Thief: The Dark Project

The Good
1. Complex AI. Guards will chase you, will look for you if you give them the slip, and will get bored of looking if they can't find you. Dead bodies alert them to your presence, so hiding said bodies becomes a priority.

1. Open-ended gameplay. This is no railroad shooter. You must come up with your own way to achieve your objectives. Do you try a frontal assault on the Manor? Quite possible, but not advisable. Sneak in through the sewers? Maybe a rope arrow placed right there? Kill the guard? Knock him out? Distract him? There are a million ways to play the game, including the ever popular "never let them realize you're there."

2. Difficulty levels that are meaningful. Not merely content with giving you less health, higher difficulty levels mean more objectives and limitations on how you can go about it ("You're a thief, not a murderer - don't kill anyone"). You haven't played the ENTIRE game unless you've done it on Expert.

3. A unique inventory. Your bow has several types of arrows, each with a different purpose. Water arrows to douse torches (making you harder to find). Rope arrows for climbing to interesting places. Fire arrows for when something absolutely MUST go boom. Your other tools include flashbombs, lockpicks, mines, and holy water. It's up to you to use them well.

4. An amazing storyline. Set in a rich steampunk setting, you are a thief caught up in a horrible plot to destroy civilization. Which puts you in the last position any self-respecting thief wants to be: the role of hero. The voice-acting is flawless, the world is unique and alive, and the continuity is maintained with extreme precision. The smallest scroll contains a scrap of information that jives with everything else PERFECTLY. Even if the information is useless to the player.

5. The main character. Garrett is a truly unique person. Cynical and jaded, he still possesses a sarcastic streak a mile wide, resulting in some priceless dialogue.
   
   The Bad
   1. Lack of rag-doll physics means that dead bodies get thrown into weird positions, which kinda ruins the verisimilitude (oh, look it up!) . There was nothing to be done about this at the time, but it'd be nice if the source code to the game was released so the fan community could improve on the engine. It worked for Doom!

6. Difficult to work with custom content. To make new missions, one must replace the existing missions. The game simply does not support loading custom content the way other games do (like Doom, for example). This doesn't affect the main game itself, so it's hard to really hold this against it.

7. Uh, I can't come up with anything else to complain about, but these lists always look best with at least three entries.
   
   The Bottom Line
   A steampunk cloak-and-dagger adventure, where a sharp mind is more important than a sharp sword.

The Good
A quiet revolution on launch, 'Thief' plays like a cross between 'Rainbow Six' and the old playground favourite 'What's the time Mr Wolf'. As a sneaky thief, you have to steal your way through a series of absolutely enormous, atmospheric 'steam-punk' levels, avoiding guards, laying traps, and hiding in the shadows. Like almost everything by Looking Glass, 'Thief' was intelligent, well-presented, extraordinarily deep, and commercially only so-so.

The stand-out elements are the excellent, shadowy level designs, and the spooky, tense atmosphere. Your character is no good at fighting, and you have to sneak around behind people who might turn around at any minute, often in dark rooms, sometimes in haunted caverns. Imagine a really scary ghost story, crossed with the tension of bomb disposal, and you're there. The level design is highly original - the level set in a giant sarcophagous, in which you turn corners to find yourself face-to-face with large, gas-breathing dinosaurs, is an all-time classic.

It's best to hunt out the 'Gold' version (now on budget) - that added three new levels, a level editor, and some bug fixes.

The Bad
Not much is wrong with 'Thief' - even the between-level FMV sequences are excellently done. Compared to something like 'Half-Life', the graphics are relatively primative, but the engine is doing a lot more. Often the hugeness of the levels makes working your way through the game seem impossible at time, and although your character is a thief it would be nice if he was at least competent with the sword. Apart from that, buy it.

The Bottom Line
An astonishingly good 'sneak-em-up' that takes a while to grab you but, once it does, your previous life is history.

The Good
There can't be any better way to spend my weekend again... and again... and again... I've been playing this game from when it was released, and I still haven't got bored to sneaking around in the dark streets, gloomy temples and grand mansions. Actually, I've found more places to break in and steal the treasury from. The level design is perversely exquisite, on the streets and in the houses. Not so much detail, but the dark textures and the glorious architecture kept me going deeper.

When it comes to enemies who are clearly on your way, I prefer to sneak around them unnoticed, shoot a rope arrow somewhere high and past the guards by going in the ceilings, and as a last resort, knocking them out. Never using my sword or arrows. It gives you a great feeling to achieve something like completing the game on expert-level with knocking only the the guards that you really have to or entering and leaving a mansion without being noticed at all. The zombies weren't the best enemy there could be. Though the rest of the undead were great, especially in making the atmosphere. They all did their jobs good.

The Bad
There wasn't anything particular I didn't like. But the enemy AI could've been scripted better, now the guards automatically stop searching you if you've hided in the shadows enough, which makes the game easy. Then there was the burrick caves in few levels, they didn't give any competition and were kind of boring so I would've leaved them out of the game.

The Bottom Line
Release your inner thief. Sneak on dark alleys, snatch a key from a drunk guard to get inside a mansion full of riches. All and all, a game you don't want to miss if you happen to be even slightly interested in sneaking.