Thief: The Deadly Shadows looked like a promising game and something a bit different; instead of shooting things all the time you had to get around by stealth, using your thieving skills and tools to achieve your goals. Now a thief is obviously not known to be a paragon of virtues, but in the course of your travels (basically a set of missions) your character will uncover sinister secrets and end up saving the world (or at least city), and thus be the good guy after all.
Initially, installing and playing the game was fine, but problems later on mean that I didn't get much actual playing time with this game. I played it for a while and couldn't really get into it, though I was wiling to give it another try. The graphics are fairly good and are very atmospheric on the whole - after all due to your trade you operate at night, and thus are mostly wandering round creepy courtyards lit only by flaming torches on the wall. The music and sound effects too are very atmospheric, and the voice-acting for the main character is pretty good. All in all, aesthetically the game manages to create a realist and interesting game world. You will probably need to adjust the brightness level - when you start the game it asks you to adjust the brightness until the character hiding by the shadows is barely visible, but I found that made the game nearly unplayable as it was very difficult to see what was happening on screen. Okay so it added realism, but clearly seeing what's what is far more important! You can play in 3rd or 1st person mode; as usual, first-person offers a more immersive gaming experience, while third-person shows more of the game world and can be easier in some circumstances.
Your surroundings are fairly interactive - for instance, one of your thief tools is a "water arrow", which you can use to douse a torch from a distance (provided you're a good enough shot, of course). There are a whole host of other tools, most of which I unfortunately never got to try out. The interface isn't terrible but often felt quite fiddly, particularly considering you're playing a game where precision is often the key. The basic game design tries to involve you in various aspects of stealth and breaking in - for instance when you try to open locked doors / safes etc, there is a mini-game in which you have to rotate the combination until you find the "sweet spot" - keep it in that position long enough and the lock will open. The idea is good, but the resulting mini-game tended to be more annoying than fun or absorbing.
The game's difficulty quickly increased after the easy tutorial level, and even the first main mission I found to be very challenging. The main problem I found was that the map was extremely unhelpful, and since each mission's map was pretty large and most of the rooms looked quite similar, it was often difficult to work out where you were and where you were supposed to be going. I have to admit that working out how to get past certain obstacles / guards was quite involving at first, but failing to clearly identify your intended destination on the map was exasperating.
Concentrating for a moment on what I did like about the game, there were often several ways of accomplishing what you were trying to do. Along with the atmosphere the game generates, this was easily the best thing about the game. If you bop someone with your blackjack there's no point just leaving the body lying round for anyone to find and raise the alarm - you have to find somewhere secluded to put the unconscious bod. Little details like that do add a feeling of realism to the game. Incidentally, it is possible to rely on brawn when you get into trouble but this really isn't recommended and it definitely won't get you very far if you try to fight your way through every situation. Apart from your main objective it's possible to find and nab loot as you go along - in fact you need a certain percentage as well as achieving the primary goal to complete a mission.
Unfortunately the problems mount up... the AI, which is very important to a game like this, failed to impress. Clearly you don't want adversaries so smart that you can't possibly beat them, but you want a good degree of challenge and you want enemies that act reasonably rationally and believably. There were signs of this but the guards often did strange things. The worst example of the AI is actually near the end of the tutorial level, where you are in a room with two people talking and a guard standing over them. You lurk in the shadows unnoticed, fine. You sneak behind them, grab the purse which is your objective, and crawl through the shadows past them and hide behind a projection. Great, all is as it should be. The doorway out of here though is flooded with light - surely I need a distraction. So I fire a noisemaker arrow into the wall yonder. Strangely, not one of the three people in the room notice. It was at this point that I decided to experiment a bit, and fired a noisemaker arrow straight at the guard's head. Perfect shot, direct hit... and not a blink of an eyelid. I know guards are supposed to not show their emotions, but really...
Sadly the problems don't stop there. While I didn't have any problems with the game the first time I played it, when I decided to give it another shot, the game refused to run (though I could get to the menu screens - sometimes - it was impossible to actually start the game proper). The only thing I can attribute this to is my updating DirectX - which obviously shouldn't cause such a problem. I've also got the most up-to-date driver for my graphics card, so that can't be the problem either.
The game's packaging claims that it runs on Windows XP and Vista, though the game's ReadMe has a slightly different list of operating systems (the game was released in 2004 and the ReadMe evidently hasn't been updated since then). Running Thief in Compatibility mode doesn't help. There is an update patch available but this refuses to work - it claims that the game executable is not on the disc, although a file of the same name is. Weird. There's an active community on the official website (http://www.eidos.co.uk/gss/thief_ds/) and they've got mods for changing the AI, update patches and all sorts - unfortunately I couldn't find a solution to my particular problem and am now beyond caring much. I will update if I come across something in the future, but for now...
I feel that there's a good game lurking in there somewhere, but it seems that I'm never going to get at it now. From the five 5-star reviews on Epinions already I suspect that this must be the case... I must rate on what I've seen so far (and the fact that it stopped working) - so I'm only going to give it 2 stars. I have a feeling that this is one of those games that grows on you over time rather than instantly appeals; it also seems likely that it will work most happily on slightly older computers.
Thief: The Deadly Shadows is rated 12+ (PEGI rating) for violence and language.
System Specs:
CPU: 1/5GHz
RAM: 256Mb (512Mb+ recommended)
HDD Space: 3Gb
Graphics card: GeForce 4 or above - must support Pixel Shader
DirectX: 9/.0b
Tested on: Packard Bell iMedia J2489
Initially, installing and playing the game was fine, but problems later on mean that I didn't get much actual playing time with this game. I played it for a while and couldn't really get into it, though I was wiling to give it another try. The graphics are fairly good and are very atmospheric on the whole - after all due to your trade you operate at night, and thus are mostly wandering round creepy courtyards lit only by flaming torches on the wall. The music and sound effects too are very atmospheric, and the voice-acting for the main character is pretty good. All in all, aesthetically the game manages to create a realist and interesting game world. You will probably need to adjust the brightness level - when you start the game it asks you to adjust the brightness until the character hiding by the shadows is barely visible, but I found that made the game nearly unplayable as it was very difficult to see what was happening on screen. Okay so it added realism, but clearly seeing what's what is far more important! You can play in 3rd or 1st person mode; as usual, first-person offers a more immersive gaming experience, while third-person shows more of the game world and can be easier in some circumstances.
Your surroundings are fairly interactive - for instance, one of your thief tools is a "water arrow", which you can use to douse a torch from a distance (provided you're a good enough shot, of course). There are a whole host of other tools, most of which I unfortunately never got to try out. The interface isn't terrible but often felt quite fiddly, particularly considering you're playing a game where precision is often the key. The basic game design tries to involve you in various aspects of stealth and breaking in - for instance when you try to open locked doors / safes etc, there is a mini-game in which you have to rotate the combination until you find the "sweet spot" - keep it in that position long enough and the lock will open. The idea is good, but the resulting mini-game tended to be more annoying than fun or absorbing.
The game's difficulty quickly increased after the easy tutorial level, and even the first main mission I found to be very challenging. The main problem I found was that the map was extremely unhelpful, and since each mission's map was pretty large and most of the rooms looked quite similar, it was often difficult to work out where you were and where you were supposed to be going. I have to admit that working out how to get past certain obstacles / guards was quite involving at first, but failing to clearly identify your intended destination on the map was exasperating.
Concentrating for a moment on what I did like about the game, there were often several ways of accomplishing what you were trying to do. Along with the atmosphere the game generates, this was easily the best thing about the game. If you bop someone with your blackjack there's no point just leaving the body lying round for anyone to find and raise the alarm - you have to find somewhere secluded to put the unconscious bod. Little details like that do add a feeling of realism to the game. Incidentally, it is possible to rely on brawn when you get into trouble but this really isn't recommended and it definitely won't get you very far if you try to fight your way through every situation. Apart from your main objective it's possible to find and nab loot as you go along - in fact you need a certain percentage as well as achieving the primary goal to complete a mission.
Unfortunately the problems mount up... the AI, which is very important to a game like this, failed to impress. Clearly you don't want adversaries so smart that you can't possibly beat them, but you want a good degree of challenge and you want enemies that act reasonably rationally and believably. There were signs of this but the guards often did strange things. The worst example of the AI is actually near the end of the tutorial level, where you are in a room with two people talking and a guard standing over them. You lurk in the shadows unnoticed, fine. You sneak behind them, grab the purse which is your objective, and crawl through the shadows past them and hide behind a projection. Great, all is as it should be. The doorway out of here though is flooded with light - surely I need a distraction. So I fire a noisemaker arrow into the wall yonder. Strangely, not one of the three people in the room notice. It was at this point that I decided to experiment a bit, and fired a noisemaker arrow straight at the guard's head. Perfect shot, direct hit... and not a blink of an eyelid. I know guards are supposed to not show their emotions, but really...
Sadly the problems don't stop there. While I didn't have any problems with the game the first time I played it, when I decided to give it another shot, the game refused to run (though I could get to the menu screens - sometimes - it was impossible to actually start the game proper). The only thing I can attribute this to is my updating DirectX - which obviously shouldn't cause such a problem. I've also got the most up-to-date driver for my graphics card, so that can't be the problem either.
The game's packaging claims that it runs on Windows XP and Vista, though the game's ReadMe has a slightly different list of operating systems (the game was released in 2004 and the ReadMe evidently hasn't been updated since then). Running Thief in Compatibility mode doesn't help. There is an update patch available but this refuses to work - it claims that the game executable is not on the disc, although a file of the same name is. Weird. There's an active community on the official website (http://www.eidos.co.uk/gss/thief_ds/) and they've got mods for changing the AI, update patches and all sorts - unfortunately I couldn't find a solution to my particular problem and am now beyond caring much. I will update if I come across something in the future, but for now...
I feel that there's a good game lurking in there somewhere, but it seems that I'm never going to get at it now. From the five 5-star reviews on Epinions already I suspect that this must be the case... I must rate on what I've seen so far (and the fact that it stopped working) - so I'm only going to give it 2 stars. I have a feeling that this is one of those games that grows on you over time rather than instantly appeals; it also seems likely that it will work most happily on slightly older computers.
Thief: The Deadly Shadows is rated 12+ (PEGI rating) for violence and language.
System Specs:
CPU: 1/5GHz
RAM: 256Mb (512Mb+ recommended)
HDD Space: 3Gb
Graphics card: GeForce 4 or above - must support Pixel Shader
DirectX: 9/.0b
Tested on: Packard Bell iMedia J2489
0 comments:
Post a Comment