Thief

If you are familiar with this magazine you might know that I love the stealth genre and the PlayStation 3 has a decent chunk of interesting stealth titles: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, almost the entirety of the Metal Gear Solid series, the Assassin’s Creed series, Dishonored, The Last of Us, Sly Racoon, I could go on. But how does Thief (2014) compare to those and to its classic namesake Thief (1998)?

The Thief series began in 1998 with Thief: Dark Project releasing on PC to critical success. It was followed up by Thief II: The Metal Age in 2000, also a PC only title, and Thief: Deadly Shadows in 2004 which was the first to be released on a console (Xbox) as well as PC.

After ten long years Thief was released in 2014 in this special transitional period between console generations. It could be purchased for PC, Mac, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, an awful lot of platforms to test on.

Like a lot of our stories at PlayStation 3 Forever it’s fair to assume the PlayStation 3 version is probably the worst port, I haven’t played all of them but I can say it’s at least worse than the PlayStation 4 version, but when has that ever stopped us before? Frame rate drops, long load times and pop in textures are just something we have learned to live with.

Gloomy

Graphically the game is OK. During this period you can really notice those games which were released on both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 as they clearly have more detailed models, primarily for the next-gen version, but when those are downscaled for the PlayStation 3 you get a lot of texture inconsistencies, severe frame rate drops and some overall sluggishness.

Being primarily a next-generation game, the design takes advantage of the ability for a game to be dark with subtle lighting effects and small color variations that really pop out. The problem for us is that none of that translates when you squish those effects down in order to make it work for the PlayStation 3. The game ends up being very dark, uniform and forgettable because of it.

[Quick disclaimer that the screenshots in this article are taken from the PlayStation 4 version so if you want to imagine what the PlayStation 3 version looks like, just smear some grease over the screen.]

Thief takes place in ‘The City’, a sprawling Victorian style, grungy, industrious city where a terrible plague called the Gloom has spread. The city is split up into a number of districts and locations where the main missions of the game take place. The game brings you back to this central location between missions, giving you a chance to buy items, do side quests and find collectables. I quite enjoyed this halfway style between open world and level based missions.

Gameplay wise we’re doing some stealth and stealing. A lot of stealing. So much stealing. A lot of Thief staples are here, different ground elements have different effects on sound and can alert guards more easily e.g walking on broken glass can alert guards or wading through water too quickly will do the same. There are a myriad of different arrow types such as the classic ‘Water arrow’ which can extinguish flames from a distance and Garrett’s faithful blackjack which can reliably knock guards unconscious.

Thieving and Thieving

The levels and areas are littered with stealable items: trophies, cups, letter openers, rings, Garrett needs to steal them all, where he puts them I have no idea, but the money earned from stealing is useful for replenishing those arrows and health items or to purchase different upgrades. It’s just that there is too much of it, it is of course optional, you don’t need to steal all of it, but if you enter a bedroom which may have a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, you can painstakingly open each draw and door to rinse an entire room of anything of value.

Most of the gameplay relies on staying hidden. Despite the game seemingly taking place in a world that feels permanently dark, nobody has any night vision and simply snuffing out flames or hiding in a small amount of shadow renders you invisible, at least on normal difficulty.

Looking at the amount of press information and appearances in magazines, I think the game was heavily pushed at the time. To mark the release, a select few branches of the GAME series of shops in the UK had a locked chest where customers could take part in a 5 minute challenge to lockpick it open. If they managed it, they could win a prize ranging from a brand new PlayStation 4 to some in-store vouchers.

Looking at the trophy list I was initially quite inspired to go for a Platinum run. But the main two problematic ones are beating the game on the hardest difficulty and beating the game without killing or even knocking anyone out which is much more of a tedious trial and error so for now my Platinum ambitions are shelved.

The biggest problem with Thief (201 is and probably always has been Dishonored. Dishonored is clearly inspired heavily by Thief but builds upon it in a satisfying way and makes a much more polished gaming experience.

Coming back to it now, I can live with some technical problems such as the frame rate drops and graphical hitches, but only if the experience is worth it and sadly Thief just doesn’t excite me. It’s dark, gloomy, a bit tedious and if you are going to play it, you probably better off playing a different version.