Thief (2014) Review

Writers note:  I did not finish this game.  I played about 15 hours.  I didn't finish because it sucks....hard.

My one sentence review of Thief would be: "It's a shitty Dishonored".  My in depth review of Thief would end: "So basically, this game is a shitty Dishonored".  I loved Dishonored.  This game tries to be Dishonored...only if it was shitty.

A much better game.

The first problem with this game is its terrible, TERRRRRRRRIBLE, level design.  Many gamers complained that this game is "too linear" and in a vacuum, that is like complaining that GTA is "too open world".  Linear games are fine.  Linear stealth games, however, are a problem.  Stealth games thrive in large environments.  The Last of Us, for example, has a linear progression but a majority of the levels are large enough to give the player options on how to handle a given situation. Thief is more like two virgins having sex.

You can pick the locks on doors, but can't open others.  You can open some windows, but not others.  You can climb a few walls, but most you can't (Some of the walls you can climb switches to a 3rd person Assassins Creed mode for no rational reason).  You can use the rope arrow to reach higher terrain like 2 times...making me question why I even bothered to buy the damn things.  In Dishonored, I almost always took to the rooftops to get around.  In Thief, you are limited to the ground in an insane number of times, except in the prologue which I think exists just to insult the player.  The prologue is almost all rooftop, like, "look at how much fun it is to run along rooftops", only the rest of the game NEVER LETS YOU DO THAT!

Imma touch you!

There is a stupid amount of dead ends in this game.  In a stealth game, that's a huge fucking problem because you need escape routes when you get spotted.  In Thief, whenever I try to escape getting noticed, I run into a dead end alleyway forcing me to use the awful combat system to fight my way through 6 guards and probably die.

Did I mention the combat system sucks?  Because holy shit, press one button to do all combat is worse than an insurance company who might appear when you're having sex.  I played this game on the PS3.  L1 to dodge, R1 to do all melee combat.  You can use a bow, but that only really works when the guards are not alerted (and even then, not always).  Think of the combat system from the Elder Scrolls games but somehow WORSE.

Yeah.  Totally believable fight sequence.  

But just in case this game didn't sound bad enough, the enemy AI is absolutely BROKEN.  Guards will never notice you unless you are 5 feet in front of them in a well lit area.  Apparently Garrett (the main character) is a wizard who is invisible in darkness even when a guard is looking DIRECTLY AT YOU AND STANDING 10 FEET AWAY.  However, if you are noticed, every guard in a 3 state radius bum rushes you and with the previously mentioned shitty combat system, AND inability to escape (I cannot stress how big of a problem that is for a stealth game), you are fucked.  That means you have to run every level absolutely perfectly, not because of purposely difficult design, but because of shitty design.

Before I move on to one last shitty thing about this game, I should mention that this game IS OPEN WORLD, but good fucking luck getting anywhere.  The map, holy hell, is fucking worthless.   I thought Deadly Premonition had the worst map in video game history but no, Thief is somehow worse.  You cannot zoom in, ever.  You cannot scroll.  YOU, CAN, NOT, SCROLL!  It is completely static.  Even then, the map is nothing but rectangles that might be connected but those connections ARE NOT SHOWN.  Holy shit, fuck this game.  It can't get a map right!

WHAT? My map never got this filled in...and THIS map still looks like shit.

This game was also written by Rhianna Pratchett who also wrote the new Tomb Raider with such a nuance, subtlety, and humanity that Lara Croft has never had.  So how did this boring, cliche, Dishonored ripoff of a story happen as well?  A good story could have convinced me to finish this game but even that sucked.

This is the same studio that did one of my favorite games of all time, Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  How?  HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?   I know layoffs are a big problem in the gaming industry and why I only really trust Bioware and Atlus to be consistent (and I'm not even that confident in Bioware), but this has got to stop.  Square Enix doesn't get enough hate considering all the hate given to EA, Activision, and now Ubisoft (rightfully so).  But Square Enix is the forgotten 4th child.  Not quite as big as those other 3, but still big enough since they will have 15 shitty Final Fantasy games to offset their shitty* decisions elsewhere.

Final Fantasy XV coming soon!

*I've said "shitty" a lot in this post.  This post was brought to you by the AVGN.  Remember him?

Being a big fan of stealth games, this is the first Thief game I've ever played.  I know the previous ones are probably a lot better, I also know that I could probably just replay Dishonored.  Fuck this game.

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Here is my part 1 of my Top 10 Games list with a GOOD stealth game

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