Thief review : Xbox One

Thief the re invigorated reboot of the classic game series of the same name recently launched for current and nest gen consoles and I've sank a good couple dozen hours into playing the title on multiple difficulties and I have to say I'm impressed with what the game is meant to be......

Thief as the name suggests puts you in control of Garret the master thief in a dark toned fictional city. This is a fist person game that gives you the freedom to approach a situation anyway you want but only ever really rewards you for using stealth. Thief is the game of stealing and it gives you ample opportunity to do so, basically anything that is not nailed down you can steal and that's one of the problems I have with the games premise. Thief puts you in Garret's shoes who is meant to be a legendary thief for which there is no equal and yet he(thus you) is still encouraged to take items such as fountain pens and silver forks worth a couple of gold pieces along with the artistic master pieces like golden bracelets made to look like a snake or an exquisite pearl necklace that are completely unique. It kind of takes you out of the fiction while you're trying to convince yourself your playing a game where you can pull of an Ocean's eleven style heist(you can by the way) but at the same time your scraping together a living like a rookie still learning his craft. Now this may just be me as a game designer as well kicking in but it would make more sense to steal smaller items and work your way up throughout the game to the good stuff as your skill increases but this doesn't happen your always encouraged to steal anything and everything in order to pay for that new tool you need or that upgrade that will prove useful. It's something that doesn't affect gameplay by any means but it does take you out of the fiction.

The game has a very dark tone and the visuals fully support this and give you a great sense of the cities plight and squalor. You'll be sneaking past guards and the homeless alike through dark, wet piss stained alleys of the city and looking down upon your unsuspecting prey from roof tops covered by the sweet shroud of darkness as you watch guards walk around making it all too easy for you to spot with their torches lit. The game portrays the use of light and dark very well and there are times that you can really believe you can walk up to within a few centimetres of a guard, pickpocket his hard earned wage and sneak back off again without him ever knowing you were there.

 The gameplay has you roaming the games open world city looking for either loot(for which there is alot) to steal or a mission from one of the many npc's there are around the city. The missions often provide the greater risk, profit and fun that the game can provide to its players. During these missions you'll be faced with a number of obstacles that must be overcome however you see fit such as traps that need to be disarmed with the correct tool, roaming guards with guard dogs that can sense your smell and secret hidden passages that could lead you to a new collectible or allow you to bypass certain security obstacle. This is where the games stealth mechanics really come into their own as you have to contend with not only light but line of enemy sight, whether your walking one cobbles or grass, weather there is running water nearby or if you should use that empty bottle you picked up before to throw and distract the guard for a few seconds. This is where your rewards come in as you make it through these missions you can choose whether you play the game stealth, predator or assault, all of which are valid methods of completing the game but while the game excels at stealth it heavily lacks in the combat department.

Combat in Thief is a clumsy affair to be polite and utterly fracking frustrating to be brutal! Using the bow is a good way to take out your foes from afar but your normally faced by more than one in a patrol which is a problem since the bow is not exactly fast, it's more of a tool with you being able to use it with different arrow heads for jobs like putting out a lamp with a water arrow or push a switch from far away with a blunt arrow. Then there's close combat where the stealth aspect again comes into it, if you manage to sneak up behind an enemy you can knock them out in a single quiet blow but if your discovered your forced into a clumsy dodge/block enemy attack then attack and repeat and if you're facing multiple enemies it's even worse near impossible on the harder settings.

Story wise the game is not going to win any awards, without giving too much away there's a big bad guy who's abit too overly interested in a plague that's ravishing the city and its already devastated population with a good chunk of the super natural and semi dead love interest mixed in. The story may have come out abit better if not for the boring and frankly terrible voice acting in the game. The general npc's sound drab and boring with primary npc's having some nice(and at times darkly funny)dialogue who can't convey the intended emotion for a given situation then we come to Garret himself, he was obviously intended to be dark and serious with a flat dark sense of humour but the voice acting doesn't quite cut it. He always seems to speak in a single un emotionless mono-tone that reminds me of Deus-ex human revolutions Adam Jensen.

My Verdict

Thief is a reboot that try's some ambitious stealth mechanics with a gorgeous overall tone and well thought out game world which these two aspects make the game a joy to play, its only when you add in the other parts that are necessary to make the game whole do we see its deep failings in the combat system and characters. I do recommend this game but only for hardcore stealth game fans who should play on the most difficult setting and try to go full stealth in order to get the full Thief experience.

3/5 Stars