Ok, those of you long TDFX know that Brian Hook used to work for them, then went to Id where he is a programming Guru. He is HARSH on stuff he doesn't like, and a sarcastic an arrogant pain most of the time. But, he does know his stuff, and he is often correct in criticising TDFX. But....he LOVES THIEF! He is hard at work on Quake 3, yet THIEF is his favorite single player game in years!!!! From VE:
December 7th
God DAMN I love this game!
Okay, a little more info for you folks that are playing the game and are curious about my
progress. I just completed "The Assassins" and am about to embark on "The Sword"
(the fifth level I think), and I'm playing on "Normal". While I realize that "Hard" or
"Difficult" would be more fun and a better experience, I simply don't have the time to
invest in that. I'm enjoying this a lot as is, but it's pretty much destroying any other free
time I might have.
Here's a question: what are the exact differences between the various difficulty levels?
Obviously, there are differing numbers of mission objectives, but what are the other
differences? I'm guessing that some monsters are slower/faster/stupider, etc.
The more I look at the graphics, the more I realize they truly are lame by even today's
standards (Quake2, Unreal, etc.). However, as a testament to how good the gameplay
is, I've pretty much zoned and ignored the graphics since the first five minutes of the
game. The graphics just end up being irrelevant.
Oh, since some of the stuff I'm saying MIGHT be construed as spoilers (I'll do my best
to avoid this), you may want to think twice if any foreknowledge of the game will piss
you off or make it a less enjoyable experience.
WEAPONS
So far I've found the moss, fire, and noisemaker arrows to be fairly useless. If you've
used these with success, let me know.
The blackjack is invaluable, the sword is pretty much useless. My general thinking is
that the second a guard finds me, I pretty much reload my last "fast save" game. In the
first four levels I've killed exactly four people, and the last three were all at once in a bit
of a fluke (I was hiding in shadows, they were blocking my only exit and wouldn't move,
and I managed to hail something like 30 arrows on them without them finding me).
TOOLS
I like the lockpick dynamics. You feel like you're actually picking the lock, and you get
panicky that you're taking too much time when you do it. However, I haven't found out
how/why you use the shovels and pick axes and hammers you find strewn about. Are
these actually useful for anything?
MAPS
THIS GAME NEEDS AN AUTOMAPPER!!! The most tedious and irritating thing about
this game is that you keep getting lost and the maps aren't very detailed. It's hard to
keep track of what rooms you've visited, how you get from one place to another, etc.
Overall some of the levels feel very "right" (extremely simplistic geometry, BTW, but it
works), but some levels just feel sort of random and are annoying more than
interesting. The Horn of Quintus level had some really icky looking areas, and I didn't
like the way they played. On top of that, it was easier for me to just sprint around the
level than it was for me to actually skulk. I felt like I was playing Tomb Raider more than
Thief on that particular level. In general, I much prefer the levels with human guards
than the ones with zombies and big lizards.
MONSTERS
The guards are cool. The zombies are lame -- you can pretty much ignore them and
sprint past them since they're so slow.
ART
The textures are pretty blah, but I think that is partially a byproduct of the really bad
looking gamma on my Voodoo 2. I'll try it again on the TNT (once I get that working --
someone sent in a note saying that with the NVidia Reference Drivers that you have to
change the monitor type to DMF on some monitors).
SOUNDS
The sound is awesome, and I'm just using a lame two speaker setup. The music is
abso-fucking-lutely great, especially in the cut scenes. Great industrial/ambient stuff.
COMPLAINTS
I only have about five gripes right now:
- when you die, you can't just jump back to your last "fast save" location (at least, I can't
just hit F12 when the skull AVI is playing). This is frustrating, to say the least, since it's
when you die that you want your last fast save!
- needs an automapper (I mentioned this before)
- getting on ladders that are going down really sucks
- IMMENSE load time from CD-ROM, and this was with the full install! This is
frustrating as hell, because you can't tell if the system is hung or not.
- mantling (i.e. jumping on a ledge and climbing up) feels weird, and I can't consistently
do it.
CURRENT THINKING
This is my favorite single player game in YEARS. Probably since System Shock or
Shadowcaster (I'm one of the few folks that really liked Shadowcaster). It isn't perfect
by any means, but it's so damn different and innovative, I just gotta love it and respect
Looking Glass for having the cajones to do a game like this instead of Yet Another First
Person Shooter. A lot of FPS games try to present themselves as "different", when
they're just the same regurgitated, rehashed Wolf3D clones that we've seen for half a
decade now. Thief simply defines a new genre. Instead of letting the technology (first
person navigation) dictate gameplay, the gameplay has dictated the technology. A
welcome and refreshing change. I hope Looking Glass continue to pursue games that
are a little outside the norm, since this industry needs this type of game far more than it
needs another game with a rocket launcher.
As I play through more levels I'll continue to post my impressions.
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