Thief: Deadly Shadows review (Xbox)

Good 'ole Garret is back. For the uninitiated, he’s the master thief who pioneered the Stealth Action genre back in the first Thief game, which subsequently inspired games like Splinter Cell and Hitman. He’s also the man who showed us how it was possible to use a water balloon as an arrowhead, in order to put out torches, so we could commit our devious acts of thievery in the dark.

This time around, we find ourselves in the usual medieval setting, and true to form, the game has no intro. You are simply thrown directly into a couple of raids (the missions from the PC demo), and then the story begins to take form.

After these introductory forays, you get to roam freely through town, and from then on, you can usually go where you like. Thief: Deadly Shadows gives you a great sensation of moving freely through its storyline, much more so than in the previous entries in the series.

Give some, take some

There is something amiss in town, and Garrett quickly gets himself caught up between three factions, each prone to meddling with the powers of darkness. They all desire his assistance, and unsurprisingly, he doesn’t mind lending a hand, as long as there are rewards to be reaped.

The inclusion of dark powers means that not only humans, but also zombies and the like also populate this iteration of Thief. However, they have been toned down a bit, and are no longer as dangerous or prolific, which makes them a great addition to the ominous atmosphere, without ruining the gameplay.

A new feature in the game is cooperation with two of the factions. By carrying out missions and not killing their members, you can improve their respect for you. In return, they will not attack you when you move into their territories. This is a nice addition to the gameplay, because it allows you to avoid unnecessary violence through cunning diplomacy.

Let’s go shopping

But where is the fun in stealing if you can’t spend all your spoils on new hardware? (Umm, how about just stealing said hardware? Ah, never mind… -ed.) Of course you can, only it no longer works like in the previous games. This time around, the town is full of shops that are willing to shift your stolen goods. Certain female shopkeepers are even willing to pay in… more natural goods (ah, now it makes sense! –ed.).

Most of the time, you will find a shop in each part of the town, and each of them deals in different types of goods. You can’t buy new goods where you sell your stuff, forcing you to wander around a lot when shopping.

It’s a bit annoying that all the shopping can’t take place in one location. And I can’t really find any valid reasoning behind this design decision. But it’s always something that you are allowed to visit all the shops when you want after the first couple of missions.

Burglary is fun

Humour has always been a part of the Thief games, and this one is thankfully no exception. It’s always worth listening to the guards’ conversations before you bash ‘em over their heads. They’re still frightfully world-weary, and it’s still very entertaining to hear all the poor buggers complaining. In one of the first levels you find yourself sneaking past a sleeping guard. If you don’t knock him unconscious, you will hear him muttering “No, Mummy… no more mashed potatoes…” in his sleep. Luckily there are a lot of details like this in the game, and the developers have obviously had fun along the way. They have obviously tried to stay true to the atmosphere of the previous games, which is one of the best things about Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Uh-oh!

Get used to the words in the title of this paragraph. You’ll be hearing them a lot during this game. You see, this is what Garret utters each and every time you try to dispose of a corpse or an object where there isn’t room for it. We’d like to have seen him move into a position that allowed for the given action instead. But no, we have to nudge Garrett into the pixel-perfect position before the action is possible.

Our hero also tends to get stuck, which isn’t exactly optimal when you’re trying to escape. Luckily, you can save anywhere, so my advice is to do it every time you’re entering an unknown area. The annoyingly long loading times are a whole other story, though.

The art of map-folding on a console

This is the first Thief game ever to appear on a console. The developers have handled the transition quite well when it comes to the actual gameplay, but the menus and shortcuts could have benefited from a superior design. You need to press your joypad buttons no less than five times to produce the overview map, for instance. Another shortcut would have been nice.

Yet even though the interface could have been better, at least the text and details are clear, although the map is quite superficial. But the latter is not necessarily a bad thing, in that it appears to be something Garrett has been cooking up back home before venturing on a raid.

Go behind Garrett’s back

Another new feature is the third-person mode. It didn’t work too well when we last saw the game in action, but it has been corrected for the final version. I actually played the game in third-person mode only, because I think this works better on a console. If you are a first-person diehard however, said mode works fine as well.

The graphics have been seriously overhauled too. The level of detail is nice, but nothing truly special. That cannot be said for the absolutely amazing lighting engine, which has been created specifically for this game. I have never seen such a convincing use of light and shadows in a game. It is perfectly done, and you will never be in doubt whether or not you’re actually hiding in shadows. The light gauge is quite superfluous. The lighting engine really improves the atmosphere beyond that of the previous games, and the screenshots in this review really don’t do the game justice.

Crime pays

Even though this chapter in the Thief saga is not as polished as is ought to have been, it is still a must for fans of the series or stealth games in general. I must admit that I’ve been nervous about if Thief: Deadly Shadows would suffer the same fate as Deus Ex 2, seeing that both games have been developed in the same way, under the lead of Warren Spector. But that is not the case.

According to many fans, Deus Ex 2 lost the atmosphere that made the original special, but Thief: Deadly Shadows has not lost its soul. It seems like this project has received more loving attention than Deus Ex 2, and this is why it is still a pleasure to become a master thief, even though the game is rough around the edges.

And remember, kids: even though you can play a thief in cyberspace, don’t steal the game…

Source: Boomtown Denmark
English version by: Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)