Gameplay
The environments you find yourself in are all pretty dark as the game is set at night with you using shadows and darkness for cover. Ripped straight from Thief is the trusty light meter, so you’ve always got a good idea how visible you are, though, to be honest the game’s mechanics make a mockery of this. The guards are probably some of THE dumbest people on earth with the AI driving them seemingly set to idiotic levels from the off. Although noise is purported to be one of the things you have to be careful of, I could quite happily clatter around in the dark right next to a guard with total impunity. Surely we’re past the stage where shooting out a light leaves the guard now standing there in the dark? This was one of the criticisms levelled at Thief all those years ago and it’s still present here…
And if you do happen to be unlucky enough to have a guard bumble into you, you can take him down with a few well aimed kicks but even that doesn’t give any satisfaction as you only have the one button to press. There’s no thought needed as the combat is reduced to jabbing away on one button on the controller until the guard falls over. Not exactly stimulating. Then there’s the annoyance of having to do it again as all the guards wake up from their pasting and come looking for you… having to sneak up behind a guard and choke him into unconsciousness again soon become tedious.
This is highlighted even further by the fact that you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around the admittedly vast levels. This wouldn’t be so bad if you felt motivated to get to your objective, but as I said before, you don’t. The nagging feeling that all you’re doing is playing the game for the sake of it is compounded by un-openable doors suddenly becoming unlockable just because you walked into an area elsewhere, and previously opened doors now firmly wedged shut once you’ve been in them. Throw in the self-reviving guards and tedium rapidly mutates into annoyance. It’s a good thing I was using an official Sony Dual Shock controller, if I’d had that new metal gamepad from Logic 3 in my hands I’d be out shopping for a new telly having hurled it through my screen in a frustrated rage.
