Panda with issues...
Well-Known Member
Having played this most of the weekend, and not quite having finished it, but being certain I'm pretty close to the end, I figured I'd do a bit of a review. Whether this view is applicable or not is kind of variable to how you're likely to play the game, and what angle you come at it from, and in some ways perhaps, I probably shouldn't review it at all.
Caveat: I come at this game through the lineage of Thief, Thief II: The Metal Age, System Shock II, Half Life and its iterations. These are the inevitable lenses through which I was always going to judge this game.
So, to start:
It's clear there has been a lot of work done on this game, by a very dedicated team, and they've tried very hard to design an original setting, however, in a lot of ways, they've failed. Graphically, well, the game is a little bit of a disappointment. It looks very much hampered to run on current gen consoles, and it shows. I'm not a person that places a great lot of stock in graphics, but this certainly felt 'limited' to me personally. In regards to the theme, I have to agree with the penny arcade boys, in that there's too much going on.
Furthermore, it's obvious to me at least, that if you smashed the aesthetics of Thief and Half Life 2 into a blender, and maybe shoved in a little bioshock to taste, this is what you'd get out. It's all a little too rich, like that 89% Cocoa dark chocolate. There's just too much in there, and it turns to powder in your mouth. In a lot of ways, well, they could have thinned it down for a slightly more coherent theme.
The story: Well, it's...not great. It's nothing that hasn't been seen before, contains the obligatory 'big' plot twist which is as obvious as it comes, and generally, well, could have been improved upon considerably. You won't be hooked into playing this game for the plot.
As anyone who spoke to me on friday night will attest to, I was really rather down on this game, and that is mostly due to the tutorial section, which is downright awful. It's full of 'press x to awesome', follow the HUD to the end of this long linear corridor you could never get lost in bullshit, and is generally obnoxious (luckily, I found out you can turn the vast majority of this off in the options). However, once this section finishes, the gameplay REALLY gets going, and the actual strengths of the game really come to the fore.
The actual strength of this game is options and choices, and the level design that allows for these to fully come into play. Forget the pointless weapon upgrades, and currency system which seems obligatory to shoehorn into games now, forget the fact that you have to do silly semi-fetchquests to find 'runes' to upgrade your magical abilities. You can play this game the way YOU want to play it, which means you can play it like thief. Let me let that sink in. YOU CAN PLAY THIS GAME LIKE THIEF. So I did.
You can also play it like bioshock, if you want, and if I must say, it plays a LOT more smoothly than bioshock. The plasmids in bioshock were kind of crap. They were designed to allow interaction with the environment, but the flaw was that basically they were set up as set pieces, in a way that didn't really hang together. The powers in this game are much, much more refined, and flow in a manner that makes gameplay incredibly enjoyable, and a lot of that is due to the extensive care that has been taken with the level design. I basically only use one power, the one that you start with, and I still cant get enough of it and I've almost finished the game. It makes it that enjoyable. All you need is blink, bli-ink, blink. All you need is blink. Blink is a sort of short to medium range teleport. In some ways it replaces the rope arrow from thief, allowing you to teleport up, grab onto ledges, get up high. This is my favourite strategy, allowing me to check out guard numbers, movement patterns, entry points, plan my route in causing minimal chaos. I also use it to teleport behind people, choke them unconscious, pick up the body, teleport away, hide it, continue. You could also use it offensively if you want to, but since I rarely engage in combat, well, I wouldn't really know.
I also have the ability to possess animals, slow time and see the movement paths of guards through walls, but these rarely see much use. There are a bunch of other powers that I haven't unlocked and are much more offensive, but that's not the game I'm currently playing. In terms of gameplay, I've barely scratched the surface. The only weapon I use is choke holds and sleep darts, and I haven't got a clue how to swordfight. These things are for another playthrough. I've occasionally rewired electronics and alarms and so on, but generally find it more fun to find a way around, and disable them by cutting the power.
Quite frankly, this seems to be a rare game where it promises that you can play YOUR way, and actually delivers. I'm confident that I'll play this game through again, trying out some of the other strategies, much, much more violently. I've seen plenty of alternative entry points if I were to sneak about using rats for example.
Now, back to the 'fetch quests'. This game contains runes and bone charms. Runes are a currency used to buy and upgrade your magical abilities, bone charms are a kind of pointless passive upgrade the only one of which I've found that I remotely give a shit about is the one which allows me to choke people faster (I really think that these, again, could have been removed from the game with no great loss). Runes and bone charms are hidden around the levels. However, early on you get given an item, a hybrid clockwork human heart which can sense these items when they are near. It's the best idea I've ever seen to make this kind of loathesome searching more palatable, in fact, I'd be inclined to say this is (pun intended) in many ways the 'heart' of the game. When you equip it and use it, it speaks to you, it fills in gaps in the story, it informs you about the environment (in an eerie way) and if you point it at people, it will tell you secrets about them. Quite frankly, it's fantastic. What's even better is that I'm pretty certain that the woman who voices the telltale heart is the same as that who voiced Viktoria in Thief II. This voice has the ability to bring me physically to tears with some of the comments, just like in Thief. The atmosphere of the game is immeasurably greater due to this item.
A few final comments. The game feels short. The missions are generally pretty high quality, but the game feels like it's missing a 'middle'. There's probably about as much game here as bioshock, which was also too short. There's about half as much here as Thief II, and it's just a little upsetting for me, as I was very much enjoying getting back to the old sneak and rob, but I think it's probably forgiveable, since there are so many different ways to deal with the different options available to you. Again, gameplay wise, I don't feel like I've even scratched the surface. There are no levels here to rival robbing the bank in Thief II, or the rooftops etc in terms of sheer complexity and difficulty and fun, but they generally don't disappoint in terms of options (I didn't think the party one was all that, and the first mission was perhaps the most diverse). It's a shame there's no map available at will to use to plan routes a la thief, and I miss the actual mechanics of the bow from thief also. The crossbow in this doesn't feel very bow like, I don't think I've encountered any arcing flight of bolts or anything.
A large bugbear was the inability to smash lights. Maybe you can do it with the pistol, but obviously that isn't quiet. It really loses something from the lack of being able to do this to enable further movement options, and throwing stuff to distract guards doesn't really work properly either.
Overall, I would have liked more content, but it's difficult to say where to have cut corners considering that the variability and multitudinous options are the strengths of the game.
I don't regret my £30, some of the rest of you may want to wait for a sale, (I suspect it'll be a while) but I think this is a really rather good game, especially for a AAA first person title, which are normally generic as they come.
It's not thief, but you can make it almost thief if you want, which in this day and age, is like a breath of fresh air.
Caveat: I come at this game through the lineage of Thief, Thief II: The Metal Age, System Shock II, Half Life and its iterations. These are the inevitable lenses through which I was always going to judge this game.
So, to start:
It's clear there has been a lot of work done on this game, by a very dedicated team, and they've tried very hard to design an original setting, however, in a lot of ways, they've failed. Graphically, well, the game is a little bit of a disappointment. It looks very much hampered to run on current gen consoles, and it shows. I'm not a person that places a great lot of stock in graphics, but this certainly felt 'limited' to me personally. In regards to the theme, I have to agree with the penny arcade boys, in that there's too much going on.
Furthermore, it's obvious to me at least, that if you smashed the aesthetics of Thief and Half Life 2 into a blender, and maybe shoved in a little bioshock to taste, this is what you'd get out. It's all a little too rich, like that 89% Cocoa dark chocolate. There's just too much in there, and it turns to powder in your mouth. In a lot of ways, well, they could have thinned it down for a slightly more coherent theme.
The story: Well, it's...not great. It's nothing that hasn't been seen before, contains the obligatory 'big' plot twist which is as obvious as it comes, and generally, well, could have been improved upon considerably. You won't be hooked into playing this game for the plot.
As anyone who spoke to me on friday night will attest to, I was really rather down on this game, and that is mostly due to the tutorial section, which is downright awful. It's full of 'press x to awesome', follow the HUD to the end of this long linear corridor you could never get lost in bullshit, and is generally obnoxious (luckily, I found out you can turn the vast majority of this off in the options). However, once this section finishes, the gameplay REALLY gets going, and the actual strengths of the game really come to the fore.
The actual strength of this game is options and choices, and the level design that allows for these to fully come into play. Forget the pointless weapon upgrades, and currency system which seems obligatory to shoehorn into games now, forget the fact that you have to do silly semi-fetchquests to find 'runes' to upgrade your magical abilities. You can play this game the way YOU want to play it, which means you can play it like thief. Let me let that sink in. YOU CAN PLAY THIS GAME LIKE THIEF. So I did.
You can also play it like bioshock, if you want, and if I must say, it plays a LOT more smoothly than bioshock. The plasmids in bioshock were kind of crap. They were designed to allow interaction with the environment, but the flaw was that basically they were set up as set pieces, in a way that didn't really hang together. The powers in this game are much, much more refined, and flow in a manner that makes gameplay incredibly enjoyable, and a lot of that is due to the extensive care that has been taken with the level design. I basically only use one power, the one that you start with, and I still cant get enough of it and I've almost finished the game. It makes it that enjoyable. All you need is blink, bli-ink, blink. All you need is blink. Blink is a sort of short to medium range teleport. In some ways it replaces the rope arrow from thief, allowing you to teleport up, grab onto ledges, get up high. This is my favourite strategy, allowing me to check out guard numbers, movement patterns, entry points, plan my route in causing minimal chaos. I also use it to teleport behind people, choke them unconscious, pick up the body, teleport away, hide it, continue. You could also use it offensively if you want to, but since I rarely engage in combat, well, I wouldn't really know.
I also have the ability to possess animals, slow time and see the movement paths of guards through walls, but these rarely see much use. There are a bunch of other powers that I haven't unlocked and are much more offensive, but that's not the game I'm currently playing. In terms of gameplay, I've barely scratched the surface. The only weapon I use is choke holds and sleep darts, and I haven't got a clue how to swordfight. These things are for another playthrough. I've occasionally rewired electronics and alarms and so on, but generally find it more fun to find a way around, and disable them by cutting the power.
Quite frankly, this seems to be a rare game where it promises that you can play YOUR way, and actually delivers. I'm confident that I'll play this game through again, trying out some of the other strategies, much, much more violently. I've seen plenty of alternative entry points if I were to sneak about using rats for example.
Now, back to the 'fetch quests'. This game contains runes and bone charms. Runes are a currency used to buy and upgrade your magical abilities, bone charms are a kind of pointless passive upgrade the only one of which I've found that I remotely give a shit about is the one which allows me to choke people faster (I really think that these, again, could have been removed from the game with no great loss). Runes and bone charms are hidden around the levels. However, early on you get given an item, a hybrid clockwork human heart which can sense these items when they are near. It's the best idea I've ever seen to make this kind of loathesome searching more palatable, in fact, I'd be inclined to say this is (pun intended) in many ways the 'heart' of the game. When you equip it and use it, it speaks to you, it fills in gaps in the story, it informs you about the environment (in an eerie way) and if you point it at people, it will tell you secrets about them. Quite frankly, it's fantastic. What's even better is that I'm pretty certain that the woman who voices the telltale heart is the same as that who voiced Viktoria in Thief II. This voice has the ability to bring me physically to tears with some of the comments, just like in Thief. The atmosphere of the game is immeasurably greater due to this item.
A few final comments. The game feels short. The missions are generally pretty high quality, but the game feels like it's missing a 'middle'. There's probably about as much game here as bioshock, which was also too short. There's about half as much here as Thief II, and it's just a little upsetting for me, as I was very much enjoying getting back to the old sneak and rob, but I think it's probably forgiveable, since there are so many different ways to deal with the different options available to you. Again, gameplay wise, I don't feel like I've even scratched the surface. There are no levels here to rival robbing the bank in Thief II, or the rooftops etc in terms of sheer complexity and difficulty and fun, but they generally don't disappoint in terms of options (I didn't think the party one was all that, and the first mission was perhaps the most diverse). It's a shame there's no map available at will to use to plan routes a la thief, and I miss the actual mechanics of the bow from thief also. The crossbow in this doesn't feel very bow like, I don't think I've encountered any arcing flight of bolts or anything.
A large bugbear was the inability to smash lights. Maybe you can do it with the pistol, but obviously that isn't quiet. It really loses something from the lack of being able to do this to enable further movement options, and throwing stuff to distract guards doesn't really work properly either.
Overall, I would have liked more content, but it's difficult to say where to have cut corners considering that the variability and multitudinous options are the strengths of the game.
I don't regret my £30, some of the rest of you may want to wait for a sale, (I suspect it'll be a while) but I think this is a really rather good game, especially for a AAA first person title, which are normally generic as they come.
It's not thief, but you can make it almost thief if you want, which in this day and age, is like a breath of fresh air.
