Thief - Complete Review

Am back with the review of 'Thief' and to be honest with you guys am also confused about the game as it has some pretty good factors and some poor factors making it hard for anybody to decide wether to go for it or avoid it.


Story/Plot

Well the plot of the game is very unstable and the theme of it is very confusing lying in the midst of Fantasy ,Olden Science-fiction or Dark Times , this uncoordinated  mixture of different genre which were intended to make the game interesting end up ruining it. Th game starts off with an interesting plot guiding us towards a conspiracy to attain power by the 'Baron' of the City(apparently the city wasn't given a name) and you as a master thief which the game force on every turn to realize(it seems petty) without any intention will try heal the city and end this dictatorship , that doesn't sound bad but due to lack in proper approach it fails horribly where the game provides us with 8 different main quests & about 25 optional quests where you easily complete main quest in 8-12 hours and completing  all quest & obtaining collectibles would easily provide you with 20+ hours of gameplay. Though the game offers you with a surprisingly more quantity of gameplay time but as i've said before the plot suffers heavily and the plot seemed a bit immature and broken and offers nothing original and interesting ,even the plot twist and spoilers are expressed in such a way that you won't be excited about it . If you are diving into this game in hopes of having a unique plot experience , i wouldn't  suggest to get your hopes up  high.


Gameplay

Well with plot of the game lies in the ruins one would expect the gameplay to be the support for the game but the gameplay was also a bit let down as Thief is a first-person action and apart from a few games the genre has not been much successful and the Eidos Interactive didn't only changed the concept of thief from a thrid- person to a first-person , they did it pretty neatly and provided us with a game which shows aspects of greatness in stealth games and sorting out many kinks along the way  but do notice i said it shows aspects of greatness instead being one. When i was playing the game i couldn't help but notice the similarity of 'Thief' and found it very much derived from 'Dishonored' where you also have the liberty to chose your gameplay style wether you wanna go head on to face enemies or hide in the corners and played it out as a ghost , personally i prefer stealth over the jumping on the enemies head-on. The main similarities of both games are that their stealth mainly rely on shadows  where Thief players feel a little over dependent on the shadows which hinders and limits the variations that might be offered by a game and on some levels of certain quests it would feel like the game doesn't challenge us enough with different possibilities instead it might be irritating as  it offers us only one path towards our objective and forces us to do some rash high profile action to manipulate the AIs as they some times gets caught up in a glitch and breaks the pace of game & speaking of AI they contradict themselves as they acts completely dumb some times and extremely vigilant the another as a result you freely roam around the area as if there are no gaurds. This is some of a few things about the game which makes us feel not being challenged enough or by getting totally irritated and also instead of the master thief The character feels more like a petty thief as we have to lift almost every thing from the area even forks and spoons and there not enough collectible theft items like a painting or breaking into a safe or hidden lock behind a posters.

                                                              Up until you must be thinking the game is horrific but its not all bad as the game do offers a swift stealth mechanics which makes the game intersting and worth playing & arrays of platforming around the map which keeps you held onto this game and variations in different types of arrow is a clever use for overcoming obstacles or dealing with AIs and i really liked the part where garret uses different tools like a screw driver to steal plates or access vents and use cutters to steal paintings and disable traps and using his focus abilities you have to do all of this without anybody realizing you were there. As of now game mainly attracts the gamers who prefer stealthy action and it seems its going towards the right direction with its gameplay tactics and if worked on kinks it has the potential to be one of the leading games in the genre but right now it gets shot down due to poor coding and optimization , at first i thought it was only on pc but as i tested it on PS4 the result remains the same. When you play the game it feels like it was rushed into development as the end result is not a finished product. Long story short game's gameplay mechanics shows signs of greatness but gets shot down because of poor optimization , speaking of poor optimization the game is filled with loading screen from when you enter a different area or after a cut scene or reloading a checkpoint and they take 1-3 minutes which is a huge bummer.

Visuals/Sound FX

Visuals are the only aspect of the game which pleased me completely , the details on character modelling , the surrounding , the burning of the game, the smokes everything look amazing and the dark environment of the game enhances the ghostly stealth provided by the game. The game justifies using DX 11 visuals and PC gamers out there if you're planning on getting this i would suggest that you gear up good as the game is demanding in terms of visuals. The game looks beautiful no doubt but there's a big catch due to poor optimization it suffer frame drops and slight stuttering sometimes no matter the platform wether its a console or a high end pc this bug is effects all.

                            The voice acting and character presentation are complete waste especially Garret his voice feels like that of a runt and the voice overs during gameplay feels forced the game is filled with cliche'd dialogues and poor voice actings , game also suffers with out of the sync video with audio which got me annoyed during conversation. The only thing good about its sound FX is that of the background music and crisp sounds of different phenomenon going around in the surrounding.

Final Words

Thief is a very contradicting game which fails completely on the plot development  , horrid voice acting and poor optimization leading to an game which feels like an unfinished product but offers Solid Visuals & strong gameplay mechanics especially the stealth part showing some good potential towards the future . Still i wouldn't recommend this game to everybody but if you really love stealth genre and have the patience to play them you could grab it when the prices go down.


"Showed Great potential but failed to Implement"

Pros - Solid Visuals . Strong stealth gameplay

Cons - Broken plot , Constant Loading Screens , Poor optimization

Rating - 6.3/10