While not quite as good as its predecessors Thief: Deadly Shadows offers solid stealth gameplay...
The story starts as Garret Like the other games the missions are very well made and require a lot of patience and knowing when and where to move to avoid being spotted by the people you're stealing from. The graphics have been updated and look beautiful with the lighting and shadow technology and the environment is very interactive, like the previous games you can hurl objects to cause a distraction or even cause death by dropping heavier objects on your enemies. The sound on this game is also terrific if you have an Audigy 2 and above then you really feel like you are in that certain area whether it is a Cathedral or open streets the sound realistically echoes off of the walls and voices seem to boom out loud depending on the area that you are in.
Yet the game does not feel optimised, the developers seem to have sacrificed the frame rate to get these graphics, I had to spend £250 to get my computer to work well enough with this game, before it was unplayable with a Geforce FX5200.
On this instalment you progress differently to the other two, you travel around the city zones kind of like Postal 2 where as on previous games you went straight from mission to mission but you have to travel to mission areas and this can be frustrating if your PC is not that fast. This game is also sadly missing a rope arrow even though the developers were intending to put one into the game they chose to give the player climbing gloves instead.
The story on this instalment is also very good and ties in with the previous games you will find and hear references to characters on the previous games. This time after you have robbed a stately home/castle you are asked by the keepers to acquire certain objects that are very important to the story and as you collect up these important monuments strange occurrences happen as you try to do and you find out that a supernatural being known as “the hag” is making attempts on your life, so you follow up all sorts of leads to uncover why “the hag” is after you.
I said earlier that the missions are very well made, like the previous games you will find some very memorable missions like “Seaside Manor”, “Wieldstrom Museum” and “Robbing the Cradle”, you often have fun on these missions by tricking guards or making them slip over oil patches, there are different ways to go around missions but ultimately you are set to acquire a certain amount of loot and one special item that is important to the story.
So to sum it up I thoroughly enjoyed Thief: Deadly Shadows though die hard Thief fans may be a little disappointed in the change in game play, but this was in no way a bad game, if your system can meet the rather steep requirements then it is worth giving this game a try.
Note: I had written a previous review which a user did not find helpful and now looking back I don’t really think that interview had got to the point so hopefully this new review will prove more useful to others.