GameSpot review

[van_HellSing PL]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/thief3/review.html

Overall: 8.3 (great)

[tealsmith]

Wha... wha... NO! How could you! That review JUST came up and I was going to post it! DAMN YOU TAFFER! That's what I get for being a minute late.

[van_HellSing PL]

:D

[bravus]

Ssshhhh - now you know the secret. To help him keep on top of all the Thiefsie news goodness, Van Hellsing has actually invented a pocket time machine that keeps him permanently 5 minutes in the future.

[Majnun]

Actually not a bad review. I expected him to be a hammerhead like the gamespy reviewer (for pc).

Be warned thought that there were a few spoilers. I think I've read every preview & review to date and even I learned about a level I'd never heard of and a new beastie.

I don't understand what the beef is with the lockpicking though. I mean what does he expect? It's a hell of a lot better than the first 2 games and better than it's done in Splinter Cell 2 for sure.

The beef about the small(er than T1 & T2) map areas I will probably agree with. But as long as the game is great it won't be a huge deal.

Anyway, decent review. But with the very few TINY things he had to gripe about I think it should've gotten a higher score.

He also neglected to mention which difficulty he played on. He mentions Normal, but may have played on all of them. I think it's standard for reviewers of big sites like that to play & review games on Normal difficulty though. Which is a shame since I don't think this game's AI is going to be very challenging unless you're playing on Expert.

[Thiefinthenight]

Looks like a pretty honest review. I think this is what most of us have expected. I still feel the missing rope arrows is unforgivable but I would be lying if I said I wasnt excited about tomorrow. Dan Morris wrote an interesting article in the new PC Gamer about dumbing down great PC games for consoles. Im sick of the console vs PC debate but in this particular situation ive been pretty resentfull of the console market.
We will just have to see whats written here tomorrow by the fans when they finally get a chance to play.

[cryptik76]

Originally posted by Thiefinthenight
I still feel the missing rope arrows is unforgivable but I would be lying if I said I wasnt excited about tomorrow...

Im sick of the console vs PC debate but in this particular situation ive been pretty resentfull of the console market.


The lack of rope arrows has nothing to do with "dumbing down" the game for the console market. It has everything to do with the fact that the development team was not able to get the rope arrows to work in the new engine.

I think we were all resentful because of Deus Ex: Invisible War being dumbed down, but from all indications it doesn't sound like Ion did the same with Thief.

I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

[Kildread]

Nice review that gives some good points, but I fear there's a few issues there that probably come from the reviewer' playstyle, I mean... it's you who's controlling the purchases and item uses, if you buy loads of healing and hoard all your rare items... nobody's forcing you :/ (Though I tend to play that way as well and ended up with loads of equipment in the first Thief games at the end of each mission).

He hints at having played the game on Normal at one point, I wonder how challenging it will be on the higher difficulties (Depending on what can be set ,I plan to make my first round the hardest possible, like how I playedt he previous Thief games).

One thing that's a disappointment is the he also mentions one of my fears that came with the game --- That the areas would feel small and constricted like they did in Invisible War (Which constrasted a lot more with the expansive areas in the original Deus Ex, but even the Thief series had large levels, like the rooftops).

I just hope it takes me at least an hour or more to clean out a given mission like the previous Thief games, if it does, yay!

[Majnun]

I'm pretty sure all big game sites review games played on Normal difficulty. The way I understand the difficulty in this game is that effects the number of "unique" loot items you need to find per mission (easy=0, normal=1,hard=2,expert=3), and the alertness/determination of the AI (i.e. on normal they won't react to every little thing but on expert they'll come investigate hearing a chair move 1 inch in the next room...and they won't give up as easily/quickly on higher difficulty), and possibly how tough the AI's are (how many "hit points" and/or how much damage they do). Not sure about the toughness part but the alertness/determination and the loot goals are definitely part of the difficulty setting. Warren Spector said everyone should try it at least once on Expert difficulty since that's where the AI is actually functioning as intended. And for once I actually believe something Warren is saying.

From what I've read the areas in the city are bigger than the areas in DX-IW and the actual mission areas are even bigger than those. Sadly, still nothing like some of the Thief 2 missions though. If the game ends up being moddable maybe fans can make missions that don't adhere to that limited size (since we'll be making them for PC only)...unless the map size limit is something that's hard-coded.

And everything I've seen says the missions take about an hour to complete (so more if you are thorough and get all the loot).

[Kildread]

I always try to get all the loot, usually keeping saves through the mission so I can reload and check if I end up without all the loot.

The only exception I ever had was the Teather mission in Thief Gold. I came up with 25 or so missing Gold and never could find it even by using a loot listing in frustation, I probably ended up leaving something on a body somewhere :/

[tealsmith]

Just watched the gamespot movie review. It's pretty good, but contains some minor spoilers if you're paying attention to the gameplay clips, including:

A zombie. No biggie though, right? Well, there's also a scene in which Garrett is sneaking through some sort of cathedral and there's some evil ominous voice speaking through the air. Also, in one scene, I can't really make it out, but it looks like there's some type of gorilla running around the city!?!?

[Kildread]

It is very tempting to boot up the download manager to see it, but I'd rather play the game seeing as it's *technicly* out in 51 minutes (yeah right :P)