Thief 3: Deadly Shadows

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » January 31st, 2006, 10:03

Anyone played this? Is it worth picking up? I want something to distract me from my dissertation till Oblivion comes out and saw this somewhere.

Post by **Joose** » January 31st, 2006, 10:16

Yep, i've played it. Fucking ace game, if rather hard. The Cradle level almost made me pee myself, but ive never been great with those kind of scary bits. Even though, it is supposed to be one of the scariest moments in gaming history.

Proper scary, mind. Not the daft "ooh, look, that person has disgorged more than their own body weight in blood, aint that scary" scary. Cos that just isnt scary. This is tension based scary.

The bits that are not scary are pretty tense too, so not one to get if you have a heart condition.

Overall, I would rate it "Fuck me sideways!" out of 12.

Rydis · Post by **Rydis** » January 31st, 2006, 10:38

Yep if youre into that sort of game (first person sneakers) its very very good.
I've never managed to finish any of the thief games, I always get highly addicted to them when they come out, play them for 2 or 3 days and then bam, totally forget about them until someone makes a thread reminding me.

I know what Im playing again next.

Hitman series is also excellent, though number 3 is a little short. Took about 6 hours from start to finish, and though Im naturally awesome, that's still a bit quick.

Post by **Roman Totale** » January 31st, 2006, 18:45

Hmm, not a fan of constant sneaking in games. Couldn't stand Hitman (yet I love Metal Gear Solid

)

Can't wait for Oblivion though.

amblin · Post by **amblin** » January 31st, 2006, 22:38

Post by **Joose** » February 1st, 2006, 8:13

The orignal hitman was great, untill it stopped being about carrying out a "hit" and turned into a shite standard shooter.

Ive never got the fuss about MGS. I cant bring myself to stick with it for more than 10 mins.

Oblivion is promising to make me cream myself with joy. If its anything less than blow-me-out-of-my-pants fantastic, I shall personally murder the entire dev team with a specially sharpened keyboard edge.

If you think you dont like sneaky games, but havent played theif before, I would still recommend giving it a go. Original and best, and all that cliché. Its got some great touches. Personal fave is the way all the gubbins you carry can interact. Oil bottle smashes, makes patch of oil to slip people up. Fire arrow sets oil on fire = firey barrier! moss arrow makes soft ground so you dont make noise. Add a water arrow, and it grows to huge squidgy levels, so you can drop on it from a great hight!

Ace stuff.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 1st, 2006, 10:24

Sounds interesting, but I've never got on thet well with sneak-em-ups.

The main problem I have is ones that just say "You have been detected. Mission failed. Game Over. You. Suck." like Sphincter Cell and MGS do.

I find the James Bond (both movies and games IIRC) approach more satisfying: "You have been detected. Therefore, simply kill everyone and blow up the base." Also the x-ray specs made me laugh hard.

I did manage to play all the way through the NOLF games though, and got quite inventive with my sneaking, largely because the lure of seeing further ace locations was so great.

Post by **Joose** » February 1st, 2006, 11:08

the thief approach is more of a "you are detected. deal with it".

How you deal with it is up to you. You can try for a straight fight, but against more than one guy you will almost always die. The usual option is a flashbang to the face and a hasty retreat to hide in the shadows. Or of course, something a bit more inventive (moss arrow to the face makes them rather upset, oil to the floor makes them do comedy tumbles for a bit, etc).

I also hate the "you have been detected, therefore the world is ending" style of sneaking. But I also get annoyed with the "you are detected, so kill everything" style. If you can just shoot everybody, why sneak at all?

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » February 1st, 2006, 11:20

I like some Sneaky games, I loved the first MGS on the playstation, never played anything like it before, played it through twice in a row (mostly cos the 2nd time you can do it in a tuxedo

) Played MGS 2 on the PS2, bought it, completed it, wished I'd spent my time wanking or something, took it back.

But I love the splinter cell games on my xbox, the first time I played I found it quite difficult and took ages to get the knack of it, but I loved the first and second one, not got very far into Chaos Theory yet though.

So I reckon i'd quite like feif free, had a demo when it first came out but my old card couldn't handle it, may have to give it another go...

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 1st, 2006, 13:13

Joose wrote:Oblivion is promising to make me cream myself with joy. If its anything less than blow-me-out-of-my-pants fantastic, I shall personally murder the entire dev team with a specially sharpened keyboard edge.

Woo yay this! It comes out just after 3 of my coursework deadlines which is handy!

Joose wrote:If you think you dont like sneaky games, but havent played theif before, I would still recommend giving it a go. Original and best, and all that cliché. Its got some great touches. Personal fave is the way all the gubbins you carry can interact. Oil bottle smashes, makes patch of oil to slip people up. Fire arrow sets oil on fire = firey barrier! moss arrow makes soft ground so you dont make noise. Add a water arrow, and it grows to huge squidgy levels, so you can drop on it from a great hight!

Ace stuff.

This sounds fun. I have just purchased it and will give it a go tonight I imagine. Always played the sneaky type in Morrowind so it should be fun.

Post by **Roman Totale** » February 1st, 2006, 20:47

mrbobbins wrote:Played MGS 2 on the PS2, bought it, completed it, wished I'd spent my time wanking or something, took it back.

This.

God I hated MGS 2 on the PS2. Especially that annoying Raiden cupcake (no, not the one from Mortal Kombat). What an annoying, whiney little shite he was. And he had girly hair.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » February 1st, 2006, 23:37

I like sneaky. But not too much sneaky. After a while it gets tiresome and I need comic relief...like killing everything in sight with big fiery death. Then slink away into the shadows again sniggering. Am also looking forward to Oblivious. Played tomorrowind for a bit but got bored of walking everywhere at a snails pace looking for elusive shrooms. Then got stuck trying to solve a murder case or something. meh.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 2nd, 2006, 10:28

Joose wrote:I also get annoyed with the "you are detected, so kill everything" style. If you can just shoot everybody, why sneak at all?

I was reminded of the recent James Bond film, where you could say "why have an invisible car when you leave it right outside the baddies door with the engine running?" or "why have a silencer on your gun when the first thing you shoot is the window, setting off the alarm?"

Like Friz, I enjoy the comic relief of taking out a bunch of baddies and feel a game shouldn't horse you down a certain route but give you a few to choose from.

The fact you can still escape by flashing them/etc is encouraging, but scenarios where a bit of a sneak gives you a chance to take out all the baddies in one go (perhaps by setting them up the bomb) would be rewarding. I think I must see this moss gun thing, I suspect once I am done the streets of The City will have lots of unsuspecting folk walking around with strange new green hairdos.

Supposedly non-sneaky games are sometimes the worst offenders - I've lost count of how many times I've had to "avoid the alarm being raised" or "kill everyone without guy X seeing" only to (seemingly randomly) fail without ever setting eyes on the alarm-raiser - the point being that when a "sneak level" is just dumped into a standard FPS, it's usually done rather poorly, spoiling the image of the genre.

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » February 2nd, 2006, 10:44

Worst sneaking in a non-sneaking game ever award:

GTA San Andreas when you have to sneak into the rappers mansion to steal stuff, sooo annoying.

Post by **Joose** » February 2nd, 2006, 13:05

FatherJack wrote: I was reminded of the recent James Bond film, where you could say "why have an invisible car when you leave it right outside the baddies door with the engine running?" or "why have a silencer on your gun when the first thing you shoot is the window, setting off the alarm?"

could, would and did. By sensible standards, James Bond is the worst spy in the world. But he gets laid a lot, so we let him off.

Like Friz, I enjoy the comic relief of taking out a bunch of baddies and feel a game shouldn't horse you down a certain route but give you a few to choose from.

The fact you can still escape by flashing them/etc is encouraging, but scenarios where a bit of a sneak gives you a chance to take out all the baddies in one go (perhaps by setting them up the bomb) would be rewarding. I think I must see this moss gun thing, I suspect once I am done the streets of The City will have lots of unsuspecting folk walking around with strange new green hairdos.

The bomb thing does, in fact, happen. You can get mines, place them somewhere strategic, and lure people to them. They then asplode. Also, you can kill people, you just have to be sneaky about it. An arrow to the back of the skill is an instant kill, and will only alert the guards if they actually see it, or the corpse afterwards.

What I really meant was the games where running about gunning things is actually easier than sneaking. Splinter Cell, for example, has levels that you can complete easily in a fairly gungho manner. Also, the NOLF games: if you dont sneak, you dont hear the comedy conversations. Thats all. Its a hell of a lot easier to complete playing it in an utterly non sneaky manner.