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Thief 4 review: Pasted from Reddit, censored by Square Enix.
11 years ago
A review that Eidos Montreal worked VERY hard to try and pull from the internet, going so far as to ban nay-sayers on their officla forums, and demand IP bans by Reddit.
But unfortunately for the hacks at Square Enix, the internet doesn't really work that way.
So here is the review that Eidos REALLY wants to go away.
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143294
Oh, and check this out too: http://sneakybastards.net/theobserv.....hief-hands-on/
I have watched the game played from beginning to end, and I am thus qualified to speak on its failings and no amount of "we don't know for sure yet, just buy it and give it a chance!" will sway me.
The game comes from the linear school of FPS design, like Call of Duty or any number of such titles, where your only goal is to run from Checkpoint A to Checkpoint B in order to trigger the next cutscene. As a result the core concept of the series, stealing things, is completely secondary. You can, and players have, completed every mission in this game without stealing a single loot item. Loot does not factor in as an objective, your only goal is triggering the events that cause the next cutscene and level transition. Even if you do not steal anything, the game gives you "money" at the end of each level just for completing it so that you can buy items and "upgrades" for the character.
This design is the core of the game, it is fundamentally flawed, and as it IS the game it cannot be fixed.
The game has nothing in common with it's predecessors, barring a handful of place and character names which in several cases are not even applied to the same character (such as Jeneviere being a magpie, wtf). I restate: There is nothing mechanically, thematically, narratively, audibly, or visually in common with the earlier games in the series. It looks and feels like a generic corridor shooter which had the Thief IP crudely taped onto it at the very last moment. I will now expand upon where they have failed in all of those departments.
The narrative, which the developers have consistently admitted that the gameplay was hamstrung in order to support, is beyond hamfisted. It is a tired bag of cliches so worn and reused in the industry that it boggles the mind. The rich atmosphere and canon of the series has been entirely disposed of and what replaces it is a generic story of "Ally betrays you, girl is still alive, save her to save the world!". Unfortunately the writing is below that of a fanfiction level, and it behooves me to think of an FM which even approaches how horrible it is. There are no Keepers, no Hammerites, No Pagans, not a single shred of anything featured in the original games remains, nothing, not even a hint of it. It has all been replaced by the most generic slop, and if you don't believe me you can watch it on YouTube for yourself.
It takes 8 hours to beat the game, several hours of which were streamers failing to defeat the atrocious AI in places where sneaking was simply not an option at all and combat could not be avoided. Roughly 45% of the total playtime was taken up by the cutscenes, which are poorly animated, suffer texture and LOD popping, and have some of the worst voice acting I have heard in many years. I cannot really express how poor the animation is in this game. I am amazed that they claim to have mocap'd it, because the guards especially were evidently animated by hand and not by someone especially skilled. Their excuse for not using SR was a clear and obvious lie to anyone watching these cinematics
The audio design is shallow and repetitive, with enemies repeating the exact same line over and over every few seconds if you are detected. There is no differentiation of sound in materials when walked on. The music is heavy and in many cases too loud to listen to your surroundings. Scripted conversations will often be audible through solid walls after you walk away from the trigger, as if you are in the same room as the speakers. At one point, the game features modern dubstep.
Even in level design the game is found lacking. Levels are largely linear with one or two paths leading the same cinematic checkpoint, usually a frontal assault option or a "Sneak in through the air vent" option. If there is a secret passage, not only will an NPC be having a conversation about it, but the player character will remark that there is a secret passage once the conversation is over. This is a game, in 2014, which suffers from levels split into portions as small as those seen in Deadly Shadows or Invisible War. Think about that: those games were crippled by the memory limitations of the original Xbox, a system with less powerful hardware than my phone, yet somehow this game with the power of modern consoles at its disposal requires loading screens just as frequent and level fragmentation just as severe. I do not even understand how this is possible.
The AI is atrocious, and will ignore you if you are standing 5 feet in front of them or outside of a 45* cone of vision. You can open doors directly onto the AI and it will not react. That this game features worse AI worse than one which released 16 years ago is a sad sorry state of affairs and frankly the developers should be ashamed. It feels like they sloppily reskinned whatever stock code ships with Unreal.
Back to the level design: The level designers have plagiarized not one, but two games in a very obvious way. Most obvious is Deadly Shadows, as they have straight up ripped Shalebridge Cradle and placed it in here as the "Moira Asylum", building a shallow and shockingly boring level completely lacking in any subtly or underlying narrative beyond the reasons you are sent there. A few jump scares, a lot of corridor trudging, and then an enforced stealth area with instant death on detection. The final level of the game is a direct ripoff of Human Revolution's final level, featuring zombies transformed by a madman bent on world domination and taking place in his fortress of solitude.
The contextual jumping and climbing is an extremely frustrating affair, with jump triggers often placed on ledges which lead to nowhere resulting in the player jumping down into an area full of enemies or having to re-do a climbing segment. At no point can you fall or jump off a ledge which would result in a deadly fall. There are many 3rd person Assassins Creed style wall-climbing segments where you navigate from glowing blue spot to glowing blue spot, and hope the game doesn't glitch and drop you off.
In summary, it is not fair to call this a bad "Thief" game, because in truth it is so lacking in any elements of the series that it should not even be considered as part of the same IP. Beyond that complaint, however, the game at its core is a fundamentally flawed, poorly designed, and atrociously written experience which belongs firmly in the bottom of the bargain bin. Had this been a new IP called "DarkBlade" or something of the sort, it would have released entirely unnoticed by most and chalked up as a console-launch shovelware title.
Do not spend money on this title, do not even waste the bandwidth to pirate this title, I sincerely regret having wasted a day of my life watching it be played by someone else.
(This review was posted to Reddit by "CynicalGamer," who was IP-banned by Eidos's demand)
But unfortunately for the hacks at Square Enix, the internet doesn't really work that way.
So here is the review that Eidos REALLY wants to go away.
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143294
Oh, and check this out too: http://sneakybastards.net/theobserv.....hief-hands-on/
I have watched the game played from beginning to end, and I am thus qualified to speak on its failings and no amount of "we don't know for sure yet, just buy it and give it a chance!" will sway me.
The game comes from the linear school of FPS design, like Call of Duty or any number of such titles, where your only goal is to run from Checkpoint A to Checkpoint B in order to trigger the next cutscene. As a result the core concept of the series, stealing things, is completely secondary. You can, and players have, completed every mission in this game without stealing a single loot item. Loot does not factor in as an objective, your only goal is triggering the events that cause the next cutscene and level transition. Even if you do not steal anything, the game gives you "money" at the end of each level just for completing it so that you can buy items and "upgrades" for the character.
This design is the core of the game, it is fundamentally flawed, and as it IS the game it cannot be fixed.
The game has nothing in common with it's predecessors, barring a handful of place and character names which in several cases are not even applied to the same character (such as Jeneviere being a magpie, wtf). I restate: There is nothing mechanically, thematically, narratively, audibly, or visually in common with the earlier games in the series. It looks and feels like a generic corridor shooter which had the Thief IP crudely taped onto it at the very last moment. I will now expand upon where they have failed in all of those departments.
The narrative, which the developers have consistently admitted that the gameplay was hamstrung in order to support, is beyond hamfisted. It is a tired bag of cliches so worn and reused in the industry that it boggles the mind. The rich atmosphere and canon of the series has been entirely disposed of and what replaces it is a generic story of "Ally betrays you, girl is still alive, save her to save the world!". Unfortunately the writing is below that of a fanfiction level, and it behooves me to think of an FM which even approaches how horrible it is. There are no Keepers, no Hammerites, No Pagans, not a single shred of anything featured in the original games remains, nothing, not even a hint of it. It has all been replaced by the most generic slop, and if you don't believe me you can watch it on YouTube for yourself.
It takes 8 hours to beat the game, several hours of which were streamers failing to defeat the atrocious AI in places where sneaking was simply not an option at all and combat could not be avoided. Roughly 45% of the total playtime was taken up by the cutscenes, which are poorly animated, suffer texture and LOD popping, and have some of the worst voice acting I have heard in many years. I cannot really express how poor the animation is in this game. I am amazed that they claim to have mocap'd it, because the guards especially were evidently animated by hand and not by someone especially skilled. Their excuse for not using SR was a clear and obvious lie to anyone watching these cinematics
The audio design is shallow and repetitive, with enemies repeating the exact same line over and over every few seconds if you are detected. There is no differentiation of sound in materials when walked on. The music is heavy and in many cases too loud to listen to your surroundings. Scripted conversations will often be audible through solid walls after you walk away from the trigger, as if you are in the same room as the speakers. At one point, the game features modern dubstep.
Even in level design the game is found lacking. Levels are largely linear with one or two paths leading the same cinematic checkpoint, usually a frontal assault option or a "Sneak in through the air vent" option. If there is a secret passage, not only will an NPC be having a conversation about it, but the player character will remark that there is a secret passage once the conversation is over. This is a game, in 2014, which suffers from levels split into portions as small as those seen in Deadly Shadows or Invisible War. Think about that: those games were crippled by the memory limitations of the original Xbox, a system with less powerful hardware than my phone, yet somehow this game with the power of modern consoles at its disposal requires loading screens just as frequent and level fragmentation just as severe. I do not even understand how this is possible.
The AI is atrocious, and will ignore you if you are standing 5 feet in front of them or outside of a 45* cone of vision. You can open doors directly onto the AI and it will not react. That this game features worse AI worse than one which released 16 years ago is a sad sorry state of affairs and frankly the developers should be ashamed. It feels like they sloppily reskinned whatever stock code ships with Unreal.
Back to the level design: The level designers have plagiarized not one, but two games in a very obvious way. Most obvious is Deadly Shadows, as they have straight up ripped Shalebridge Cradle and placed it in here as the "Moira Asylum", building a shallow and shockingly boring level completely lacking in any subtly or underlying narrative beyond the reasons you are sent there. A few jump scares, a lot of corridor trudging, and then an enforced stealth area with instant death on detection. The final level of the game is a direct ripoff of Human Revolution's final level, featuring zombies transformed by a madman bent on world domination and taking place in his fortress of solitude.
The contextual jumping and climbing is an extremely frustrating affair, with jump triggers often placed on ledges which lead to nowhere resulting in the player jumping down into an area full of enemies or having to re-do a climbing segment. At no point can you fall or jump off a ledge which would result in a deadly fall. There are many 3rd person Assassins Creed style wall-climbing segments where you navigate from glowing blue spot to glowing blue spot, and hope the game doesn't glitch and drop you off.
In summary, it is not fair to call this a bad "Thief" game, because in truth it is so lacking in any elements of the series that it should not even be considered as part of the same IP. Beyond that complaint, however, the game at its core is a fundamentally flawed, poorly designed, and atrociously written experience which belongs firmly in the bottom of the bargain bin. Had this been a new IP called "DarkBlade" or something of the sort, it would have released entirely unnoticed by most and chalked up as a console-launch shovelware title.
Do not spend money on this title, do not even waste the bandwidth to pirate this title, I sincerely regret having wasted a day of my life watching it be played by someone else.
(This review was posted to Reddit by "CynicalGamer," who was IP-banned by Eidos's demand)
Making a shitty game is one thing but trying to fucking censor people on a public site like Reddit?
I mean even deleting this from their own forums would be low but this?
Wow.
Speechless.
But to go after reviews on a public site like Reddit AND get their own way? Fuck me.
I was willing to give Eidos the benefit of the doubt until I actually played it myself but to hell with that.
Now, to be fair, it doesn't look like that bad of a generic game. Slap a different label on it, toss it in the $5 bin, and it might be worth a look. But they have the wrought iron nutsack to call it THIEF. Or 'THI4F' I guess. That's why I'm never playing this.
EA, Actervision, Blizzard and Square-Enix, and Eidos is just one more thing going into that mosh pit.
This is getting out of hand at this point where Corporations are so invested protecting their IP's that they will do ANYTHING to get rid of any sort of negativity aimed at them, regardless of tone or context. But then they feel like it's us who aren't buying their product enough, that we should be ASHAMED that we are the one's causing the downfall of gaming. The only downfall here is big cats not happy that everything's not going their way, and I gotta say that ether this will become the new norm and we are all screwed as far as interactive media goes, or this bubble will pop, and everyone ends up clearing house.
I kinda figured the industry had moved on from such things :/
Nah, journalist right now cant even complete games on anything other then the easiest setting or just glance over the entire thing, all that matters is the "ITS AMAZING! BEST GAME EVER! YOU SHOULD BUY IT!"
you know its strange when COD gets a negative score because "maps are to large and complex" after praising it for "not being overly complex"
Some reviews really are just awful. There's a magazine in the UK called GamesTM and they do some really neat features but almost every review is a 7 or 8/10 and I've read several reviews that don't have a single negative thing to say in the text but only end up with an 8 for example.
Why? Surely reading the review I should be able to work out the score they are going to give it, no?
wanna make your boss money, write a article so batshit crazy that it draws in clicks, DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR MOUNTAIN DEW AND DORITOS FOR MAX COD POINTS AND BUY HALO 5!
What was that good one from a while back? Killing female gamers online is the equivalent of rape or something? Good times!
Hell just accuse anything of being sexist and BAM three million views and half a million dumbass comments.
Conversely, did you know that if you REFUSE to kill a female player in an online game, then you are a sexist who isn't giving women the chance they deserve?
---Kotaku
"Intensely buggy. But it may get better with a patch."
"Truly a thrilling experience, if a little cliche'd."
"An insincere cash grab, fit only for the bargain bin. Skip this one."
"Not overly intelligent, but that's what makes it fun."
"A depressing, cynical piece of narrative, and worth every penny."
Things like that.
And that's not even counting the user reviews.
This now happens frequently as well as on image boards where viral marketing is easy to do.
And if you get some BS spreading on Twitter or whatever you can send it a hell of a lot further for a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to convince people your game is good via advertising or whatever.
I try to atleast beat them before giving my opinion because that is enough.
you dont need to 100% a game but you also must understand if your bitching about a game being to easy or dull, that may be because YOU ARE PLAYING ON EASY!
lol/
http://www.screwattack.com/news/his.....ni-documentary
wish that was even a joke at this point.
I do remember a Blue pill and a red pill.. and a green pill!
"If you dont like Dragon Age 2 or Heplers writing you are a sexist"
during the Sims debacle and golden poo trophies EA said that the reason they got so much flack was because they are a tolerant company and hire more lgbt then anybody else in the industry and the reason they won the golden poo was homophobes.
They will win it again this year.
Hell Dungeon Keeper mobile may even win them 2014 as well..
Oh god, don't get me started on Dragon Age 2.
They have spoke about including her as a cameo in FF15, she has cameo'd in FF14, and they said they would like to work on her in another future project.
Seems Eidos, by their overdone defensiveness, deserves all that scathing critique.
Now I kind of want to review it myself for my page/site.
Seriously though... who wrote this review?
Also, what is EM's Thief?
If you haven't played the original games, here is the first game. http://www.gog.com/game/thief_gold
It's pre-patched, so it will work on modern PCs.
I look forward to your review Marbles.
Still, the review might be valid
Good thing the originals stand proudly even with age.
Some are review copies.
Some got their copies early.
The entire games walkthrough+ending is on youtube.
just youtube HOWDY HOWDY HOWDY and it should come up, i think.
I am going to redbox review it
if I had a PS4, id get it.
Meanwhile indy games raise hundred of thousands of dollars in crowdfunding, from people who like good games.
Oh, and while society may have its messed up moments at present, it can still be good bud. And also be redeemed, through humility and grace. Just have a little faith, bud.
And from reading what 4 removed, those sound fun, now I'm thinking of buying the originals :V
Unless you staffed your development team purely with interns making something for their class project, I have no idea how the in the fuck such a big budgeted company would shit out something this poor.
We buy up studios and their franchises so we can destroy them, as they compete with our japanese product. We cannot have Western games doing better than our games. This hurts our pride, and we have very little to be proud of since FFVII.
We also do this to compensate for our very small penises.
We are the EA of Japan.
We will not apologize.
Yep. Par for the course with Squenix.
Anyway, yeah. Squeenix hasn't put out a critically lauded game in ages.
*crosses one more gaming company off hir "Will Purchase From List"*
I must be one of the few who actually enjoyed the story form 13 and 13-2 ... still haven't played 13-3 all the way through. At least it's not 12. and seriously, ever since Enix took over Square, the company's quality has gone down. Must we be reminded of the Chrono Trigger remake? Many people, even within the company blame that on Enix's meddling... It's also the same with FF14, many of the higher up in the company has far too much say in that game, and it failed. Horribly. At least they managed to recover it in -really- decent way! (Props to Yoshi P., by the way!)
Also, Look at X ... That game is just as linear as XIII. ... no one seems to call attention to that thought. I actually like the characters in XIII .... Even if the jarring change to 13-3 is a major step in a very weird direction, not only for the arc of 13, but the series as a whole. And, please... Squareenix still make really good RPGs. The Final Fantasy series has had it major ups and down this whole time (FF2j, FF8, FF12.... Let's be real, these games sucked.) LONG before 13 came to being... and why keep making them? Because Nintendo hasn't given Zelda up to roost yet, it's the same bullshit over and over, and people keep buying that, so why not make something that is sometimes original and unique, even if it fails?
I still yearn for the days of really good gaming in general, like FF6, CT, Star Ocean, Legend of Dragoon... Who's with me on that one?
While I love FFX, yes one cannot agree it's linear rails for a good chunk of the game. I think it's better remembered because of structure. Your tutorials were better handled and you were nearly separated from your main party for almost half the game before you could enjoy a full party, and well honestly it got brutal with just two people against some of the odds you faced. Frankly I feel a four-party system would have worked better for FFXIII given some of the brutal difficulty in some areas. Story and cast otherwise I enjoyed it.
FFXII I enjoyed the exploration, and with the plot and cast I was 50-50, but rather loathed the MMO-style controls which felt lacking in the fine control of prior Final Fantasy games.
Despite the hate it got I also rather enjoyed Star Ocean 4, though I wish I knew the International edition was coming out, I was 50-50 on the english cast and would have preferred a choice of audio options.
Onto the issue of Final Fantasy like Zelda being a series that well is still going because it makes money: This can be a good or bad thing, I just think the series could use more innovation and maybe new direction of story-telling since there are certain hold-overs and methods of story-telling that seem to linger in each iteration.
Nostalgia glasses I too would like to have a game that wowed me in Square's hay day. The Chrono franchise would be perfect to have another go, a new Xenogears (or even a new mech based RPG of similar vein), just...well seems Square is suffering the lack of innovation plaguing the Japanese gaming industry.
I hope they don't fuck it up :C
They should have named the game "Bob The Burglar" or "Victorian Criminal Batman" and left the best PC gaming franchise ever alone. Hardcore fans and curious casuals alike would have been happy with that, it seems like a 'decent' enough game in comparison to its contemporaries, but a fucking terrible Thief game.
At least we have the Zero Punctuation review to look forward to.
Anyway, what I'm trying to get is, is the walkthrough of the finished game? Do we know if it's a hoax or not, and shouldn't we I dunno play the game ourselves before we decide it's BS? I'm just very leery these days of people decrying games before they come out when some of their "sources" for which they decry turn out later to be stuff started up by either internet trolls wanting publicity or even rival game companies wanting to stir up crap.
Eh I'll find out tomorrow if any of this is true or not, and hey if this turns into another Colonial Marines where I feel violated for spending cash on such a game I'll gladly join the masses.
Besides there will be people who still enjoy it regardless of reviews or what anyone says.
For an example of something recent that would fall under the same issues you're having with thief, Crystal Dynamics are making a F2P game called Nosgoth. The world had been waiting for a sequel to the Legacy of Kain games for years after that non-ending we got in Defiance. There were I think two games in development then canned. Nosgoth is the salvaged multiplayer aspect of one of the games (you know, that one thing fans of the single player only game had been begging for? Multiplayer?) that is set in an era where nothing happened of any importance and where none of the known characters show up.
I could do the same thing as you, make numerous journals tracking its development and urging people not to buy into it, but I know I don't have to.
Because the feedback to the original trailer was so negative, the developers disabled ratings and comments. That always speaks volumes. My word will mean nothing in the vast swell of public opinion, and raving about my hatred towards something would make me look like an obsessed loon.
http://youtu.be/jKAZyb07qtA
They talk about how open the WORLD is but missions are directed..
"Faithful Gamplay"
"Beautiful visual and amazing sounds"
"Bad loadtimes"
8.5/10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny1wtt8NaiU
They tend to be relatively low-budget, which increases total profit regardless of how niche the title it is, and the best ones are remembered more than any AAA game.
what Sort of illegal narcotics were they snorting when they decided to try and silence the same fans they hoped to woo over with this game.
just the words Triple A game make me wince these days.
I might not be programmer, or comprehend how to build a physics engine, but speaking as a socio-politicial buff, and as a writer I found the story crappy "watered down dark fantasy" and the company's actions abbhorant.
No theif 4 for me... dicks...
So often people scream "I was silenced for being negative! EVIL CORPORATIONS!!"
But more often than not, said person was breaking the rules. Like the guy who was banned for being negative about Dragon Age 2, people supported him until they found out he was calling EA satan worshippers and using every type of off-colour language under the sun, thus breaking the terms of service for conduct.
It's the mass number of it that makes me worry
and its more showing stuff you can go around and do then a video of the starting zone video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJS1yCSKlhs
"The reason why thiefinthedark was banned was because he was manipulating the votes. He created 10+ different accounts to upvote his own submission. Vote manipulation is not allowed on reddit (which is even stated in the rules), but he clearly didn't care or try to follow it. Also he cross posted the thread on several different forums across the internet. We could clearly see that the thread was being brigaded from outside sources and tweeted about on twitter. We also didn't ban him, only admins can do that.
The ironic part is that Eidos never contacted us, nor have they done so in the past. Why would Eidos (or Square Enix for that matter) care about one angry user on some random website? We never take down threads because of legal threats (or similar), just because some company demands it.
This submission was low effort, sensationalized (he didn't even play the game) and it clearly didn't belong in /r/games (as it's stated in the subreddit rules in the sidebar). He also tried to get one of his friends to create drama about it and saying that we were "censoring" him and the submission, when in reality there was no drama to be had to begin with.
This is all on him. "