Outdated Shadows

So a couple of weeks ago I decided impulsively to pre-order Thief 4 from Green Man Gaming. The game was already discounted by ten percent and GMG were kind enough to send me a coupon for another thirty percent on top of that! Why? I don't really know. I have a fondness for the franchise even though I've only played just a portion of one game out of the three. I guess it's my love of stealth games coupled with a nice heavy discount.

So in preparation for Thief 4 I decided to give Thief Deadly Shadows a spin, a game I've only played a few hours of back a number of years ago. The first thing after installing the game via Steam was look for John-P's Collective Texture Pack - a mod that replaces quite a few things, mainly up-scaling the textures in the game to look less better. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the name of the mod and after about an hour I was able to download, install and start playing.

Here's where things sort of fall off this Thief bus - the game is just butt ugly even with the mod. Honestly the graphics didn't bother me all that much, it's the awful controls that really ruined the game for me more. It's unfortunate that for me, TDS just doesn't hold up well in 2014. When you consider the more recent Splinter Cell games, Assassin's Creed and Dishonored, there are just better options to satiate one's need for stealth action over a game that is so dated.

Don't get me wrong, TDS isn't a bad game and I'm sure there are many who will not have any issues with the game like I do, after a few hours I just wasn't having much fun. At one point I went and searched out some old reviews to see how well the game was received back in 2004, and surprisingly they were pretty good. I seem to remember TDS not being as well received from gamers because it was consolized unlike the previous two games. Funny how after ten years people still use that argument for multiplatform games that release on the PC.

So in short, I've decided to forgo Thief Deadly Shadows and instead fill my time with a replay of Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut till Thief 4 is released later this month.