Released in 2004, Thief: Deadly Shadows is the third game in the series. However, this time it was developed by Ion Storm Austin, after Looking Glass Studios closed doors.

I played the original Thief demo in 1998 but didn't particularly enjoy sneaking around in shadows, so I never played the full game or it's sequel. But with Thief 3 based on a heavily modifed Unreal 2 engine, I decided I could put up with some slow gameplay in order to explore the gorgeous Victorian city.

I'm glad I did too, because it was very well designed. After playing through Enclave and now Thief 3, I've been spoiled with highly detailed, tight and twisting little levels. The FPS genre needs more games in this style, rather than modern war or sci-fi themes. Every level in this game looks great, and there is just enough variety in there so that you don't get sick of the town theme. Level highlights were the short but foreboding haunted, rotting ship full of zombies. But it was an insane asylum slash orphanage which wins the award for spookiest level I've ever played. You help a ghostly little girl try to escape the asylum, playing from present time to back in the past through the eyes of one of the insane patients. Very, very well done.

Due to the level of sneaking around in shadows and trying not to be seen, this brings a whole new level of suspense to first person shooters (if you can call this that), which even horror games like Undying couldn't do. If you get seen and have to engage in a fight you're going to take a lot of damage, which means you really can't treat this as an action game. The style of gameplay works well, but I did wish at times I could just run in and shoot everything and be done with it. Instead, you can easily spend ten minutes in an area trying to knock each opponent out.

The game ends up being very long, perhaps around twenty hours which is double your average action FPS. Unfortunately, you spend a great deal of time returning to levels you've already played through over and over again. Made worse by the fact that your maps are useless and the levels are very non-linear, so you can easily get lost in the streets which often lack distinguishable features.

The biggest problem with the game were the loading times. On a fairly new system brought for gaming (8800GT, 3ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) you don't expect loading times of 20 seconds on a game that is four years old, featuring relatively small levels. Every time I'd sneak up behind an enemy ready to knock them out, only for them to slightly turn at the last second or the character not swinging the bat properly (it happens a lot!) I get to sit through another 20 seconds of loading. Also Garrett, the main character, acts like a complete drunk sometimes with the way he moves - and his ability to jump even a foot high object is laughable.

Another big probably was over 15 hours into the game, my saved games corrupted themselves and I lost everything. Fortunately, someone had put all their saved games on the internet for me to play from.

Overall, Thief: Deadly Shadows features some fantastic little levels, enjoyable gameplay and a great storyline. But you need to be a patient person to sit through 20 hours of creeping in the shadows. 

About 2 hours or so into this game. FUcking bad ass game so far. Almost like a FPS GTA or something. Really bad ass.

Only complaint so far: Every character in the game talks fast. They sound unbelievable. It wouldn't kill them to talk a little more normal.

Otherwise it's super awesome so far. 

Great, seems the designers picked a bit of everything, mish-mashed it and there you go! We have a winner...! Hey! What about freakish voices like "the many" or somethin'? Got that too? 

and how does it run? 

I haven't had a hickup yet. I'm debating trying to turn the graphics up even higher. I didn't bother seeing what all had changed, I just selected the 'High' graphics option, out of like 5 options, but you can change everything individually if you want.

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz
2 Gigs Ram
9800 GTX 

I really shouldn't be this cynical but it's far too easy for me to picture someone on one side of the glass in a recording session saying "Can you say it faster? We only have 200mb for audio data on the disc." 

Any of you know about some great horror games like SS2 with the same elements?

Sorry; by the way - Hello all! 

System Shock
or
Serious Sam
or
Perhaps something else. 

Seriously, I haven't played it. 

sort of.

its all a bit tongue-in-cheek though... 

skeletons (oddly fiend-shaped, btw.)

I believe he meant System Shock though.

I thought BioShock was pretty awesome, pretty moody. Others thought otherwise (generally those that played System Shock 2 were let down.) But seriously give it a spin. 

but you can't really call it old... 

aka Bloom - The Game. Seems to run fine on my machine (2.6, x1950pro, 2GB), even on high settings. Though I haven't gotten into a larger firefight or vast open area, yet - played only one hour so far.

The extreme bloom sucks. The introductory sequence was basically almost completely white. Problem is, without bloom the game is too dark. But with bloom enabled it's too bright and everything looks somewhat shabby if the details (shadows etc) are not set to ultra-high.

What Zwiffle said. Feels a bit like a GTA game indeed. And yes, the characters do talk very fast. Considering there's a console version too, I can see why. ;) 

Bought this.

Like the Graphics, and the free-roaming, the tackling people for loot stuff, the atmosphere etc.

Dont like: (deep breath)

The fact that people no-longer carry money. (wasn't there money when you searched bodies before?)
The fact that many "missions" are broken and incompletable
The fact that it KEEPS CRASHING TO THE DESKTOP REGARDLESS OF WHICHEVER PATCH IS APPLIED, OR EVEN COMMUNITY "FIXES" WHICH DONT WORK EITHER.

Fucking waste of �30. 

I gave it a last chance when the fifth patch was released. But alas, the game still crashed. And not only that - it also gave me my first ever bluescreen on XP. Didn't even know there were such things. Lowering the video settings seems to increase the stability somewhat, but why play on low settings only because a game is so poorly made.

NPCs never carried lootable money, I think. They only had some to buy stuff from you. Ricky, have you played SOC? If not, you should - it's much less frustrating. 

And found similar problems. Although I found the missions to be a bit more stable. I've been debating playing it again, because I hear there's the "Oblivion: Lost" mod, or something, which basically fixes everything.

The thing is I paid �5 for SoC, and din't feel ripped off at all! Yet today I see that Far Cry 2 is out, even in the shops in my tiny town, and if I had known that CS was going to be such a fucking cock-tease let down, I would have waited and bough that instead.
I paid �4 for Far Cry 1 a few months back, and really enjoyed it! I would definately pay �30 for FC2, simply on the basis of my experience of the first game.

There have been a few releases of late which caught my eye, and more just over the horizon:

Crysis - Warhead
Stalker CS (GRRRRRR!)
Far Cry 2

and soon

Fallout 3

Of those four, why did I have to buy the shit one?!?! 

Ah yes, played this recently, too.
While it was pretty short, had an anti-climatic ending and no map that really stood out, I somehow enjoyed it more than Crysis. Kind of odd really. Maybe because the Psycho character had such a cool accent.

Gameplay is pretty much the same as in Crysis, only more linear. Half-way through, there's a train ride sequence with turrent combat which seemed to be the most special or new aspect of the game as compared to its predecessor, but I didn't like it that much.

The performance was better than in Crysis on high settings. I suppose that was because many environmental details were turned into mapobjects with a limited distance of visibility - as a result, all those things, e.g. stones, constantly popped up some 10 meters before me as I was moving forward. Looked pretty silly, but I could live with it regarding the potential perfomance boost. 

Don't worry, they all suck in one way or another. 

Despite the game being gorgeous, I just can't play through it, it's sooooooo boring. =\ 

i tried it, but there's some wierd bug with the AI... the game would run smooth when no npcs were 'chasing me' but as soon as i entered into combat with npcs, the game would keep slowing down as if the AI searching was doing something wrong. 

is the fact that I have this game that has been released in a state where it is in-completable. I read one review today which said that it was almost reviewed without even being completed.

I mean the game has a story. I would quite like to see how it pans out! And it's not because my machine isn't up to scratch!

I really feel ripped off. It's like buying a car only to find that that you can't drive it.

Where do I go to demand my money back? 

Doom3 crashes my PC for some reason and I haven't bothered to fix it yet - got sucked back into DOW.

So I can't play through Doom3 again, irritating. 

Played some more (25-30%).
The engine is kind of nice. It's a vast open world with fast loading times and no perceivanble in-between loading (except when fast-travelling). Details and theme are generally good, but it also looks very samey in many places. Buildings and areas of special interest often feel too artificially cluttered, messy and worn-down.
I wonder what Stalker could've been like with this engine, though I guess its large industrial ruins crammed with details would have had to be drastically simplified.
A cool feature is the spreading of fire from explosions and molotov cocktails to grass and trees which sometimes burns semi-large areas. The water doesn't look so good. There isn't even splashing or ripple when walking/driving through and when bullets hit the surface.

What really sucks is the fact that the player can't jump over many obstacles that don't look insurmountable. This is particularly annoying if one has to walk around rock formations or along riverbanks for some time only because so much stuff is unclimbable (even if there's no risk of getting stuck or whatever).
I like that there's no crosshair (optional - disabled by default) and no permanent HUD.

The game's main problem, however, is that it becomes somewhat boring quickly, because the missions are repetitive and there's not much going on in terms of main story yet. Maybe it picks up later on, but so far I don't find it overly immersive. Could also be a bit related to obvious elements of consolization.
Also, perhaps I missed something, but what exactly does this game have to do with Far Cry? I mean, it would be cool if suddenly monsters dropped in for an "ah, right" reaction, but I doubt this is going to happen. Wouldn't be so bad really, it might spice the combats up, as enemy (and buddy) AI is average at best. More often than not, enemies just stand there waiting for me to pick them off, or they crash their cars back and forth into every wall or object available. Though it can also make for some laughs: one of my buddies once ran up a cliff, telling me to follow her or something and then suddenly jumped down and died. Maybe it was a hint at things to come? 

Yeah, I agree with most of what negke just said.

Guess it's a bit similar to Assassin's Creed in that aspect, there seems to be alot going for it when you first start off, but you quickly realise that it doesn't have much depth. It really lacks mission diversity.

A few other complaints I have with it are:
The headbob when you run is just horrible, makes my head hurt when I run too much.
The way they integrated the map is interesting, as the player actually takes it out like a weapon, but when you're looking for something (like diamonds) it's always in your face and really annoying, I'd much rather have a minimap.
The dissapearing HUD is ok, but not for me, I'd rather have that info visible at all time + a minimap.

All in all it's not a bad game, plenty of fun to be had, but it gets boring long before you reach the end. As the comparison is inevitable, I think it's a better game than Crysis / Crysis Warhead, even though the engine isn't as pretty. 

I like the headbobbing and blurring. Somehow feels more realistic (dunno if it is).

The animations are nice too, e.g. unjamming a gun, getting into vehicles, map view inside the cars.. Nothing special really, but for some reason I always tend to compare such things to HL2's telekinesis thing.
Agree about the map taking up too much of the view - it should be lowered to the bottom of the screen when moving.