Had never really played any of the Civ series before, (I know, I know) started Civ V last night around 9PM, and the next time I looked up it was 2AM. God damn is that an engrossing game. 

I just came here to ask which Civ game is presumably the best? I was totally hooked on the first two, haven't touched them in the past 10 years. 

Nice synchronicity!

I'm told that Civ 4 is the best by people that know the series but 5 is thoroughly enjoyable so far. 

I also bought UT2004 and Painkiller on a whim. 

preferred div 5 myself. they did away with unit stacking so you can't just have one giant army on a single tile going around wiping everything out. hex grid also provides more options than squares. 

I read the AI is kind of retarded in 5 tho.
Is that true? I might try 3 for starters, where I left of. 

I have to wonder how indicative of the actual game this is and how open it really is. Also despite garratt not being acted by Stephen Russell the guy they are using is making his best impression of the original actor. This begs the question "why use a different voice if he's going to impersonate the original?"

http://youtu.be/3_2cAbijZVc 

Atmosphere looks stunning. Gameplay seems to be a mixture of Dishonoured and weirdly right-next-to-people stealing stuff. Control looks a bit meh but that's partly due to console controller use and also that quick move thing could be bad or just okay. 

I've never played a Thief game. There's stealth mechanics in lots of games, and every game seems to do it in pretty much the exact same way shown in that video. So I'm just wondering what the unique selling points are? 

Thief is known for its very strict stealth and the fact that Garrett, the protag, has no super powers and is absolutely shitty at combat so he has to hide in the darkness as much as possible to avoid getting spotted. The AI is dated by now but it's still more intelligent than a good chunk of the games you see on the market today. Levels are huge, highly non-linear and can be tackled in any way you can imagine. The maps you're provided with are often vague (in Thief 1 only, Thief 2 made the mistake of detailing everything), encouraging you to case the places and scout around as much as possible.

But it's not just about gameplay. You have games like Deus Ex that do a lot of things, but in the end all the things they do are either average or good, but never great. Thief focuses exclusively on a single aspect and pulls it off brilliantly. It also has killer lore, great voice acting with memorable characters, super thick atmosphere and a brilliant artistic direction.

Seriously, go play it now, you will not regret it. Forget about the very dated visuals, the atmosphere alone will grab you by the balls (of by the ovaries for the ladies). 

Thief was the first first-person stealth game and that it pioneered pretty much all of the mechanics you see in subsequent stealth games, and it's by far still the best. Other games don't even come close except Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory with its very tight mechanics as well, but its level design is way too linear. 

One thing I really liked about Thief was it was rigid in it's rule set. If you knew the rules, you could exploit them or get screwed over, but you always knew it was fair.

The light gem was the best example. If that gem was black, a guard could be 2 inches from your face and WILL NOT SEE YOU. That's a pact the game makes with you, and it never breaks it. Don't move and they won't spot you. Period.

I loved that. It felt honest and when you got busted, it was your own fault for not being careful enough. 

Good point really. Comprehensible mechanics are crucial. 

Completely. I really dislike when games teach you something and then, haha, surprise! they take it away for some arbitrary reason for a boss fight or whatever.

Solid, repeatable, and dependable mechanics are the core foundation of a game. 

Should I play first?

BTW: Galactic Princess (looks like FTL on crack)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/19027642/galactic-princess?ref=discovery 

Because it's the best of the bunch. 

Thief Gold is absolutely incredible IMO.

I wasn't massively keen on Thief 2, not a big fan of the Mechanists at all. I really enjoyed Thief 3 though, Shalebridge Cradle was awesome. 

t3 looks great and great story. t1/t2 might be getting a bit visually too dated to enjoy, if it was me. but i suppose you're not playing for the graphics. 

This is the best POV adventure game I've played in a long time, even though it can be buggy with Windows 7 & 8. 

Thief 2 fo' lyfe. 

Got this couple of weeks ago. Much smoother gameplay than Shadow of Chernobyl and the new way of detecting anomalies and the way stashes are done is more interesting and fun.
No crashes either. I think it's unfair to judge a game's stability based on how it plays with mods. It's completely stable as stock. 

Thief Gold, HD textures - anyone tried it that is familiar with original look ? Total desecration or well done ?
http://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-gold-hd-texture-mod 

I'd advise against, it's not faithful at all in most cases. 

If it's anything like other HD texture mods in games, I'm sure it'll just be a load of garish programmer art, made in FilterForge or something. 

A lot of the thief textures were already photosourced in most instances, so it's not going to ruin the aesthetic compared to quake (where most of the textures were hand painted)