Being an early adopter of the PS4 (I had it the day they came out in Australia) I have been hamstrung for video games to play. I got Knack (which I highly reccomend regardless of reviews) Killzone Shadowfall (fun), Call of Duty Ghosts (really not a fan of this one), the Need for Speed for my racing fun and Tomb Raider Definitive Edition (I LOVE that game). But I wanted something really good and fantasy-ish roleplay. I saw that Thief was coming out, a reboot of an old, fun franchise and I ran along to my local game store and asked about it. I got told it is the next BIG game and they were excited. I said shut up and take my money with a pre-order.
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| At least the case art looks cool, even if nothing you find inside the case is |
Well, it got released yesterday and I picked up my copy super excited. After playing a bit of Mage Knight (board game) I sat in front of the TV, opened the case and put the disc in. I immediately went to the Playstation Store to download my free mission and entered my redeem code. This should have been my hint when I got an error, the code is no good. I tried it three times by myself and then my wife read the code and still nothing. Game designers, if you are going to release a game with free downloadable content, make damn sure that it is available the moment I open the case because it WILL make me very negative about your game before I have even played it.
So, I decided to give it a try and started it up. Pretty standard fare from the start screen. The graphics seem a little basic for the power that I am paying for with a PS4 but the sprawling city that they show is dark and gloomy and my hopes pick up a little. The city looks extremely European, perhaps even London in the days of Oliver Twist. They use thick fog to try and build atmosphere but it leaves me a little underwhelmed.
I hit start and it pans out to give the same impression of the city and then my character starts with his voice over… in a thick American accent. I have nothing against Americans. They are lovely people on the whole but if you are going to build a game world that suggests a European style then don’t hit me with a voice actor that is obviously not from the area. Not only is his accent American, every voice I heard bar one is an American voice actor.
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| See the Game Designer making off with my money. He is the real thief here |
So while I am talking about voices, lets talk about lip synchronisation in cut scenes, or the lack there of. They show a character face and you hear it talk but the lips do not move, until about 3 seconds later and then the lips move as if speaking for the same period of time. This is completely atrocious. These are cut-scenes, not in game moments and they can not get it right! This is definitely going to be a topic on my personal blog later but releasing a game this BAD because of all the errors in coding and short cuts that have been made to get it out on release date is unacceptable. I can just feel a gigabytes worth of patch coming out soon and that smacks of bad business even though everyone will just take it without protest.
I played the game for about an hour to an hour and a half last night and it left me stone cold. The plot to me is blatantly obvious. The tropes used to drag you into the game are placed on a large plank and smacked in your face many times trying to win you over. There is no subtlety or finesse in a game about a character who should all be about subtlety and finesse. Well done on ruining not only this incarnation of the game but the previous games of Thief for me.
There is one plus to all of this. At least I can go back to Tomb Raider, because there is a polished game I want to play through. Sorry for the Video Game review for those of you following the Chronicles for paper based RPG’s but I had to unload. This game is awful.