thief |

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Eidos Montreal

Release Date: 2/25/2014

Available On

Thief has been one of those franchises that has been on the back burner of gamers’ minds for over a decade. Like Deus Ex, Duke Nukem, and various other decade-long franchises, Thief went through its own development hell. The end product isn’t exactly something that’s worth waiting ten years for, but it’s a fun game with fantastic visuals and some great stealth gameplay.

I will come right out and say this: the story is almost complete garbage. It’s a discombobulated mess of disjointed segments strewn together in eight chapters of gameplay. You play as a master thief, Garret, who is trying to get his friend Erin back, whom he let down during a big heist. You need to get a hold of some powerful people to answer some questions and find a mysterious stone. There is some anarchy and revolution thrown in, as well as some sort of plague called The Gloom. I honestly don’t know why any of this is happening or why Erin has a power called the Primal. It’s a huge mess, and nothing is ever explained. That’s too bad for a game, as cinematic as it is, that can’t tell a decent story. At least the gameplay is fun, and that’s why most people are here.

The stealth gameplay consists of sneaking and hiding in the shadows, like in previous Thief games. Garret isn’t really about killing enemies, so you just knock them out with your famous Blackjack. You can kill enemies by using arrows, but it takes away from your level score. Like in past Thief games, arrows are your whole arsenal. Water arrows can put out fires, giving off light; rope arrows can help you swing to a new area to get around guards; poppy arrows can stun enemies; and blast arrows can take out a group of people or cause a distraction. Your arrows are a playground for anything you want them to be to your heart’s content.

Like in previous Thief games, you can take multiple paths to get around guards completely undetected or by taking them out one at a time. Some of the paths are hard to find, and some just lead to the treasure. Picking locks and finding loot to gain gold are very important if you want to stay stocked up on arrows. Sometimes it’s not worth getting caught just for a piece that’s worth 10 gold. Sometimes animals are guarding a piece, or there are too many guards or lights to get around. Thankfully, vertical play is quick thanks to your claw, which lets you climb taller areas.

An odd addition to the series is weird creepy horror segments straight out of Amnesia. You can’t kill these things; you can only sneak around them. Sure, they were creepy, but why? It felt out of place. Also out of place are the awkward boss “fights” that just feel loose and sloppy—maybe even shoehorned in. The flow of the game is also off quite a bit, with side missions taking you to weird areas of town and not really being worth anything. I honestly felt the whole world was limited to just side missions when it could have been a whole larger open world.

Outside of all that, there’s not much else to the game. It doesn’t feel like the ultimate revolutionary stealth game like the first two games felt. The AI is dumb most of the time, and the game can be beaten in less than 8 hours, even if you try to gather all the loot. With side missions, you may extend to 20 hours, but just barely. The graphics are just fantastic, with advanced DirectX 11 effects and a great art style that feels like Thief; there aren’t even any memorable characters in the game—Garret included. What we have is a fun weekend rental and nothing more.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Publisher: Atlus Co.

Developer: Frozenbyte, Inc.

Release Date: 12/7/2011

Available On

Trine was a great co-op physics puzzle game, but those puzzles insisted that you manipulate the elements of the game and exploit your abilities to solve them. There’s no canned solution. You get a puzzle, and you can solve it a few different ways, but it takes a lot of experimenting to solve them. Trine 2 continues this, but at least makes the puzzles a little more understandable.

Zoya, Amadeus, and Pontius return as the wizard, thief, and knight to solve these tough puzzles. If you already played Trine, the game is almost the same, but with new levels and puzzles and slightly refined controls. For people who haven’t, you can go ahead and start here because Trine has a very bare-bones story and is completely forgettable. Zoya has a bow and arrow; Amadeus can conjure up planks and boxes; and Pontius is the fighter. As you solve puzzles, you need to find glass bottles and orbs that will help you level up. Most take some thinking to figure out how to get to them, but you honestly don’t need to level up completely because if you hit a puzzle that needs a certain ability, just remove those points from others to do it.

Puzzles consist of tough platforming and being able to use the heroes’ abilities to solve them. It’s too difficult to explain how the puzzles work, but let’s just say the game is easier in co-op. Manipulating the various levers, pulleys, and platforms requires thinking outside the box. If you have a slippery slope that you can’t jump up, what do you do? There’s a ledge overlooking it, so you use Amadeus to create a plank at the top, then put a box on top of that so it doesn’t slide down. Conjure another plank, and as it slides, you jump on it, then the other plank to the next section. Puzzles like this are everywhere, but some are just completely difficult due to the mechanics needed to do them, or you can’t figure them out at all.

Combat is usually the only break from this, and it’s just a mouse mashfest. Pontius can use his sword, shield, or hammer. Zoya can use her bow to get high-up enemies, but if you die, you need to start back at the last checkpoint to revive your heroes and heal. Every so often, you find chests that contain poems and paintings, but there’s really no need to get these. You spend so much time trying to just advance in the levels that you’ll pass on trying to find out how to get to orbs and chests.

The visuals are stunning, with gorgeous lighting effects and an enchanting art style. This is probably my favorite part of the game because each level is completely different. My biggest gripe is that the game feels too much like the last game, with just some minor combat improvements, and the puzzles can be figured out a little easier. The story is complete crap. The trine makes you follow it so you can save some rival princesses, and that’s about as far as it goes. You beat the end boss and find out what has happened to the good princess.

Overall, Trine 2 is great in co-op but really tough in single-player. The story stinks, and the puzzles are extremely hard to solve due to the fact that you have to manipulate the hero’s abilities and exploit the physics system. This isn’t fun to me, but some people may like the think-outside-the-box-style puzzles. If you were a fan of the last game, come back. If you weren’t a fan, you wouldn’t like this much either. New players can jump right in here and enjoy the stunning visuals and tough puzzles.