Gadgetory

what's up tech fans Kevin here on TECA tomorrow bringing us more gaming goodness and today we're talking about thief the reboot and fourth installment in the thief franchise now this is the first one to be produced by Square Enix and is the first new thief game since 2004 making this a decade-long restart in the making the original series is really popular dude with emphasis on planning stealth and nonlinear map design heavily rewarding players that took their time to explore and find as much things to steal as they could does this new one live up to the legacy let's find out today on tech of tomorrow so to begin with let's talk about how it looks and performs for the most part the game is really dark and dreary and tone which makes a lot of sense considering of course you are a thief and visually if the most part it looks really nice you can tell there was a lot of really good concept art that went into detailing the city and some of the more richer areas that you'll explore the game also makes use of a lot of different environmental special effects including really good use of lighting fires mists and rain which makes the game really come to life but at the same time also really hits your performance now the game does have a built-in benchmark utility that we did make use of which features a lot of the weather effects and has a lot of people on the screen at once now in our system which includes an msi gtx 780 twin frozr edition an i7 4770k processor we saw about 42 frames per second on average when running on 2560 x 1440 and 62 frames per second when running on 1920 x 1080 now it is worth noting of course that this is while a lot of things are happening on screen during regular gameplay you're probably going to see at least at 10 frames per second boost if not as high as 20 or 30 thanks to the fact that you spend a lot of time being crouched in doors and not actually actively running so it's going to be a lot better than that normally but once you start fighting a bunch of guards or run through the city you will notice the frames per second take a bit of a dive now as far as actual gameplay is concerned thief has been somewhat of a mixed bag for me there are some things that are really like and there's a lot of good groundwork to it but at the same time there's some things that really bother me some of which are subjective and may not matter to you but some of which are also really objective so to begin with let's look at some of the good things specifically the core stealth elements now some of these mechanics are returning from the previous series but some of them are new as well in terms of how you avoid and distract guards for instance there's water arrows to put out torches to reduce visibility fire arrows that can start fires to distract guards avoiding stepping on things like broken glass or water and the always-popular throwing a glass bottle to distract guards now one of the new mechanics is the game's focus mode which is basically a sort of magical power you get you can activate a special focus mode temporarily that slowly drains your MP and gives you a number of bonuses that you unlock over time initially all it'll do is highlight things you can interact with like hidden buttons or valuable things can steal but over time you can also log other abilities like increasing how fast you can pick pocket or making shadows cling to you while you're using stealth overall this was actually a pretty fun a dish my opinion and I really like what it does for the most part there's just one aspect I have a bit of a problem with and that's the fact that once your MP runs out you can still tap the focus button to do a little blank and it still highlights objects you can use which makes finding hidden switch is really easy in the game it almost really defeats the purpose of hidden switches you don't have to find documents or figure it out for yourself you can just keep tapping the F button until everything's highlighted that you want to interact with now if you're like me and that does bother you a little bit the game does have a really awesome customizable difficulty mode that helps to address this basically when you start the game you can not only pick whether you want it to be you know normal easier hard you can also do what are called classic thief mods these can do things like turning off the focus mode entirely or even removing the reticle or restricting what kind of equipment you can use so those you who are fans of the older games can make it closer to the experience you want now as far as the actual stealing side of things goes the game does a really great job of making the environment interactive you don't just click on things and see yourself get an item you'll actually take the time to open drawers or feel they're hidden switches or actually grab items physically and look at them which just makes the whole thing a lot more engaging now some aspects do feel a bit easy at first for instance lock picking but this is mainly due to the fact that didn't want lock-picking itself to be hard but instead just something that takes time so that a guard might notice you or if you do mess up you make a loud enough noise to attract attention there's plenty of loop to search for on every level there's also some special hidden collectibles that you'll accrue over time and money isn't just used for score you can also use it to purchase consumables in between missions like getting extra arrows or getting permanent upgrades like increasing your armor or buying more focus powers so when you're looking at just the core gameplay alone there's a lot of good going on here and a lot of potential for a great game but there's three things that really cause problems for me personally going from least troubling to most there's its storyline there's how linear it is and most of all the fact that enemy guards are about as intelligent as a sack of marbles so to begin with there's the story which isn't terrible but it's just not very good nothing about it is very memorable there's a very heavy emphasis on the supernatural and not very much emphasizing the fact that you are a thief the title of the game you get wrapped up in all these crazy epic fantasy things happening and just happen to steal everything you can along the way it's not enough to ruin the game but if you're the kind of person who looks for a good story in what he plays this one's just not going to appeal to you very much now second up is just how linear it can be now the game is divided into sections there's the main hub city and then there's the chapters you play to progress the story the hub city itself is fairly open there's lots of routes you can take from point A to point B but this is because it is the main hub city this is we're going to spend time just buying items or walking around so you get tired of it pretty quick as far as the main missions go they run between either being one gigantic hallway or being nonlinear in the sense that there are multiple paths but it's mostly just two or three different straight lines that all lead to the same point usually one that's just an obvious route to take filled with a lot of guards and then a side route that you're rewarded with if you take the time to search or bought a special item like a screwdriver now depending on who you are this may or may not bother you for instance if you're a fan of the older games you're probably going to be angry because those had a very big emphasis on open areas whereas this is basically just path a or path B now while those last two may not matter to you the last point is definitely just one objectively bad thing about the game that just really negatively affects it and that's the enemy AI and the fact that they just don't notice or care about anything you can pretty much just be crouching in the shadows and you're invisible even if the guard is only four feet away and staring right at you doesn't matter you're in the shadows no one can see you on top of that they just seem to forget about your existence really quickly and not care for instance my favorite example of this is on a mission where I opened a door and snuck in left the door open guards noticed and they were alerted which makes sense that's how a stealth game works but then I closed that door while they were staring directly at it and no one cared anymore door mysteriously opens what's going on door mysteriously closes no problem here this may not matter in some other genres games like an action game where nothing's going to live longer than 10 seconds but this is a really key aspect of how stealth games work and it just brings the whole experience down because you don't really feel like stealth is that big of a deal since no enemies really ever matter so as far as my final thoughts in the game go i'm a bit conflicted on this one on the one hand i really like allow the core stealth mechanics but there's a few things that are really holding it back for me if you're looking for a serious and challenging stealth game this one may not be worth full price for you just yet on the other hand if you're just looking for something to screw around in and steal everything not nailed to look around and even mess with a guard AI a little bit you might find it worth purchasing either way I'd recommend waiting maybe for a price drop or two or just catching on sale still fun to play just not what it could have been as always guys thanks for watching our videos if you want to grab a copy of the-- for yourself check out that link in the description and if you enjoyed this vid while you're down there make sure to smash that like button if you're not a subscriber yet then you should be because we've got more content on the way including a review of south park the stick of truth i'm kevin protecting tomorrow we'll see you next time you you