Thief (III): Deadly Shadows - Stealing for a living.
Written: May 31 '04 (Updated Aug 16 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Advanced stealth action, great AI, super graphics, 1st & 3rd person, good story line
Cons: Requires powerful PC, controls (complexity), load times, clipping issues, no multiplayer (if you need that)
The Bottom Line: A welcome relief from the current wave of shooters, 'Thief: Deadly Shadows' is fun and challenging for player and hardware alike.
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| theuerkorn's Full Review: Thief Deadly Shadows for Windows |
Here it is: High degree of freedom in a stealth action game with amazing graphics. To make things even better, the medieval theme allows you to emerge in intrigues and gain lost treasures modern times are not able to produce anymore. Now put all that into one game and you get 'Thief: Deadly Shadows'. (I will just shorten it to 'T:DS' in the review.) It's the third installment of the Thief series and sometimes even called 'Thief III' (unofficial name). (Thief I & II both date back to 1999.)
Quick Orientation:
Objective of the Game
How does it play?
System Requirements (important)
Summary
Bugs & Fixes
THE OBJECTIVE
You're a thief: and the objective of the game is predetermined by that occupation. Each level requires you to bring something important into your possession and reveal another piece of the unfolding mystery.
How you achieve the set goals is up to you - lethal or stealth. In your career as a master thief, you gain access to great treasures and sophisticated burglar tool (by medieval standards).
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HOW DOES IT PLAY?:
Manual: The manual looks good and provides good information about the setup, game objective and controls. Some might wish it was a little more detailed but overall it's quite good.
Graphics: Stunning! Though most of the time it's dark (the thief's best weapon), the light and particle effects are amazing. Characters are detailed and environments are beautifully crafted. (Being from Germany I almost felt home in the castle.) As with all dark games, LCD screens are at a 'slight' disadvantage since they are currently not able to produce a real black and washes out a little bit. It also becomes harder to recognize things that way.
Violence: This game is M-rated despite the lesser violence than many other games. I guess training kids in the art of stealing may be a reason to limit this game's audience. Nevertheless, as a thief one mostly relies on stealth and killing makes thing just more complicated (hide bodies etc.). However, one can choose how to accomplish tasks and basically get by without massive slaying. (Unlike most shooters where you have to kill all to proceed.)
Controls: Main controls rely on the simplified scheme supported by most games these days. Hoewever, the options are complex and with it the additional keys to access specific functions. This requires some practice to succeed. For instance using a flash bomb to blind opponents requires to hit 'F1' to select it and then 'I' to use it. With one hand on the WASD keys (left side of keyboard) and the other on the mouse, this becomes somewhat of a hassle especially if new to the game. First person is good, and 3rd person mode is quite manageable too, unlike the dreadful most recent 'Prince of Persia'.
Sound: Nothing to complain here. Voice acting is of good quality and not too repetitive. Enemies show idle behaviors and kind of entertain themselves while keeping watch. Since I only have a 2.1 Sound system available, I could not test the 5.1 sound that's supported by the game. Too bad since it may help to locate threats better.
Animation: Characters don't just look nice they also move mostly anatomically correct. One exception is the rag-doll physics for falling bodies, which lets them end up in somewhat impossible positions.
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Equipment: Call it weapons or tools, as you proceed thru the game your arsenal expands to meet the 'job requirements' (a.k.a. objectives). There is only 4 lethal weapons (little effective in toe-to-toe fight), and as many as 10 medieval versions of Bond-like gadgets. (right, as in Bond, James Bond.) Just take the water arrow (to extinguish torches) and noise maker arrow (to distract) for an example. Not necessarily authentic, but quite possible and a lot of fun while essential for most 'jobs'.
Progress: Unlike other 'great' games that were crippled by an impossible game save (just think of Halo and XIII), Thief allows to save at any time in the game and keeps track of several saves too. It still falls a little short to Call of Duty or Tron2.0, that allow for autosave upon completion of an objective (within a level). Quick save and load happen via F10 and F12 versus the 'standard' F5 and F9 respectively.
Enemy AI: With the graphics looking so good and the sound being real enough, the artificial intelligence adds to the realism and is quite adaptive. Idle behavior (as seen in FarCry) has been added and reactions are quite adaptive to your actions. Once spotted one has to run and hide and guards will try to find you. However, to keep it playable some activity is still predictable after observing.
Difficulty: Stealth is not the easiest thing to do on a computer since you're missing several senses and have to replace them with visual or audible feedback. There are 4 difficulty levels EASY, NORMAL, HARD and EXPERT. I started as normal and it feels about right to me. Especially in the beginning where the controls are to be learned
Longevity: Hmmm, it's a story-driven singleplayer and most will put it away once all level are completed. Since there is basically several tactics to accomplish a goal, one might try it differently some time later. The level progresses differently but the outcome is not changed.
Locations: Love the dark times of medieval building and other contraptions? This game meets all your needs. Though placed in a town called 'The City' the variety of dark and moody streets, courtyards, basements and rooms keeps repeating elements at a low. Within a level there is a couple load points to manage object detail and the resulting memory need. It slows down the game only by a few seconds unless one decides to frequently change locations.
MultiPlayer: ... uhm ... what multiplayer? To be honest I don't miss it at all and Singleplayer is all I need anyway. Given the pace of T:DS and the basic theme, i am not sure how 'entertaining' an online game would be anyway. (Besides, the net is flooded with cheaters that spoil the fun anyway.)
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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Beauty comes at a price, a 'steep' one in this case. While not completely unheard of, T:DS' restrictions of compatible hardware exceed those found in Enter The Matrix, Tron2.0, Midnight Club 2, Need for Speed: Underground, Call of Duty and Halo. Frightened? Try XIII instead.
Even beyond the limitations of DirectX9.0b (included), the OS is limited to Windows 2000 and XP. That's right, T:DS does not play well with any 'older' system.
Eidos lists a PENTIUMŽ IV 1.5GHZ with 256MB of system memory and 3 GByte of hard drive space as a minimum along with a 100% DX9 compatible soundcard and the usual mouse and keybard. A CD-ROM is also required since Disc 1 (of 3) functions as a copy protection dongle (beyond the installation). Realistically though, a system should be above 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB - 1GB of RAM. However, the most strain will be on the graphics board and even underpowered CPU might do okay with a good VPU.
So far that doesn't read too bad, but here it comes. T:DS is very (!) picky about the graphics chip and even flat out excludes laptops or any integrated graphics for that matter. (Some high end models might run it but the majority surely won't.) After the dawn of T&L technology as a requirement (see Enter The Matrix for references), T:DS demands (!) Pixelshader1.1 technology (nVidia) in order to even start the game. (a.k.a. ATI's 'SmartShader'.) Sure a bold step, but another indicator of upcoming hardware requirements.
SUPPORTED GRAPHICS CHIPSETS:
- ATI Radeon 8500 & 9xxx series
- nVIDIA GeForce 3TI & 4TI series
- nVIDIA GeForce FX & 6xxx series
Until now you were safe with any Radeon and GEForce if 'only' T&L was required. (The list even extended to Matrox's Parphelia.) However, not so anymore and use of PixelShader 1.1 excludes even older nVidia models like ...
- nVidia GeForce 4MX (460, 440 & 420)
- nVidia GeForce 4 GO & QUADRO FX GO
- nVidia GeForce nFORCE2 & nFORCE3
Add to that list any (!) graphics board that does not hold a heart made by ATI or nVidia. Take it simply as a precursor for upcoming games. Keep an eye out for Half-Life2 and Doom3, as both games will define the 'proper' equipment sometime between August and October, and most likely it will be along the lines of T:DS. (Once the Unreal III engine becomes available in 2006, the bar is going to be raised even higher!)
My system (2.4GHz P4, 533MHz FSB, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro, ATA133, WinXP) runs the game okay with video options set to 1280x1048, 32bit, and all of the game's options put to maximum. However, reduction in shadow detail and a few more (slight) tweaks were necessary to run it smoothly. (essential to become a successful thief)
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What does it all mean?
First of all be sure to take the system requirements seriously. Otherwise you end up with an expense of $40.- that will be useless until you upgrade.
Having said that, T:DS is a lot of fun and eye candy for a reasonable price. There are a few graphics problems (at least on my system) that cause some surfaces to get confused as lit or not lit - depending on the viewing angle. This results in annoying flicker and some (supposely) dark areas to appear bright and other lit surfaces (triangles) to appear dark. I hope it will be fixed (either thru Eidos or ATI driver updates).
Even with a few handicaps it is a game worth being considered a must-have (for stealth action fans). No dumb shooting and kill-or-be-killed attitude make for a welcome game in the shooter heavy market.
The freedom of the game can be good and bad at the same time. Gamers used to handholding and streamlined stories may have to adapt a little bit. It's an intriguing concept and impatient players might end up confused and disoriented.
T:DS is pretty much comparable with Splinter Cell set back in time, without high-tech gadgets. T:DS gets ahead with improved AI and graphics as well as a slightly more enticing story line and (much) less linearity within a level. Don't get me wrong, SplinterCell is a great game, but T:DS simply feels more polished (not considering the graphics issue).
Since T:DS is my first encounter with the Thief series (I downloaded the demos for both predecessors from 1999 and neither will run on my configuration), I cannot judge on the progress of the series but given the new features in T:DS it's safe to claim that it should be the best yet. I sure like the 1st person mode most, and SplinterCell doesn't offer that.
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GAME HOMEPAGE
http://www.thief3.com
Game bug reports and suggested fixes...
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?s=0778f48c8eaf9f8487f7868235301294&threadid=38410
Use caution (!!!) when modifying Default.ini
To improve mouse control:
- Change MouseLagThreshold=75 to 0
- Change MouseSensitivity=70 to 20
To reduce render issues on Radeon
- Change VolumetricLighting=False to True
- Change Use32BitTextures=Flase to True
In the BIOS
- Check AGP Aperture and set to max. half your available memory (256MB preferred if system memory is 521MB or more)
With those changes T:DS actually runs quite smoothly on my configuration. (I hope Eidos releases a fix soon.) Note: It only has been tested with v1.0 of this game. Later updates might be affected differently.
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Update (10-Jun-2004):
The graphics issues (flicker) recently has been acknowledged as a problem in the ATI database. However, it's not fixed in the latest release of Catalyst 4.6. (Is that maybe a reflection of the heavy nVidia support for the game? After all, Eidos must have seen it too.) I guess it will be addressed by the time I have finished the game.
-> http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4557.html
Update (18-Jun-2004):
Eidos releases the first (minor) patch v1.1:
"Difficulty Settings not working properly with the Save/Load system. This patch fixes the problem the player has with the game resetting the difficulty from Expert or Hard to Normal, or from Easy to Normal, when the game is re-loaded in-mission or if the player transitions more than once in any mission."
So the well documented flicker issue (both in Eidos' FAQ and ATI's FAQ) is not even acknowledged by Eidos. So I was hoping for it to be fixed quietly, but that turned out to be whishful-thinking, at least for version 1.1.
Update (8-July-2004):
ATI released Catalyst 4.7 and still does not address the texture flicker. (Gets confusing since it makes some shadows look like brightly lit areas.) I would not expect anything from ATI until the next update (catalyst 4.8) in about 1 month. Eidos, any help here?
Update (16-August-2004):
ATI finally released Catalyst 4.8 and the flicker issue within Thief Deadly Shadows has been resolved. Thanks a lot, it's finally fun again to go an finish the game. (Other changes have not been reported and I could not notice any.)
Recommended:
Yes
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