Master_Taffer

AC III has problems. It's the ultimate example of AC's "everything and the kitchen sink" design philosphy where they decided to keep piling features in like it was a hoagie. It doesn't work, and results in a muddled experience. The story takes a more serious turn as we follow Connor, a man with a very black and white view of the world entering the morally gray colonial period. Connor is a great character, earnest and sincere, who is not served well by the poor implementation of the time period. It's just a stiff, uninteresting mess all around. Multiplayer is once again its saving grace.

An amalgam of the best aspects of previous Splinter Cell outings, Blacklist is a fine example **** stealth game. It thinks critically of what the previous games accomplished and combines them in a great single player, coop, and multiplayer game. I've been playing this one quite a bit in the past year and it still hasn't gotten old. easily one of the best entries in the series.

The first and easily the best of the Thief games, The Dark Project follows the snide yet consummate professional thief Garrett as he engages in a heist with the payday of the lifetime. It's a simple and well told tale of someone biting off more than they can chew. Garrett's ultimate heist takes him to a variety of locations in the City ranging from mansions, prisons, tombs, and the churches of religious fanatics. The experience never seems to get stale as you sneak through dark corridors, avoiding detection from your enemies while stripping the place of valuables. There are a few missions that don't hit their target as effectively as they should, otherwise this is probably one of the best and influential stealth games in history. A must play for fans of the stealth genre.

Deadly Shadows is a Thief game bursting at the seems with ideas, with most of them working out. It dared to experiment with the Thief formula, adding things like the City hub among others to the proceedings. While missions are a bit smaller than previous outings, they are tight and well designed and bursting with a gorgeous aesthetic. Where it trips are some of it's larger ideas not panning out as expected, such as some of the eccentricities of the AI within the City hub. Gameplay is tense and intuitive, while the story is full of twists and turns. It's easily the best plot and storytelling in the series thus far, providing a satisfying conclusion to the original Thief trilogy. Well worth your time.

A great game in it's own right, Thief II unfortunately was a step back for the series. Sacrificing some of the mission variety present in The Dark Project rather than taking the time to improve it, what we're left with is a section of the original that's been polished to a fine sheen. The infiltration and sneaking aspects are at their finest, but at the same time while it's got a high gloss it's missing some of the charm of its predecessor. It feels like a part rather than a whole, like someone picking the chocolate chips out of a cookie. The narrative is choppy and incoherent and seems to just facilitate Garrett going to cool locations for levels rather than an over arching plot, and the aesthetics general feel cold and clean, missing some of the dank grime present in TDP. A great game, and certainly one I recommend, but ultimately a bit of a let down in the grand scheme of things.

Thief games have, as a habit, always been rough around the edges going all the way back to The Dark Project. Tasked with reviving a series that has been dormant for ten years, Eidos Montreal had a valiant first effort that largely succeeds. It's gorgeous, engaging, and fair. Not once did I ever feel like my failures were anyone but my fault, which is what one looks for in any game. Some of the refinements and changes for the series were for the better, including an approach of less ambiguity in HUD information and general grinding through missions for arbitrary loot totals. It's mired a bit by a muddled narrative and some repetitious elements like loading screens, but on the whole it was a great game and a good foundation for future entries. And Romano Orzari was great as Garrett.