Thief Review

Thief was published in 2014 by Square Enix and developed by Eidos Montreal. Thief was the recent reboot of the Thief series, in Thief you play as Garret a master thief who gallivants around a fictional steam punk like Victorian era city stealing valuables and keeping to the shadows to avoid confrontation from guards.

Thief was an interesting game to play, since you aren't playing the usual gun toting meat head of shooter games the player has to take a lot of precautions and carefully plan how to get around a patrol of guards or find a path from the street up to a third story window left open that could open up to a room of loot ripe for the taking. To help Garret move around the city he has a special claw-like device that helps him quickly climb certain surfaces (usually outlined in blue) and a bow with special arrows like ones meant to put out fire or ones with rope attached to access an otherwise out of reach area.

The stealth mechanics in Thief are nothing new but they are done well. The shadows are your greatest asset in staying hidden as it greatly reduces the chances of being spotted but if an enemy is reasonably close they'll still be able to see you. Noise and movement are the other two main stealth factors that you need to focus on to stay hidden, obviously its easier to see a moving object and this is certainly the case with Garret and staying crouched usually keeps the player quiet enough but occasional surfaces make too much noise when walked across normally (i.e. walking across a creek) so you have to carefully walk across it by holding down a specific key

While the character Garret prefers to avoid confrontation sometimes it's inevitable, when that's the case Garret prefers using non-lethal take downs instead of killing which he views as thoughtless violence. The player can do this numerous ways like sneaking up behind a guard and knocking them out with a swift strike from Garrets blackjack, or shooting an arrow filled with choking powder near a group of guards causing them to pass out or just incapacitating them long enough to let you slip by unnoticed.

Thief is a fairly fun and interesting stealth game with an interesting story rich universe to explore that I'd recommend playing but it's not something you should run out and buy right away

A few screenshots I took:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut edition review

Deus Ex is set in a future where people enhance themselves with body augmentations. They range from  uses like prosthetic limbs to weapons or to use as we would use our smartphones currently, however there is a group of radicals who believe in not modifying the human body who try to stop it. You play as Adam Jensen, an ex swat member who was hired as head security of Sariff corporations the very company to invent and introduce these modifications. After a terrorist attack Adam is almost killed, on the brink of death doctors save him by loading him full of these augmentations.

Throughout the game your actions gain you xp points, these points along with upgrade cards can be spent to improve the augmentations Adam has. These upgrades are mostly the usual ones like more inventory or health while other ones (like punching through light walls) gave interesting opportunities to me as a player. The game mainly plays in a first person format with a third person cover system (the camera pans from the characters point of view to slightly behind them while they take cover behind objects). The guns are unique looking in appearance with most looking futuristic and sleek others looked like they hadn't changed with age in this games depiction of the future. The shooting feels nice but the enemy artificial intelligence leaves much to be desired. All they seem to be able to do is look at you, shoot and move left to right a little. (I didn't get that far into the game yet so this may just be the easier ai at play.

Deus Ex: HR seemed really fun from what short amount I played and I look forward to beating it, even though its almost 4 years old this game holds up very well.

here is a link to my youtube with a short gameplay clip uploaded

How the most popular genres of video games are ruining them.

A few years ago in 2009 a game called Just Cause 2 was released and was considered one of the first major open world sandbox game successes along with another more familiar game Minecraft. In 1996 Resident Evil was released and praised as an amazing and unique survival horror game, now browsing steam it seems like every other game is a survival horror game and every other survival horror is one with zombies in it. These genres and a few others (first and third person shooters free-to-play etc).

The reason why every developer who just finished watching some YouTube tutorials usually chooses games of these genres is caused by how easy it is to crap out a horribly basic shooter and how it's equally as easy to get published and charge five to ten dollars for something that would maybe be considered good, if it were an iphone game.