Grimrock

So I've just played about 30 minutes worth so far. A few of you may know that I am a massive Thief fan from back in the day, so the reboot is important to me.

A few impressions:

CONS:
- The environment seems to be on extreme rails, which is quite a disappointment. You can't walk off the side of a ledge (invisible walls) to an alley below that the game doesn't want to you visit. You can't even jump unless you're in a spot where you "need" to jump, it's that controlling/limiting.
- Rope arrows can ONLY be shot into tiny predetermined points that highlight when you're aiming at the right spot. Talk about consolization-to-the-max. Instead of having a rope arrow and thinking "Ah, freedom, where would I like to explore?" I now will be thinking "Oh great, where does the game want to me to go?"
- Some of the anachronisms are a bit extreme (ex: electric fans circa 1930). I love the original game's medieval/magic/steam-punk blend, but this feels too modern for me so far.
- Garrett's voice acting is only okay, nowhere near the richness Stephen Russell brought to the character in the past, disappointing but to be expected (Russell's a very tough act to follow).
- Loot glint, gah! At least you can turn that crap off in the menus, kudos to them for that option and quite a few others like it.
- When you crouch, for some insane scooby doo reason you always hold up your hands in front of you, like you're bending down and pretending to be the boogie-man to scare a four-year-old or something. It is seriously annoying and retarded. I find myself trying to avoid crouching as much as possible because of those stupid hands looking so dorky (and also blocking my view all too often).

PROS:
- Body awareness is good, mostly well done. Walking slow makes you "moonwalk" somewhat, especially when crouching, a pity they couldn't match the animation to the movement speed very well. But usually the body positioning and interactions with the world are very well done, such as opening cabinets, climbing ledges, etc.
- The ambiance and atmosphere are amazingly well done, very very good
- The world is richly detailed, nice to just look around at almost every little thing, very well crafted.
- Ambient sounds are very well done, and give off a clear Thief 1/2 vibe. They did a smashing good job of recapturing the original sound magic (so far), something Thief excelled at and was famous for.
- Finding and activating secret switches is very immersive and cool, well done.
- Lock-picking is pretty cool too
- It's Thief!


I'm sure some of my impressions will change with further play, we'll see.

I would say it's Square Enix re-using their Tomb Raider engine for a Thief remake/reboot.

I was super excited for this, but with mixed reviews about how it's been modernised in the traditional 'dumbing down' kind of way, I've still not quite plucked up the courage to commit £30 to it yet.

After another hour playing my impression has gotten a little worse

- The whole thing so far is on rails, no exploration, no freedom, very constricted and "along for the ride" feeling.
- Audio positioning and volume is off. I will hear a conversation but I can't tell how near/far or what direction it's coming from. Several times I've been way off in where I thought sounds were coming from, unlike the original games where positional audio was a huge immersion factor.
- I've turned of almost all the HUD "features" that are just crappy hand-holding immersion breakers. But with the game designed around them, I end up a little bit unfairly handicapped because they seemed to rely on the HUD factors too much rather than more organic natural indicators of things.

It's still early for me, so I'm hoping as I get further along it will improve. But I suspect that my impressions will only be reconfirmed over time.

I would say it's probably not worth full price, but that's a very subjective judgment from person to person (based on time value, disposable income, etc). Probably a lot of the problem comes from how amazingly good the first games were in so many respects, it has too much to live up to. And in today's market, they just HAD to make everything more "accessible" for a broad player audience to handle.

That's a shame. I hope it opens up a bit later. Exploring the map was all part of the fun of Thief.

I'm sure it's not a bad game - but as you say, when you've come from playing the original, it just sounds like it's identity has been watered down. I don't know why devs so often feel the need to go generic with their game design, games like Dark Souls have proven that there is still a place for niche games in the market today. If anything, with so many generic games out there - we're itching for things that do standout in some way!

I've got to agree on the game being too linear, I can live with the audio bugs (which will be fixed I'm sure) but I agree that finding your own path is half the fun (I haven't played to far so maybe it gets better?)

On the subject of dumbing down I can see why they want to make sure to its accessable to a large group of players and one of the best features is the custom difficulty modes, I'm playing with most of the challenge modes turned on and it becomes really tense trying to pick a lock in a room inches from a guard knowing that if he spots you its back to the start of the chapter. I like to see more features like this in other games I've always gone back to my favorite games to play challenge runs by giving myself a handicap, and having the option built in is great.

I think its a solid game, its no where near Metal age (the best thief in my opinion) but I still hope its successful so there can be improved future games

I'm getting used to things more and liking it more as I play, so for me at least it's getting better, more fun, more cool.

The Thief games were literally my favorite games ever. But I have no plans to play the reboot, the very idea of including special super attacks for killing guards offends every sensibility I have.

Hmm, looking on google I can't find anything about those. Were they dropped? Well I'm already here, does the game have special attacks you can use in fights?

(Not that it's terribly likely I'll play it anyway. It's plot and setting rips off dishonored. I mean the games were medieval not Victorian. Man, I'm being a whiny fanboy.)

I haven't found any special killing attacks, but I haven't played in a few days and only played a couple hours total, so maybe there is something like that I haven't discovered yet.

Asteroth wrote: I mean the games were medieval not Victorian. Man, I'm being a whiny fanboy.)

There's actually an interesting fan theory that says that the new thief is in he same universe but several hundred years into the future, there are lots of little easter eggs like ruins from the keepers and hammerites

heres a link to a steam thread about it http://steamcommunity.com/app/239160/di ... 835780617/