The gameplay is generally one of the most important aspects in a game and especially in a game like Thief. The movement in Thief 3 is unfortunately broken. Forget the smooth movement like in Thief 1 and 2. In Thief 3 the movement is just painfully bad and nothing solves this issue. You usually have at most one clunky mechanic in a game like "moon jumping" for instance but in Thief 3 nearly every game mechanic is terrible. Opening door is weird, pick-pocketing is almost impossible, jumping, crouching, walking.... take your pick because everything is here. You will get this feeling the game is going to break at any moment and you will fall through the floor and fly all over the map.
The game has good graphics, music, story and atmosphere but there are just too many annoying design flaws that ruin it and even make it quite frustrating experience: - the game is too long for all the bad reasons - incredibly tedious pedling between locations (no fast travel) - you will regulary cross 4 and more screens - long animations before dialogues - slow movement of the main character - often slow and subpar voice acting - some redundant and weird puzzles - story progression activated by certain dialogues - you can die or even worse there is at least one gamebreaking situation (wolf) - out of nowhere one of the worst puzzles in the history of the adventure games (the second tomb) - pixel hunting (you will often miss some item) - confusing controls (for some strange reason sometimes you have to click with the right mouse button instead of the standard left mouse button for the action)
First of all, graphically the game looks still very appealing, the music and the voice acting in the game are also really good. The story is not too interesting though and you play for some guy you know nothing about apart from the fact he was sentenced for the murder of his wife and son. The gameplay becomes after an hour very repetitive partly because of the bulletsponge enemies (medium difficulty) and partly because of the lack of more diverse enviroments (it takes place mostly in the prison areas and it gets soon old). It is an ok above average game that I wanted badly when it was released but I would not rate it too high nowadays.
It is a good game but it gets soon claustrophobic, repetitive and boring. Once you have seen level 1 you have seen them all and there are like 7 levels. It looks like a difficult game at first but soon you will realize it is just a simple shooter that forces you to search everything to get a new gun, ammo or a healthkit which is after a while just annoying routine. It is not that interesting to explore the ship. From that era I would recommend Realms of Hauntig instead. That offers more fun with more variety of levels and a much better story.
This title shows that you don't need modern graphics to make a good game. What really matters is a graphical design and a good storytelling. Thanks to that the game will always look very charming and attractive. It is not really FPS but shooting is suprisingly fun even with old school controls.
This adventure game has one of the most interesting mystery stories ever and its presentation is simply a huge achievement in minimalism. The voice acting is superb and immersive (including top notch original Russian dubbing), the graphics is charming, the style is beautiful, the platforming is fun and the mystery is so good you want to know more and more about the planet and what happened there. The game looks like it was made in late 90's and if it really had been made at that time it would surely have been be a huge hit and a classic. Now, 10 years later after its release to me it is a classic. A really memorable piece of art obviously made with love. The game is not challenging but if you like lineral mysterious stories and fun platforming then get it without a second thought.
If you like well written psychological mystery adventures this is exactly what to get. All the characters are very interesting and the acting is amazing. The graphics look still good and the music is also very nice. It is just a well made game. There are some easy puzzles here and there but the main theme of the game is the psychological study of a sick mind.
I expected there to be a realistic investigation, interesting characters, maybe some backstory, flashbacks, etc. in the game. There is nothing of that. No kind of realism whatsoever. You just look for single pages that are all over the map. The game is just an empty map where you go from the point A to the point B and pick pages that complete the story. It looks almost like an unfinished project. I lost all the interest right at the beginning of the game when I was spoonfed that it were all monsters who were to blame for the disappearence of the students. That should be maybe somewhere at the end of the game as a resolution and not at the beginning. The real explanation would be also preferable but in that case they would have to put some more work into the story. So they killed all the thrill of gradation and joy of discovery in a game that should be all just about that. What is there to left? Wandering around in the dark with a compass and a map, collecting notes about the history of these disappeared students and finding these monsters hives. I did not care anymore. Yes it has nice atmosphere but without any driving force it is just a boring walking that you want to have over as soon as possible. There are more issues like no Russian audio in a story that takes place is in USSR, impossibility to save the game whenever you want, the fact it is all in the dark and therefore you can't really enjoy even the enviroment very much, despite it being a so called open world map you have very limited possibilites how to get to your desired location, you have to travel on the predetermined trails, you can't even jump or climb. There simply are not that many interesting things.
They tried to top COJ1 by improving the things that did not work, by adding more characters, more interesting stuff and they mostly succeeded in that aspect (apart from the lame comics over the top villain). On the other hand your freedom of movement is more restricted. Yes, the first game was also quite lineral but it could hide that fact rather well. The game suffers from some nasty technical issues. First of all FOV (field of view) is just horrible and will cause you a headache. This can be fixed by installing a patch, then it is acceptable but you will also get some other visual issues (all the guns will look too long for instance). Secondly the muddy grey graphic is just a pain for your eyes and sometimes I could hardly see enemies and again if you are sensitive to this kind of thing it might cause you a headache as well.
As incredible as it might sound up today there are only a handful of western FPS games and even less good ones. I can only think of Outlaws and Call of Juarez trilogy and that is it. So any new western fps will be close to the top but Gunslinger is a really good game on its own. It is basically a simulator of a badass gunslinger. If you ever longed to shoot bad guys in wild west with a colt, a rifle and a shotgun then this is your dream come true. It is needed to mention that it is a very lineral game with elements of on-rail shooters especially compared to COJ 1 and 2. Sometimes you get some free choice how to attack but mostly it is just a corridor like game. There is even a story which is quite funny and badass but it is also completely redundant. It is not a story driven adventure like its two predecessors. You will likely forget the entire storyline in a week. So in the end it is mainly focused on action and the action is amazing.
