Now that I finished T3 - My honest opinion of the whole game...
Bruce Tyler
the past few years, I feel I could, like some of you guys, call myself
a true blue Thief fanatic... Both Thief 1 and 2 were more or less
identical, just different episodes of the smae continuing saga. It
took me a while to accept the metal mickeys (robots) in T2 but apart
from that, both games were magnetic in their content and I never
wanted to simply quit from having played too much, like I did with
many other games when you simply reach the point of saturation...
Then came T3...
Realizing that T3 was made with other companies involved, I expected
it to be a completely new up-market hyped up game that had little
resemblance to its parent game(s)... It took me a while to get used to
the new bow, then new style blackjack and having a dagger instead of
the good old sword but at some point about a third of the way into the
game, I realized that I no longer dwelled on these points. I simply
played the game as per its original intention. Bits and pieces of the
old game(s) were inserted into this one to remind you of its heritage.
Memorials, statues, tombs were strategically placed to let you know
that T2 was indeed imbedded into T3's roots and that the legacy was
merely continuing, albeit along a slightly different path than before.
Toward the end, I felt T3 wandered a little with old hags and stone
warriors starting to enter the picture but the occult type of feeling
of demons and ghouls were reasonably well done and I guess Garrett
always had a destiny, it's just he had to find it and like all others
who eventually find their destiny, he had to follow the already walked
trail as best he could.
It's a bit of a shame that the games graphics were a letdown,, in that
you had to have a reasonably high spec PC/graphics card to exploit
them. I simply can't see the point of this type of thinking, as many
of us have "ordinary" or "average" PC's and can never really go to
maximum settings in any game and by the time we get a PC which can,
the game is long since out-of-date,, so it's a bit of a shame we
couldn't have seen T3 in all its glory. I feel that may many companies
which realease games of a similar nature, rather let many gameplayers
down by aiming at the top end few... Great graphics and textures are
one thing but actually being able to play the game you just bought is
another issue altogether... Still,, I guess most games face that same
dilema = "better graphics or frame rates"...!!!
One slight issue came to mind with the voice accents and some of the
sayings... I mean, I heard lots of American accents and yet I heard
sayings like "Bloody Hell" which is distinctly British (or at least
non American), right throughout the entire game.. I don't get into
studying games,, I just play them.. I therefore am a bit lost as to
where this Garrett fellow actually comes from and what part of the
world this all takes place in... Still, as I said, it's only a slight
issue,, BUT,, if it was a movie it would be heavily criticised, one
way or the other,, and,, let's face it, computer games are a huge
industry now and games are virtually ineractive movies on your PC, so
maybe they should attempt to get it "more right" next time...
All in all, I got right into the game and found it plenty enjoyable.
Am I glad I went out of my way to find this game at PC shop 20 miles
away - YES...!!!
Overall score...9 out of 10...
What about you guys...???
Augustus
> one thing but actually being able to play the game you just bought is
> another issue altogether... Still,, I guess most games face that same
> dilema = "better graphics or frame rates"...!!!
I agree, once I got over the difference curve, I really began to enjoy the
game. They did a good job continuing the Thief universe. I especially liked
reading the familiar names on the tombs in various places, gave a good sense
of continuity from T1 and T2.
Although I've mentioned this before in other posts, I'll flog it again
here. There's absolutely no reason other than crappy code and sloppy
unoptimized programming why this game performs the way it does. It's a
modified Unreal engine, plain and simple. With damn small maps to boot. The
shadow and lighting effects are complex, different, but UT2004 also has many
different and very demanding effects too. This same engine, in UT2004, runs
at high frame rates with most settings maxed at 1024x768 on your average
8500, 9100, Ti4200 or Ti4600 card. TDS will run on these, but not great at
800x600 and minimized effects.
TDS is allegedly a DX9 game. I've yet to see a single DX9 effect
anywhere. I played through the game completely with my overclocked 8500
128Mb card. Upgraded to a DX9 compliant 9800 Pro 128Mb card, and replayed
the entire thing. With DX9 installed. This time at 1024x768 with all effects
maxed. Smooth, at last, but zero visual effect differences. And I was really
looking for some.
I run the game on a dual channel Barton 3200+ with a gig of RAM. My 9800
Pro is run at 9800XT spec (413/730). If I run TDS at 1280x1024, effects
maxed, there are a number of areas where framerates drop sufficiently to
notice it. Sorry, but given the game engine and what it's doing, there's no
excuse for this.
Awesome game, true to the series, but the lazy coding and optimization
really takes away from the experience for many gamers who thought they had
pretty decent hardware.
Gez
disaster that
a lot of people were predicting. I'd have like a couple of more "thievy"
levels,
and somewhere cool to show off the climbing gloves.
If an editor ever sees the light of day I think it may secure this as a
truly great
game.
Terry Pratchett
<t...@bottom.au> writes
>O
> I therefore am a bit lost as to
>where this Garrett fellow actually comes from and what part of the
>world this all takes place in... Still, as I said, it's only a slight
>issue,, BUT,, if it was a movie it would be heavily criticised, one
>way or the other,, and,, let's face it, computer games are a huge
>industry now and games are virtually ineractive movies on your PC, so
>maybe they should attempt to get it "more right" next time...
In the movie sense, more right how? It's never seemed to me that Thief
takes place on Earth. It's 'elsewhere', in Generic Fantasy Space, where
zombies, rat men, wizards and walking trees are all normal. I was quite
happy with the variety of accents (to me, it sounds as if there's a few
Aussies there, too) because they were, well, just accents. Everyone got
to do sound like *something*:-)
Hollywood has been quite happy with a Scotsman commanding a Russian
nuclear sub and an American playing a medieval English outlaw, so I
doubt the T3 would be seriously faulted on this issue.
--
Terry Pratchett
Anders Thulin
> One of my favorite pastimes in 1 & 2 was to get rid of all opponents
> (especially by having them chase me into an area populated by other
> opponents that were natural enemies to each other, like zombies and
> burricks) [...]
Try the Sunken Citadel again.
--
Anders Thulin ath*algonet.se http://www.algonet.se/~ath
Darin Johnson
> I find the gloves to be limited in that any ledge
> will stop you and some walls won't let you grip.
I have found very few places where the gloves really are useful.
Sure, there are places I can go to with the gloves, but not that many
useful places such as alternate routes past the guards. They do exist
though, just not as many as there were with the rope arrows as I recall.
--
Darin Johnson
Caution! Under no circumstances confuse the mesh with the
interleave operator, except under confusing circumstances!
Dan Stephenson
<spamm...@spamminator.com> wrote:
> (especially by having them chase me into an area populated by other
> opponents that were natural enemies to each other, like zombies and
> burricks)
Wait, zombies and burricks fight it out??? Cool!
I knew Hammers "bring the Builder's wratch" down on zombies, but I
didn't know about Burricks.
I miss Burricks.
--
Dan Stephenson
Photos and movies from US Parks and all over Europe:
http://homepage.mac.com/stepheda