PixlBit

Loved TNS movie discussion. I'll just leave this here:

So, here's some stuff I didn't mention on the podcast that you might find interesting:

TNS is actually based on a German novel, but the movie only covers the first half and takes some liberties with the story. It took so many liberties, in fact, that the author took the creators to court, demanding they either cease production, or change the name of the movie. He obviously lost the case. The sequels are actually based on the original story as well, but deviate from the plot even further. Wikipedia has a ton of interesting stuff on the subject and it's worth a look.

Fun fact: The theatrical trailer for the movie shows part of the scene where Sebastian nabs the book from the store, but instead of the book bearing the title "The Neverending Story" it actually has the name of the original book in German. Obviously that was changed as well. (I didn't see this in the Wikipedia entry)

Oh my word that image of the Risk game. I can actually match one of my relatives to the personality of each of those caricatures pretty easily.

I wanted to tell Angelo that I've been playing Thief. Let's talk about it.

I went to the indie game store and traded in enough old games to get it on 360 for $30. A few months ago I also spent some time in the store playing the game on PS4 so I've seen what the different gen versions look like and play like. The current gen game looks significantly better but the load times are slightly longer. The last gen version looks the way you'd expect a decent last gen game to look. The load time are a little shorter, but those two things are the only differences. The whole game is there and the frame rate is fine. The technical part of the game that's terrible is the cutscenes. Framerate is really bad and often times the VO will get out of synch, and if you have subtitles on they may just rush by for some reason. The cutscenes are crazy bad.

I've been enjoying the game a lot. It's definitely worth playing for people who enjoy first person stealth action. But early on you have to reconcile the fact that it's not as good as Dishonored. Dishonored is a great game, Thief is a good game. If anyone tells you Thief is a bad game they're crazy. Once you accept the game for what it is you'll find it has charm of its own.

Obviously you're a thief and not an assassin. Combat isn't fun at all, and it's much tougher, in Thief. You can still get lethal arrows and head-shot guards to kill them which is fun if you're into that style of stealth, but ammo is hard to come across during exploration (although you can buy it from vendors for cheap), but there's no summoning rat swarms, getting into fast paced sword fights, or sneaking up on guys and knifing them like Dishonored, so stylistically you have to settle into what Thief is offering.

Mechanically there are some ways where the game takes a step backward. For example you can't knock a guy out and throw him over your shoulder in one fluid movement like you could in Dishonored, which means you have to be more picky about who you sneak up on and when because it'll take longer to do the deed and then move his body. Thief is a slower, less fluid, game in every way.

It's a semi-open world and the city the game takes place in is a little labyrinthine, which is overwhelming at first but after a couple hours you'll start to understand its quirks and the options they give you to navigate it. It's like a mix between a big city from an Assassin's Creed game and an urban section of Dishonored with a lot of verticality and odd nooks and crannies everywhere. It's a more dense world than I expected it would be. Go figure, there are a lot of places to break into and rob! The biggest difference is the fact that the city in Thief is broken up into sections and traveling between sections means either climbing through apartment windows that act as a loading screen, or shimmying through a stack of boxes, or the more obvious stuff like using city gates, so it's not seamless.

There are lot of side missions you can take on to make extra money, and most of them are pretty good as far as optional content goes. They are either quick and simple 2 minute affairs of getting into an apartment to grab an item, or they can be longer 15+ minute affairs with a more substantial level design and guards to worry about.

The big story missions are not as well designed as the ones in Dishonored but you'll feel relatively at home in them. As far as I can tell there's no way you can affect the outcome of the story like in Dishonored, Thief is just about sneaking around and stealing stuff in the best ways you see fit and the story does whatever it's doing (I can't tell yet, its a weird story). I did a big mission in a brothel, not unlike the one in Dishonored, and I had a few different ways to sneak into the building. Once I got in I found out that the brothel has a big machine that processes opium and creates a mist that makes customers feel cozy. I sabotaged the machine and it created high enough concentrations of mist to knock out everybody in the brothel, making it easier for me to rob them all blind.

It's pretty good, I'm happy I grabbed the game.

That's good to hear, Mike. I have been keeping an eye on the bargain bin for this one on PS4, so I'll definitely grab it when I happen across it $20 or under probably. I'm having a hard time motivating myself to play much shooty-shoot-shoot lately, so some sneaky-sneak-sneak might be just what I need to get hooked on something. I won't have high expectations, but what you describe is pretty good. The fact that you have some variations of methods to use in the levels is enough for me. I've enjoyed some generally disliked games this year, so hopefully this one will be similar. 

I think you'll find a lot of things to appreciate in Thief. It'll be a great bargain bin game for you to knock off the backlog. I still haven't played any of the Dishonored DLC and playing Thief is making me want to grab the Dishonored GOTY edition finally, so I may do that. I might be ready to play through that whole game again, and then see what all the DLCs are like as well.

Lately I've been feeling the other way around, I'm burnt out on rpgs and hoping to get cod advanced warfare for christmas. I've occasionally been playing it online at the game store and really loving it. I've only played rpgs this year up till now; a lot of dark souls 2, dragon age, fallout, and skyrim. Advanced Warfare will be my first new shooter of the year in fact. I still haven't grabbed Wolfenstein like I said I would. Wolfenstein is one of the games that I think I want to wait to play on PS4 because I heard that if you grab it for 360 it's spread across 37 discs and a gazillion gigaytes of HD space. I'll probably play it on 360 anyways, I don't want to wait forever for that one.

I love that backpack line in 21 Jump Street. "you gotta one-strap it. If I could no-strap it, I would." HA!