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1 month ago
It's the weekend, or at least after work-hours for most on a Friday, so might as well pick up something to demolish your free time. Square Enix are running a rather nice sale on Steam for the weekend, cutting 50% off the price on most of their bigger games, and slapping deeper discounts on a lot of more obscure stuff, including their old Eidos catalogue.…
Feature: The silent cartographers
We don’t expect much of a typical video game map. As long as it guides us to our destination (and perhaps looks pretty while doing so) most of us won’t waste a second thought on it. And yet, maps can be much more than tools that make our way from A to B a little more convenient. Some games reject the notion of maps as…
Feature: Going legit is more trouble than it's worth
Thief: The Dark Project still stands out as one of the most compelling stealth games twenty years after release. Huge levels packed with treasure and secrets, and no radars or sensors to help -- just your senses, intuition, and maybe a badly drawn map. While later games in the series were a bit ropey, the first two Looking Glass-developed ones are still actively supported by the…
2 months ago
Feature: Redistribution of assets that don't belong to you
The original Thief is one of the first games I remember playing. I was at my mate’s house, because he had a proper computer (and one of those old school mice with the little ball in that you had to take out and blow on if it got stuck). I remember doing the tutorial; being taught to hide in shadows and avoid the light. I…
11 months ago
There are few things as momentous in the gaming calendar as Games Done Quick charity speedrun marathons, and the full broadcast schedule for this June's upcoming Summer Games Done Quick event has just been published. Many of the world's weirdest, most diverse and implausibly skilled players will congregate at the end of June to raise money for a good cause (in this case, the increasingly…
1 year ago
Feature: The Loose Canon
There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it's important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we're here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made.
2 years ago
Feature: Horrors and heists
I have this clear memory of playing the first Thief, crouching against the wall in a dark stairwell as a guard walked closer. I held my breath until he passed, hidden in a shadow inches away. The games in the original Thief trilogy were all about light and darkness, with a “light gem” at the bottom of the screen to indicate whether you were really…
4 years ago
If you're examining floor textures in Thief: The Dark Project, you're not paying enough attention. Stop staring at that cobble and watch for the guards strolling across it, taffer. Still, given that the game is old enough for a metal dealer's license, I can see why you might want to freshen it up - teenagers can be an awful lot. Many moons ago we peeked…
5 years ago
Well now, here is a brilliant little surprise. Who'd have thought the best game set in the Thief universe this year would be an itsy bitsy isometric Ludum Dare 29 entry? Maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but Beneath The City really is a smart (though sadly brief) execution of a really fun idea. In short (but undeniably stout), it's a real-time turn-based stealther…
Feature: Stealing Is Caring
We tried to play Thief: The Dark Project and chat about it. Honest! But Twitch, the purple scab of a service, wouldn't cooperate with one of the most storied series starters in gaming history. It's almost like I shouldn't have expected a 15-year-old game to be compatible with a crazy space-age cyberfuture streaming platform, but no, that's just ridiculous. At any rate, today - for…
Feature: The Ghosts Of Thiefmas Past
This week's episode of A Game And A Chat is very special. Very special indeed. For one, I've got two whole guests this time - namely, former Thief: The Dark Project director Greg LoPiccolo and longtime Thief series designer/Thief: Deadly Shadows director Randy Smith. Yes, it is time to talk (and play) all things Thief. Classic Thief, nu-Thief, and everything in between. Expect stories from the dank…
Here at the RPS retirement home for weary writers, our memories are often akin to a swirling sea of confusion. Just yesterday, I was watching the trailer for Peggle 2 and thought it looked terrible. I realised that Peggle the first has come to resemble a Jackson Pollock gallery retrospective in my mind's eye. How strange then that our collective memories of Thief were lucid…
Feature: Nothing has changed
Fifteen years ago to the day, with some variance depending on where in the world you lived at the time, Thief: The Dark Project, went on sale. It is one of the games that continues to define the possibilities of first-person architecture and also an example of interactive storytelling that has endured over a decade and a half without being fully tapped. Some of the…
Update: done, and suitably shamed. Videos below. I have never played Thief: The Dark Project. Please stop hitting me. (I have played Thief 3, at least). In about half an hour, I'm going to play it at last. Would you like to watch? Join me, live-ish.
6 years ago
Feature: Shadow History
With Thief 4 bearing down on us like a robber with a toothy smile, we thought it might be interesting to go back to where stealth began: the creation of Thief. Joe Martin stole away with this report. There's a line I had wanted start this article with. It is a line from the ironic finale of The Neverending Story and it would have been…
7 years ago
Edit: cos there are various theories flying around below about my perceived intent in posting this, I shall clarify my own feelings. I would really like to see contracts between publishers and developers more commonly include an arrangement whereby key (and ideally, but rather less plausibly, all) creatives on game projects continue to see some post-release royalties, as is the case in some other entertainment…
Now that my initial excitement has waned to a deep, purple coloured throb in the centre of my soul, the stark reality of GOG.com's Thief port has settled in. It runs, which is the big step up from my original version, but it's not widescreen, the resolution is stamp sized, and it's a bit grimy. Fret not, lovely Taffers, for I'm about to tell you…
I can't believe that writing about a 14 year-old game is getting both me and Adam so excited (He: "This is the best thing ever!”), but Looking Glass's genre-defining classic Thief is now available to download on Good Old Games. I'm downloading it right now, Taffer.
8 years ago
Feature:
Yesterday, as you may have noted, Dr Rossignol began our lecture series on the most important PC games of all time. Much like The Christmas Lectures, The Reith Lectures, and the TED Lectures, this definitive series has been a part of our institution as long as the Earth has borne stones. In this second part Professor John Walker explains the varying importanceness of a second…
10 years ago
With the announcement of Thief 4 (Thifourth) this week, it seemed an apposite time to go back to the very beginning and remember why this series was so special. Armed with a commission from Eurogamer, I snuck back to 1998 to play Thief: The Dark Project once again. It begins: "This is a game where turning the difficulty up reduces the number of enemies you…
