Recent reviews by jwest

This is the most a game has really moved me in a long time. Overall it's short, and the mini games are simple, but boy do each of them still manage to hit hard.

Thoroughly enjoying this game - the artwork is gorgeous and card-based combat is a lot of fun. The upgrade tiers for each card offer a good bit of variety to your play-style too! There are some bugs and small elements of interacting with the game that could maybe use a bit of polish, but nothing that really takes away from the experience of playing.

Really enjoyed playing through this! Good variety of environments and enemies, playing on normal difficulty had its tough moments but not unfairly so. Cool to see that there are 3 other characters and a boss rush mode that I can go back and play as well. Pretty great amount of content for the price.

... also arachnophobia mode when?

This is such a joy from top to bottom

A really well-polished arcade experience. Although you see a lot of the same enemies and obstacles as you progress, the level design and rapid gameplay loop keep you from ever getting tired playing. The bits of dialogue sprinkled throughout the levels help give the game a lot of character as well. There are occasional difficulty spikes, but they aren't ever really unfair. The game also has a simple but robust level editor that you can open up while playing any of the levels to make your own edits, or start a new level or campaign from scratch.

The only feature I wish it had was an added "boost" button to give you some extra oomph at the cost of more fuel. It would have made some challenges I faced a little more fun to overcome and could make for interesting speed-runs as well.

It is early access, so expect a few *extremely* minor bugs, but this is an extremely fun and well made game overall!

A creative little gem of an experience. Definitely well worth taking a little bit of time to play through.

A little more than half of the reviews I read for Thief 4 are negative ones, and they mostly compare this re-boot to the original games. If you played the originals and loved them to death, you may want to avoid this.

However, I myself have never played the original games. And that being said, I'm rather addicted to Thief 4. It's controls are easy grasp, and its movement mechanics are great for it's core purpose of being a stealth game. Physical conflict is something that is encouraged to be avoided, especially when there is more than one guard in the area, making the use of your tools and the shadows all the more fun. The story, while not a brilliant one, can still strike curiosity as you explore the city, read documents/newspapers that are lying around, and listen in on conversations.

That being said, I do feel a tad bit of dissappointment from what I was expecting upon hearing the announcement of the game. The maps are not quite as "open", and getting around some parts of the city are rather simplistic, not leaving much room for creativity in your movements. NPCs (not including guards) hardly interact or acknowledge you, and a lot of the apartment rooms you can break into on the streets never seem to have anyone at home, which, for me, breaks the tension that can keep you so immersed at times. Plus the "focus" ability, which can be incredibly handy from time to time, can still be used even when the focus meter has run dry, simply by repeatedly pressing the focus mode key. While this might not be a problem for some, it makes me feel dirty when I use it...

The game does have a few bugs, for example on ocassion sound levels change, making it hard to hear some conversation, or guards will ocassionally stop and spin in place for a minute or so. However there are already patches releasing to fix such issues, so the developers are at least staying on it.

Overall I do think this is a great game, even if it didn't meet my initial expectations.