Zero Punctuation: Thief: The Dark Project

Slackenerny

New member
Oct 26, 2008
76
0
0
Midnight Voyager said:
While I'm at it: The servants. From the second game. OH GOD the servants. With their giddy giggles and relieved, whispered "Thank you,"s as you knocked them out. *SHIVER*
Oh yes. And do you remember breaking into the vault under the old Hammerite chapel in Thief II? They had those ghosts which were almost impossible to deal with stalking the place like it was a convention centre. It was so immersive...the most tension I've ever felt in a game. Period.
 

josh797

New member
Nov 20, 2007
866
0
0
BlueInkAlchemist said:
klc0100 said:
And now we watch thief sales rocket on steam.
It's available on Steam? *goes and purchases*
no its not, i just checked.


wow yahtzee, that was the best review ive seen in probably close to 3 months. maybe more. nice job. incidentally i loved theif deadly shadows, so poo on you. but i never did play the prequels, im going to go do that. any idea how? i might just have to bit torrent it if theres no other way.
 

goodman528

New member
Jul 30, 2008
763
0
0
Never play Thief before. I was always really frustrated playing Splinter Cell because I couldn't just go around and shoot everybody.
 

Assassin Xaero

New member
Jul 23, 2008
5,392
0
0
I bought Thief and Thief II off amazon a year and a half ago... I just wish they didn't lock up after 2 minutes... Really wish I could get it to run now... :/
 

Signa

Noisy Lurker
Legacy
Jul 16, 2008
4,749
6
43
Country
USA
Oirish_Martin said:
It seems like I'm the only person who actually liked the zombie levels. Bonehoard was probably the creepiest thing I'd ever experienced in a game at that point. Rope arrowing over a flight of trapped steps stealing jewels, frantically trying to manage your holy water, and freaking the fuck out when the first restless dead appeared. Awesomeness.

The sprawling building levels are also great fun, except for Constantine's house. Finding a key placed on ONE FUCKING TILE of a very large carpet was not fair in the slightest.
The zombie parts were the best for me as well. It wasn't that it was trying to be "blast em up" it was that YOU CANT KILL THESE GUYS HAHAHAHAHHAHAH!!! It forced you to be even better at stealth than ever before. TO THIS DAY I think that Thief 1 zombies were the scariest zombies of any game. Their groans, OH! their groans... *sob*

thetragicclown said:
"Gorn to the bear pits tomorrer. Wanna come with?"
YEEEES!!!!!

I thought that was the COOLEST thing about that game then. I had never heard NPCs have a full conversation like that before. Not only was it long, but it was funny!
 

Ima Lemming

New member
Jan 16, 2009
220
0
0
Assassin Xaero said:
I bought Thief and Thief II off amazon a year and a half ago... I just wish they didn't lock up after 2 minutes... Really wish I could get it to run now... :/
Sounds like you're having an issue with Hyperthreading/Multiprocessing. I had that problem with System Shock 2 and Grim Fandango (I've had Thief 1 and 2 for a while now, installed them, but haven't tried running them yet). This site tells you how to fix that:

http://www16.brinkster.com/salvage/thief/darkengine.htm
 

Kekon3

New member
Dec 4, 2008
224
0
0
Vlane said:
stiver said:
Err I don't think I have ever heard of this game.

Bah who cares about old games?
Yahtzee obviously, many other people, I do and you should.

Agreed, but i think he's just wondering why yahtzee didnt pick one of the new games out there now. but still stiver, you dont know what your saying. you sound like a noob
 

CaptainPicard

New member
Feb 11, 2009
4
0
0
josh797 said:
BlueInkAlchemist said:
klc0100 said:
And now we watch thief sales rocket on steam.
It's available on Steam? *goes and purchases*
no its not, i just checked.


wow yahtzee, that was the best review ive seen in probably close to 3 months. maybe more. nice job. incidentally i loved theif deadly shadows, so poo on you. but i never did play the prequels, im going to go do that. any idea how? i might just have to bit torrent it if theres no other way.
If you had experience with the first two games, your opinion of Thief III would be different. It was an ok game, but, other than graphics, it pales in comparison to the first two games.

It's like if you only ever had McDonald's to eat your whole life and never knew that better restaurants existed.
 

_Algernon

New member
Feb 12, 2009
6
0
0
The first two games or hard to find these days (but nothing online shopping, or, in a pinch, evil evil torrents cannot fix). The real trouble is getting the games to work on any recent hardware.

It is possible, though - having recently spent a ridiculous amount of time grappling with patches and frustration, I can tell you that this site:

http://www.saleck.net/Games/Thief1-Gold/Thief-HowToGetWorking.php

...is a sure bet. The instructions are simple and straightforward, and by following them I've already managed to get Thief Gold working perfectly (and in high-resolution *widescreen*) on two multi-core XP boxes. It should even allow Vista installs, if that kind of thing rattles your saber.

So, get to it! And if anyone is silly enough to read down this far, please disseminate this information, for the good of mankind!
 

Stewie Plisken

New member
Jan 3, 2009
355
0
0
That was pleasantly unexpected. Love the series and The Metal Age was undoubtedly its high point. Great review.
 

_Algernon

New member
Feb 12, 2009
6
0
0
Also, incidentally:

*TTLG hosts graphics tweaks to make Thief 1 look just a wee bit less crap - worth a look:
http://www.thief-thecircle.com/media/patches/
describes the patches, though most were lost weeks ago to a hardware disaster. Fortunately this site:
http://thief.nov.ru/catalog/index.php?parent=i68F876FD
has the same files backed up and readily available.

*The install-guide site [http://www.saleck.net/Games/] has similar guides for installing other Dark Engine games, including Thief 2 and *System Shock 2*, yet another sparkling milestone Yahtzee's brought up as an example before.

*And: "GORN TO THE BEAR PITS TOMORRER" made my fucking day. Thank you, you magnificent bastard.
 

lizards

New member
Jan 20, 2009
1,159
0
0
geldonyetich said:
Ah, now that was pretty good, higher quality than usual, with a plethora of unexpected sight-gags that were genuinely lol-worthy. e.g. Mecha-Gandolf!

So: Thief. Yahtzee makes a good point in that it was indeed an interesting game in that it took the tired old FPS genre in an entirely new direction. Maybe more games should stop worrying about minor quibbles like vehicles and sprawling worlds and instead investigate ways to change the central activity to things other than gun people down in fascinating ways. If there's a dividing line between clone and innovation, the central activity is a likely contender.

Granted, Mirrors Edge could be said to have tried to do that, and Yahtzee wasn't impressed.
ya but mirrors edged butchered the concept of the game completly
 

Kaleid

New member
Feb 12, 2009
7
0
0
Ima Lemming said:
Assassin Xaero said:
I bought Thief and Thief II off amazon a year and a half ago... I just wish they didn't lock up after 2 minutes... Really wish I could get it to run now... :/
Sounds like you're having an issue with Hyperthreading/Multiprocessing. I had that problem with System Shock 2 and Grim Fandango (I've had Thief 1 and 2 for a while now, installed them, but haven't tried running them yet). This site tells you how to fix that:

http://www16.brinkster.com/salvage/thief/darkengine.htm
I think there's an easier way, just edit the shortcut(s) to the game(s)

modify "Target" in your shortcut
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start /affinity 1 thief2.exe
to dedicate the first CPU core to the game (or "/affinity 2" for the second, and so on)

Where thief2.exe is the name of the executable file. Works for Thief 1, Thief Gold, Thief 2 and System Shock 2.
See this picture for example with Thief Gold:
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/772/thiefgoldaffinitynd0.jpg

Thief: The Dark Project is one of the better games out there. Playing with EAX enabled (with a Creative card) in XP32 with a properly setup monitor with good contrast is still one of the better gaming experiences even today. Very good use of light/dark and sound. I'm very glad that the community still puts out plenty of fan missions.

Thief 2 I think should have had a bit more undead and the like, and casing the joint was a painful mission really.. still very good though.

How does Yathzee like Deus Ex 1? Thats another classic.
 

_Algernon

New member
Feb 12, 2009
6
0
0
That affinity fix works for some, but there are still serious issues with many new graphics cards (Just about any GeForce with current drivers may be liable to cause crashes), among other problems, (widescreen support, resolutions over 1024x768) - see post(s) above?
 

Ima Lemming

New member
Jan 16, 2009
220
0
0
Kaleid said:
I think there's an easier way, just edit the shortcut(s) to the game(s)

modify "Target" in your shortcut
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start /affinity 1 thief2.exe
to dedicate the first CPU core to the game (or "/affinity 2" for the second, and so on)

Where thief2.exe is the name of the executable file. Works for Thief 1, Thief Gold, Thief 2 and System Shock 2.
See this picture for example with Thief Gold:
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/772/thiefgoldaffinitynd0.jpg
Huh, I'll keep that in mind. I actually got Grim Fandango to work just by setting the Compatability to Windows 98, but when I tried that with SS2 the game wouldn't boot at all.
 

Jaythulhu

New member
Jun 19, 2008
1,745
0
0
Hahahaha, brilliant. I do love the retrospective reviews. I think they may help the current crop of ritalin-popping twitchkiddies to appreciate some good games, and understand why people over 25 consider gaming these days to be a murky torrent of poo, vomit and unidentifiable things that may be carrots.

What's next? Halloween Harry? Monster Bash? Space Quest? Ooh, ooh, I got it... Lesiure Suit Larry.