Thief

The return of Garrett on PC is great for gamers who love to climb, sneak and steal through a dark steampunk setting, opening hundreds of drawers, cupboards, chests and more to find loot. The narrative aspect of the game is entertaining and particularly the movement of Garrett offers a deep in-game feeling. Some design-issues won’t please thief-veterans, especially the action-drive scenes. There’s also a lack of orientation in the nested level design of the city. But equipped with cool gear and tons of game-options you’ll definitely find your individual thief-experience.

Overall Thief is an enjoyable experience that deserves to be played and explored if you are a fan of stealth games. Trying to figure out a creative way past the guards can be very fun and satisfying, and replaying missions to find all of the collectibles can be quite challenging and rewarding.

Thief is a good game that fans of the stealth genre will appreciate but it has several gameplay flaws that keep it far from being a new masterpiece.

Not the best brand relaunch ever, but forgetting the great predecessors, it's a decent game of its own. [March 2014]

It may not be a traditional Thief game and the story may be awful but there's still some great stealth to be had. [May 2014, p.66]

A thoroughly enjoyable, if somewhat diluted return to a cult favourite franchise. [Apr 2014, p.50]

A swagbag of stolen promises, not all of which deliver. Still, it outshines many new-gen titles. [Apr 2014, p.55]

While it suffers in aspects of level design and uninspired use of Garrett's inventory, Thief delivers a unique stealth experience that lives up to the original game, but not quite.

A game with a dual nature, one simplistic and a bit too linear, the other way more faithful to the Thiefs of old than we believed this reboot could be. It's a great game and Stealth aficionados will definitely love its gameplay, but it could have been much more with a bit more polish here and there, and a braver approach.

As reboot, it does everything it needs to, to bring the core mechanics to 2014. As Eidos Montreal’s second game, it shows that the studio learned much in the process of making Human Revolution (especially in regards to boss battles). But as a game on its own, Thief a fantastic ride and great game in which to merely be a thief in. It’s just a shame that it exists in such an uninteresting and disjointed world.

Garrett is back with a mighty stealthy adventure that perhaps tries a little bit too hard to cater to the interests of everyone. But it is still an entertaining adventure that Gamereactor highly recommends for thieves and people that like good games.

If you’re content to save your game every couple minutes and enjoy a slower-paced stealth game, then Thief rewards you with plenty of moments so tense you might catch yourself holding your breath.

Great in places, but never quite lives up to its potential. A competent sequel let down by inconsistency.

When I think about what Thief could have been if it had just had the courage to want to be something, then I get annoyed .

Longtime fans might find the new take on Garrett hard to swallow. Thief's thin story doesn't explain much in the end when it tops things off, but I enjoyed the time spent in the City. I wouldn't mind revisiting for another go in Garrett's shoes, but I hope that by then, some of the training wheels will have been removed.

Operating from the shadows should feel great, and it does. It’s just a shame that the great sneaking gameplay has been wedded to a story that doesn’t quite feel like it fits the classic character you’re cast as. It doesn’t ruin the game, but it definitely keeps it from living up to its potential.

It's still enjoyable, but it's too wide of the mark. And that's a taffing shame.

Maybe the new Thief fails to achieve sufficient amount of depth and alternative paths to satisfy every player, but its stealth gameplay makes this game fun.

Overall, Thief is a quality game, particularly if you take the time to explore the side missions. If you go in expecting the game to be a solely stealth game or a remake of the original, you will probably be disappointed.

Had Square Montreal shifted its focus from the story chapters towards the more open-ended city, and granted players more sandbox-y freedom, this could have been quite a milestone for the genre. In merely aping the strengths and, unfortunately, the bad habits of its competitors, though, it becomes just another, if quite well polished, stealth game on the market.

To the player willing to take the game at a slower pace, with a focus on pure stealth and without the artifice of in game assistance Thief will deliver the goods. For everyone else the reward may not be worth the effort.

Thief is far from the disaster that many feared it would be, and fans who take the time to customise their settings ahead of their first playthrough will find a rewarding world here to pick clean. Nevertheless, it’s still difficult to shake the feeling that, for all his dexterity, Garrett has stumbled in his attempt to gain access to a new generation.

Between the hit-or-miss missions is an extremely annoying city hub map and a weak story full of bland characters, and Garrett himself isn’t as sure-footed as a master thief ought to be. Ignoring the story and cherrypicking the best side missions is the best way to approach it.

It’s solid, it has its moments, but as a whole Thief is incoherent, seems to be stitched together from different visions of the game and falls short of the expectations aroused by the previous games of the series. [04/2014, p.50]

Oh well, this Garrett couldn’t steal my heart.

As a Thief, it is a huge disappointment. The extraordinary map design of the series is gone, the story is forgettable and the reboot of Garrett and The City really misjudged. While entertaining as a stealth game, its sins are bigger than its virtues.

When Thief remembers to be a stealth game, to focus on the kleptomanic joy of cleaning a place out unseen, it's great. Unfortunately, Thief tries to do too many other things and does them badly, preventing a good game from being a great one.

The new Thief is the weakest installment in the series - a game that loses much of the unique narrative and protagonist creation. There are too many inaccuracies, errors and bad gameplay solutions as well. But on the other hand, there were moments that made me forget about all that and truly believed in this world. All in all the new Thief shows that grey is the new black. The game has good mechanics that were wasted - as a fan I'm really disappointed.

This new Thief does a lot things right but can still be rather clumsy at times. Definitely worth trying, though. [Issue #240]

In fact, of all the games I’ve been in, this one is definitely the worst.

It can’t hide the repetitiveness of its template but in the simple act of silently snooping and investigating every corner of the world, while circumventing every enemy, there’s a brilliantly tense, gratifying experience that Eidos Montreal sadly struggles to sustain over the eight hours of gameplay – resorting to cheap enemy types and crushing linearity.

Such is the turbulent nature of Thief, a clunky, intriguing, slapdash, atmospheric stealth game that leashes you to its inconsistencies and gives you no choice but to submit to its whims.

I'll be blunt: if you loved the original Thief series, you won't enjoy this game.

The problem with Thief is that the studio spent so much time trying to make a game for all kinds of people that it forgot to execute any single part of the experience perfectly.

Moments of true thievery are frequently left to side missions, which leaves roughly 10 hours of story in which you navigate bland mazes of narrow corridors, dull traps, and dimwitted A.I. foes, all for an end result that does nothing but underscore what a colossal waste of time the whole endeavor ultimately was.