Looking Glass Studios first person looter is back, in a much bigger and dangerous adventure.
In 1998, Thief stormed onto our PCs, playing as young Garrett, you break into houses or buildings, performing missions and gathering loot, for you to spend on items on your next mission.
Thief introduced an innovative approach to first person games, by introducing stealth mechanic, by allowing Garrett to hide in dark areas to conceal himself and away from enemies.
Thief 2: The Metal Age changes the mix alittle bit, however it still maintains the same gameplay with a few addition elements which allows you to complete the game.
There were a few flaw at the time, this game around, they've been fixed and sorted. The graphics are at a 16-bit colour rendering, the story is more focused and refined and hopefully avoided the effort of battling an army of crab people or bug eyed human figures, despite this, there are a few monsters and creeps you still have to battle or sort out in the game
The story take age of Garrett being set up, he sets out to find out why an organization is trying to dispose of him. He later finds out that a person by the name of Karras is staging a plan, in which Garrett sneaks out. With some help of some old friends from the first game, he sneaks his way into buildings, mansions and other places to find out the truth.
Finally the team got around to constructing levels first and putting the plot in afterwards, which seems to sink in a little bit towards the missions, however on the plus side, it was satisfying. The levels are mostly cities based and with the new theme of the metal age taking part, they really do fit in the game very well.
The controls and mechanics are the same as the first game, there were a few new items for you to help you in your missions. Potions will help you give you a temporary effect of boost, from being invisible to speeding up to a new Vine arrow, which is similar to the rope arrow, however it sticks to carpet or metal drain panels.
With the metal age being the main them of the game, Garret will come across really tough mechanical objects from robots to turrets which shoot out arrows, cannonballs and other deadly objects towards Garrett if he's careless.
As stupid as they may be… the giant robots sometimes shoot themselves if there cannons aiming toward the wall while they spot you, which defeats them, however you be having to deal with a problem of having that bot blocking the doorway and sometimes when they deal heavy damage and they flee, they tend to do the same thing.
Also the bots seems to be able to enter the doorway which are smaller then they made for… another strange moment or bug in the game. Other then that, the new enemies you face against is worth the challenge.
The graphics and sound received a huge overhaul and they look really good, along with the new skybox which gives the game a whole feel to the environment.
It took me some time to complete this game, even on Normal, that alone was around 9 hours, with the other 2 harder modes offering more difficult objectives and it take much more time for any player to complete.
This game came on 2 CDs, it's a huge game, with really sweet movies telling the player the whole story. I strongly recommend anyone who loves the thief series to buy this game.