Thief 2: The Metal Age Review

No point in waiting, everyone who is going to be asleep in the house already is. It's time to turn off the lights and begin... Who said anything about a girlfriend?

What's new in the metal age? At the end of the first part the Keepers warned Garrett of the coming of the metal age... The last two years brought a lot of changes into town. The most troublesome of them being the new sheriff called Gorman Truart. A promising man who brought many a villain to face the justice turned into an underworld big shot. Dark rooftops and shady streets are in need of a man who will stand up to the corrupt sheriff and disregard his laws. Gorman Truart has an army of men around him; Garrett has only the shadows... To steal and survive or to die?

It seems that Looking Glass Studios and Eidos decided to continue along a well-trodden path, making Thief 2: The Metal Age not too different from its predecessor... The concept remained the same apart from the already mentioned "metal age" which introduces the Mechanist cult and certain robotic creatures: robotic heads, some sort of walkers and mechs... I had certain troubles with getting accustomed to this type of anachronism: I simply cannot put swords, bows and arrows alongside with Dark-Forces-like robots. There are certain anachronisms (light and sound alarms) that may as well be tolerated, but the robots really went too far. That is why the missions with robots seemed a bit ridiculous, yet the atmosphere in classically realistic missions remained flawless.

Now where did those robots come from? The Hammerites have been almost completely replaced by the new sinister sect called the Mechanists, who invented all sorts of hi-tech stuff, among them the ever more popular robots.

The levels are particularly beautiful and various, with great styling and architecture. I, personally, preferred the levels that take place on the town (the fourth mission: Ambush is the most realistic one, it has no robots in it), yet the rest of the locations also give the impression that they had been created with utmost care and precision. Even when you play a mission in the town, you can enter surrounding buildings that do not have anything to do with the storyline. The textures are very good and detailed, and there is a great number of objects that you can interact with. Some things can be collected, some thrown, lights can be turned on or off (the blue gas-lights are one of the novelties), and bodies can be carried around as before.

It's time to get rid of her too, and start your copy of Thief... for Garrett is back. The master thief is back after two yea

The graphics have a beautiful dark fragrance about it. The game uses the enhanced Dark Engine (from the first part). The enhanced version was also used in System Shock 2. The new features include: twice as many polygons per character in comparison to the first part, 16-bit textures, colored lights and weather effects. The composition of the surrounding darkness and lights coming from windows and lampposts is perfect. Putting out lights with a water arrow now looks much more realistic... The only engine's imperfections are the water surfaces, which look far worse than in other contemporary games. They look like poorly drawn 3-frame animated GIFs. And the explosions aren't too spectacular, still...

I do have to say that the engine works neatly. I also have to say that when the first part appeared and I had a P200 machine, it had a lot of trouble trying to achieve a decent frame rate, and now, my P400 has the same problems with the sequel. So, I get a bit annoyed and I cannot relax and enjoy the game completely, but that's my problem, isn't it? A number of enemies on screen induce intolerable slowdowns. On the other hand the game slows down after some playing on much more powerful machines than mine, so I guess the whole engine has a memory bug.

The sounds are something else... They have been drastically improved and create a perfect atmosphere. There are more sounds than there were in the first part, and I couldn't make a single objection where sound is concerned. Again you can hear footsteps, whistles, comments, coughing, spiting, conversation, argues... The sound is surely the best segment of the game.

The weapons are the same they were in the first part, then again, who would need more than a sword, a blackjack, and a bow with several types of arrows. Garrett became a better thief in the meantime, so that he can now steel arrows from archers' quivers. As for other novelties, Garretcan now unfortunately use the scouting orb. I said unfortunately, because he wouldn't have to use it if he hadn't lost one of his eyes in the first part. In its stead he got a mechanical eye that enables him to see through the lens of the scouting orb (meaning that he actually got a remote camera) and too zoom his vision. There are also two new potions: slowfall potion to fall slowly on tall jumps (anyone remembers Prince of Persia?) and invisibility potion to get out of trouble fast.

Sword guards and Archers are the most common foes that will trouble you on early stages of the game. Mace-equipped mechanists, skeletons and robots appear later. The AI is much improved, as is your enemies' sight and hearing, so that now, you wont be able to sneak behind somebody's back for too long. The guards will notice when a torch is extinguished and they even discus which one of them should light it again. If you encounter more than one guard, one will always run to get reinforcements, and if they start losing a swordfight, they will start running for help, and trying to sound the alarm. On the other hand, their perception could be a bit better at times: they fail to spot Garrett even if he stands beneath a nearby torch. Even though sword guards should be professional swordsmen they are not too good at it. Most of them aren't that aggressive, even when in large groups, and they can still be killed with a single unexpected, well-targeted arrow. The dumbest enemies are the infamous robots, which come in two flavors: little scouts and big iron beasts. The iron beasts can be inconvenient, but not too much, they just seem frightening because of their size, and the scouts are almost completely harmless: they have no weapons, they just survey the terrain and they are not at all good at it because they can only register major movement. Even if they discover you, you have a good chance that they will not sound an alarm.

The one thing that really drove me mad was that at certain points Garrett gets stuck on the staircase or in doors or other places with insufficient space for moving. Entering and exiting through windows was a frustrating operation lasting anywhere from 3 to 60 seconds for I had to keep loading saved games because I was overheard dozens of times. Using ladders is much beter than in the first part, but still far from being perfect, so you can still expect to have a hard time trying to make Garrett grab or release them.

Again, there are three levels of difficulty, differing mostly in the amount of loot you have to gather, and of course, on Expert level, as before, you have to refrain from killing (and sometimes even blackjacking) your enemies and complete some additional tasks... a real treat for die-hard fans. Mission stats are now available during the mission telling you how much time you spent on it, how much loot you've gathered, how many pockets you've picked, how much damage you've dealt and taken, how many innocents you've killed, how many secrets you've found, how many iron beasts you've destroyed and how many bodies had been discovered by enemies... The best thing is that there is an infinite number of ways to complete a mission. There were some speculations that Thief 2 could include a multiplayer mode, but it never came to be.

To cut the long story short: Thief: The Metal Age is a good sequel to a great game. It has few technical and concept novelties but, hey, it's just a sequel.