syzygyeolith

Hey helpful troubleshooters,

I went to dump another bunch of videos onto my iPhone today (via iTunes), but all I got was this:

Don't tell me I can't watch giant bomb videos on my phone during lunch break anymore! :(

Wow, it's so cool to be a cynical asshole.

I hope they nail this one.

Against my better judgement, I did buy the season pass.

Having now finished the game, I'll be really disappointed if it's just new gear or tonics. Best case though, is it's something like Minervias Den, which I really did enjoy from Bioshock 2.

I have to say, the OP of this thread brings up some of the biggest issues I had with her. It could be the way it felt like the game clearly tried to manipulate the player into liking her, which made me more skeptical of her as a believable companion. Maybe it was the lack of being able to carry health packs or 'eve hypos', often making me impatiently wait for her to 'find' which ever I was low on at the time. Perhaps it was the uncanny-valley way the mo-cap actor trotted her around, exaggerating the 'disney princess' feel to her in a world that was anything but whimsical. I think just as like several people in the thread have mentioned already, a character who has spent her whole life in a tower alone isn't exactly relatable.

I didn't dislike her, but when people gush on about how she is the pinnacle of AI companions, it makes me wonder if 'not getting shot in combat' is really all it takes.

God I want this to be good. I really do.

But the things I liked about the first two Thief games don't and probably never will have a wide spread appeal. Not something what will likely be an early next gen release focus. Deadly Shadows wasn't a bad game, but there was so many small things about it which I'm sure most fans would agree was the weakest game of the series. A hub-world that detracted from the immersion, no sense of risk/reward for rationing out consumable equipment (since by the 2nd level you have more equipment than you could ever imagine using), a heavy prod towards being a murderer (I still don't get why he'd need a dagger and a blackjack..). And none of those awesome cut scenes!

I don't mean to rant on about a game that game out years ago, but I'd say fans of the original two ought to be lowering their expectations. Especially if they don't get Steven Russell and Eric Brosius back on board.

Alright.

So I've sunk about another 10 hours into the game since my rant, and I can see the appeal of the game now. I did play it for about 4 of those hours wearing all the armour that I started with, having no idea that I was able to actually roll faster than I was by unequiping my feet and hand armour. I also did the first 'bridge boss' without knowing that I could climb the ladder before engaging him to take out the two skeleton archers - I very nearly gave up on the game again trying to fight that boss while the archers were sniping me.

My mate who lent me the game came over and pointed out about a dozen things I either wasn't doing right, or didn't understand (like the three speeds of roll). Now that I kinda understand all this stuff I'm enjoying it a lot more, but I maintain this is far too opaque for a game that didn't come with a manual. I've since decided (under his advice) that I should consult the wiki whenever I feel the need.

Also, I'm divided on what to think about the phantom mechanic. I've found that it can make what could be an extremely difficult encounter (especially if you haven't fought the boss before) completely trivial. I was asking myself if I was robbing myself of the part of the game that makes people love it so much by summoning in these powerful other players.. but I've been doing it anyway when I see the chance to enlist help.

Lastly, having gotten used to it now (and being strong enough to equip my armour without doing the slow roll) I take back saying that the combat is 'clunky', however it's very annoying when an animation plays out which moves your character off the edge of a cliff. Or as the OP said, when an enemy attack clips though the geography.

I'm in Blightown now, am hating the toxin darts, and will update if my opinion changes again.

Thanks for the replies. I genuinely didn't know this was an 'open world game', and I couldn't find anywhere else to go, so I figured that fighting trash mobs for 15 minutes is just how this game rolls. I did manage to kill the first giant skeleton I saw, but when walking a little forward it just spawned another one with 3 little ones as friends, thats when I turned it off.

If I decide I feel less grumpy with it I'll try to find the place that isn't the graveyard later, and rectify my first impression.

I've only spent about 3 hours in it, and I need to vent. I hate this game.

I was given a copy from a friend who insisted I'd like it, since I like 'punishingly difficult games' apparently. So why did I 'rage quit' in the catacombs, and decide the game doesn't deserve my time?

First of all, I disagree that the game wants you to 'figure stuff out'. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't start my whole misadventure with my blandly ugly character until I looked it up online. Apparently there was a 'name' box I needed to fill in.. however on the character creation screen it's barely even noticeable. Okey.. so the back end UI is sort of.. '1993'.. I continued on with my 'Knight'. Why did I pick Knight? Who knows! The game showed me a bunch of meaningless stats and something about not being knocked down (very not true, as you all know), so that sounded good. I did notice that there was an explanation of the stats once you're in the game.. but that just described the stats in a vaguely incomprehensible way, leaving me wonder why they bothered at all.

So I played on, deciding if I ignore the stuff I had no idea about, maybe it would all just go away.. and for a while, despite the slow and clumsy combat, I thought that maybe I could find a groove eventually. Right up until I fought the pit fiend thing. I must have died a dozen times, wrestling with the controls, trying to dodge the massive sweeps of his mace, getting hit no matter how far away I thought I was. I died a couple times because my character got caught on some broken pottery on the floor (that should have been the red flag), but eventually I beat it by strafing around behind him, hitting it in the arse. It basically felt like a tedious exploit. I didn't think I had learnt a damn thing (other than steel boulders will roll down flights of stairs without any warning. Cool!).

But no.. I tried to brute force fun out of the game in the next area, fighting skeletons over and over and over. Why do they take so long to kill? Why do I need to wait for their 'rebuilding' animation to complete before another blow will skuttle them apart again? If I can't block the attacks from the giant skeleton, and the 'dodging' is awkward at best, how am I supposed to have fun learning to kill such an early enemy. In the end I said 'to hell with it' and just ran as far as I could, died, and turned it off.

Now, if you liked it.. great. Whatever it takes to keep you people off the streets. I've read this thread in it's entirety and I can only conclude that people defending are suffering from some sort of stockholm syndrome. To anyone else who hated the game as much as I did (but really wanted to like it), I gotta recommend checking out Severance: Blade of Darkness, from 2001. It's another difficult 3rd person melee game, where even a lowly goblin can pose a very real danger to a clumsy high level character. It's also similar in that it has a focus on animation priority, but the movement is much nimbler, and if you get the right attack in the right opening, you can dispatch a foe quickly.

I'm done my rant. Feel free to smugly say I'm not a 'cerebral gamer' at your leisure now.

@rchen:

Ah, thats done it.. thanks man!

Since the new site has come out I haven't been able to download quicklook podcasts though my iTunes. When I launch iTunes I get a error box popping up telling me I need to login to check/download the postcast list, but my giantbomb details are rejected by it (it's actually really annoying since it will constantly prompt me for details, but thats a problem with iTunes, not giantbomb).

It's a real bummer, since I watch them on my phone when I'm on my lunch, and I don't have the phone reception there to simply stream it.

Sorry if this is a known issue that has already got it's own thread - I couldn't see anything that looked relevant from a quick search.