> First off, let me start my rebuttal by saying a
>few things:
>
> 1) I only played the demo of the game. I can
>not comment on anything beyond the content of the
>demo, but from what I hear it's one of the better
>levels from the game.

Blah blah blah

>
> 2) I didn't say the game was crappy... it was
>decent though (IMO) very flawed. Anything I've
>said in places like chat were probably just
>ribbing to upset Dave :P

Yadda yadda


>
> Wolf3D wasn't really the first FPS, but we'll
>overlook it.

I knew one of you anal-retentive types would call me on that. Wolf3D is the first one everyone remembers, so it might as well have been the first.


> Err... what about Half-Life? Generally HL is
>considered to be one of the best shooters of all
>time, and offers a helluva lot more than just
>"Shoot anything that moves". Incidentally, HL
>and Thief were released in the same year if
>memory serves, and HL won more than like 40 "Game
>of the Year" awards from major publications.

Whee. Everyone knows Half-Life is named after the people who bought it. They only have half a life--they're searching desperatly for the other half.


> I'd agree with this. When you're sneaking
>around and whatnot, it's insanely fun. Even the
>waiting bits are neat.

What's that I hear? Stephen saying the words "I agree"???? GASP-AH!!

>
> My point is rather simple: if you're given a bow
>and arrows, a sword, a blackjack and numerous
>other combat items, why the hell are they so
>ineffective? You can honestly hit a guard
>upwards of three times with an arrow square in
>the chest or head and he won't die. He'll just
>keep rushing you.

Ok, here's where you're taking what I admited as a flaw in the game and continuing to harp on it. I know it's stupid to be able to put an arrow in a guys face and have him keep rushing you. But that only happens *when* he's rushing you. I know, I just tested.

I replayed the first level of Thief (which is essentialy the Demo level Stephen played). I was able to kill half a dozen guards with one arrow shot each. It wasn't even *hard*--not even as hard as I myself have made it out to be. I shot them in the face, in the back, in the chest, in the neck, in the head--they died. The secret? I was close enough to make sure my shots would hit their upper body and not their damn kneecaps, and I snuck up so they were unaware of my precense. And they dropped like newborn birds from a nest. Go try it yourself if you don't believe me--just whip out your bow and take out that drunk guard right at the beginning. It's simple. Then kill his buddy as he comes around the corner, before he sees the body and starts looking for you.

I even took out a "suspicious" guard with one shot. It's not even as hard as *I* remembered it.
It *is* still true that you can't drop a guard charging you with one arrow. But it's *not* true that they don't react at all. They double over, go "OOOoohhhh," then straighten back up again. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

>
> The thing is, there's plenty of times where
>killing a guard would make sense in the context
>of the game. Watching a few patrolling guards'
>patterns in order to snipe one on a tower at the
>right time could be very strategic and with the
>flow of the game. But this is virtually
>un-doable. And there could be consequences for
>doing so indiscriminately -- guards finding
>corpses, hearing death cries, etc. But again, if
>the game doesn't want you to kill anybody at all,
>why are you armed?

This works exactly as you describe it. In fact, In the first level I *did* stand in a high place and "snipe" a guard below me. And he died. And his buddy came along, saw the body, and tore off down the hall looking for me.

> Ideally, yes. But that requires an incredible
>amount of sneaking around and generally requires
>that you do it in the way the developers intended
>you because it's all about timing. One of the
>things I loved about a game like Half-Life is
>that I can kill people strategically. There's
>almost always more than one way to approach a
>situation. In Thief you pretty much always have
>to follow along the specified "route" finding the
>unlocked or pickable doors and avoiding guards by
>memorizing a bunch of timed movements. I don't
>really feel like I'm interacting here.

Bull. I played the demo level about 25 times. And I'm not the type of person to play it the same damned way 25 times, either. I tried whole bunches of different scenarios. Sure, there were some that worked better than others, and the one that "worked best" was probably the one the developers had in mind. But it doesn't mean I couldn't do other things, or that I was locked into one way of playing. I think Thief has almost endless variety in how you handle many of the basic situations.

> Since there are roughly 100 (I estimate) guards
>in the first level alone, I find this a little
>hard to believe. You might be able to take out
>10 on your own, but that would be with a ton of
>luck and skill. You'd still end up dead, of
>course. And that's not unrealistic. Dave's
>problem is that he seems to think that it
>requires no skill at all to kill someone, and
>that the only way to experience this game is the
>exact way that the development team wants you to.
> That's silly.

Bull again. I just reconfirmed for myself that it *does* take about zero skill to kill someone *if you're careful*. Catch him unawares, and he drops like a ton of bricks. And bull to the second point, which I already refuted above, so I will not do it a second time.



>
> Alternatively, go play System Shock 2 which runs
>the Thief engine and was developed by the same
>company and offers many of the same things. It
>has the bonus of having a ruling RPG/character
>devlopment system but suffers from the drawback
>that it's far too hard and complex for Dave (who
>apparently got confused by the menus).

Bah! I defy you to show me that so-called "map" button. :-P

-- Dave