Thief

Thief has good stealth going for it, but everything connecting its few relatively open scenarios is a mess.

At its best, Thief makes you feel like a devious outlaw. Sadly, such moments are too few.

At times the game suffers from a lack of ambition, placing far too much importance on the tiresome looting of endless cupboards and dressers in the vain hope that this will be enough to propel you forwards. In other places, Thief suffers from too much ambition, unable to draw its systems into a cohesive whole. Whether the game simply needed more time or entirely different foundations is never quite clear. Either way, it's a game that adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

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

The elements of a better game never come together in Thief

Thief maintains the strengths of its stealth-centric predecessors and offers plenty in the way of actual thievery, but don't expect any fun, new gameplay mechanics or an enchanting story in this reboot.

Thief's sneaking challenges are highly rewarding when you ghost through the world undetected, but will send you to the loading screen repeatedly if you're not careful

Nick Cowen: Thief feels unwieldy at times, although it's not the travesty some reviewers are making it out to be

For where it falls short, it far more often had me crouched in a shadow, heart racing, waiting for the perfect moment to dart past a guard's routine. It may be the fourth best Thief game, but it's a damned fine game in its own rights.

Thief is a great escape for those of you who yearn for more stealth experiences, but it doesn't really offer up anything exciting. The story and characters are somewhat forgettable, most of the missions are straightforward, and the locales tend to blend together after a while. Having said that, there's a lot of potential here if you dig deep down into the game's ingenious difficulty sliders and challenge modes. In that sense, Thief succeeds as a bold stealth game, despite its bruises.