Customer Reviews

Thief: The Complete Collection (PC DVD)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've been wanting a compilation disk of the Thief games for some time, but the others have dissapointed me by including the standard Thief - TDP rather than Thief Gold that includes 4 extra missions.

I remember when the original Thief was released I spend endless hours sat in front of my PC with the lights off playing the game. What an experience! Seldom have I got in to the character of a PC game protagonist as deeply as I did with Thief 1 and 2. These games literally invented the first person sneaker sub-genre and they have certainly not been bettered.

In all the Thief series, success comes from patiently waiting, watching, calculating the timings of guard patrols, selecting which torches to extinguish with your water arrows then picking the perfect moment to bop a guard smartly on the back of the head before hiding his unconscious body. There are some nearve-wrackingly tense moments in Thief 1 and 2 where you find yourself cowering in a corner while an oblivious guard walks past only feet away, whistling to himself as he does his rounds. Oh yes, Thief and Thief 2 are absolute classics.

By modern standards the Dark Engine (which powers Thief) and the Dark Engine+ (which powers Thief 2) are woefully out of date in terms of graphical quality. However, these games are an absolute show case of sound design in a game, and neither engine is so ancient to make the games unplayable. Thief and Thief 2 are all about the game play rather than shallow but pretty graphics. If you enjoy immersive first person games you would be doing yourself an enormous disservice by not playing this series.

Thief 3 was somewhat more controvercial, in that it was ported to the PC from the equivalent console game. Missing some of Garrett's most loved tools of thievery, it was to my mind a great game, but did not blow everything else in the genre away in the way that Thief 2 did. To my mind Thief 2 - The Metal Age has yet to be surpassed in terms of immersive game play for a first-person game. It can take litterally hours and hours to finish an individual level. And there are plenty of them. Usually, the more patient you are the more successful you will be.

One final note - Thief 1 and Thief 2 do not run on Vista as they are, from the DVD. However, 5 minutes spent searching the relevant fan sites and forums, and a downloadable replacement .exe for both games will have you up & running in no time. Thief 3 works fine and it's system requirements are hardly demanding by modern standards.

If you enjoy first person action games but have grown tired of shallow twitch-shooters with little immerson, do yourself a favour and buy this collection. You won't regret it one bit.

Length:: 7:25 Mins

An overall review of the Thief series covering all three games. There's a slight retrospective feel to the review, so hopefully it will introduce the trilogy to anyone new to Garret and his antics. A fantastic series of games and a "must play" for anyone who hasn't already.

This is a great box set, and for any fan of thief is a must have. If you have never played thief before, prepare to become addicted. The earlier games, 1 and 2 are the best in my opinion, it's especially good that the first thief is the Gold version, which is very rare to get hold of originally, and contains 3 extra levels. (I DO have it as I have been nuts on the game since It came out), but getting it to run on a modern system is very hard. This version at least skips the annoying NT message, which stops the games loading in the first place. Now how to get them to work, he he I managed it, not without much trial and error. Firstly my operating system is Windows 7, load thief 2 into the games file, not program files x 86, (this is a bad idea) once the game is installed download tafferpatcher, and extract into the thief 2 file, game runs like clockwork after, easy peasy! Thief gold, SLIGHTLY harder, but not impossible, once again download into games folder, then download ddfix, and extract into thief gold folder, don't run it, as it will not work that way in windows 7, you just need the files from ddfix for now. delete the thief exe in the thief gold folder, and shortcut if necessary, and replace with a PATCHED thief exe, which skips the ddfix install, place in thief gold directory. Go to the cam.cfg file, alter the screen resolution line to 800 600, you may need to open this as administrator before it allows you save it. Once saved thief gold is up and running, yay. There is one slight annoying factor, as I could not get the videos to work, but I bypassed this by watching them seperately, by manually opening the MOVIES file. Phew! There was no problems that I encountered installing thief 3 on windows 7.

**Note that I have only played Thief 1 (on Windows XP) of this disc, so my opinion/info is based on that game only!**

I'm very satisfied with my purchase of Thief - The Complete Collection (in October 2010), even though I had to find solutions for problems to make the entire game Thief Gold work. That took me quite some time, spread over a period of months. However, it IS POSSIBLE to make the game working in no-time - depending on your computer hard- and software.
The information needed to solve the problems can be found on the internet, see the sites at the bottom of this review.
The disc already contains some fixes, as well as a readme with some help on the required DirectX. An example of a fix that IS already included, is a widescreen patch.

Still, I found this a great deal, as this price for all of the (three) Thief games (Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows (Thief 3) and especially Thief Gold) is splendid.

My personal conclusion: a must-have for the fans!

PRO:
> Product contains Thief Gold (=The Dark Project+3 extra levels(+some other changes))!
> All the three Thief games on one disc.
> Disc contains (at least) one fix/patch (widescreen) for Thief Gold.
(> I received the product a few days after my order, and the box was well packed in cardboard. It was undamaged, as well as the disc, so I personally had no problems with the service or whatsoever.)

CONTRA:
> The game contains some fixes, but there are still problems that need to be solved to be able to play. Problems to which solutions could have easily been included on the disk, ready-to-go or as information in a document, as the solutions can be found on the internet after some well-invested research.
> Although helpful in some cases, loading the DVD in your drive will always start a setup with a built-in menu of Mastertronics. After solving the problems, the setup is not very useful anymore, as the game can no longer be started through this setup.

The following SITES are VERY helpful, you can find many solutions to your problems there:[]

Update 2013: There is a new fan patch for Thief II:The Metal Age (patch v1.19) that can get the game running on modern multicore PCs. It's available for download via the ttlg.com website. Also try the similar TFix_1.13.exe patch for Thief I:The Dark Project. These two patches got the two games running on my 64-bit Windows 7 PC, although I've not got to the the final levels yet. See the discussion below this game listing for more details (How to run Thief I and II on Windows 7!!!).

Review: I have literally worn out my original Thief III CD, so I invested in this triple Thief set: Thief: The Dark Project [superb], Thief II: The Metal Age [very good], and Thief III: Deadly Shadows [superlative]. You can still cheaply buy these older games individually or as this new triple pack in 'The Thief Collection'. All the games are on one DVD, and installing them was very easy via a unified interface, and the Indeo Video software is available as a 'patch' if needed. These games have all the most recent patches applied [and there's little chance any new ones will appear]. This DVD has the rare Thief I Gold edition, which has extra levels, although Thief II appears to be original release. I'm so used to the original Thief:Dark Project gameplay, that I'm not fully sold on the extra levels on Gold, as they are a bit of a Labyrinthian slog affecting pace, but I guess I'd rather have them than not (and you can buy the original Thief game CD cheaply anyway).

Naturally I was hoping that these Thief I and II games would run far better under XP than the original game installs (they were ported for Windows 98SE PCs originally), and that Eidos had tweaked them in some way. Sadly it was not to be, and both Thief I and II crash within seconds of running on both our 32-bit XP Pro gaming PCs [with ATI 4770 and NVidia 8800GT graphics] - just as the games have always done. We can run them with the accelerated graphics turned off, but they look so naff we don't bother. That said, both Thief I and II games run perfectly on our Inspiron 6000 laptop with XP Pro and its integrated GMA 915 graphics, probably as it's a single core CPU with old graphics drivers, so you may get lucky and be rewarded with two classic games. Despite the optimistic `runs under XP/Vista' description by Eidos and Amazon, these older `dark engine' games simply aren't as XP/Vista/7 or multi-core CPU friendly as Thief III:Deadly shadows, and may take some work to get running. You must see the dedicated Thief forums at ttlg.com/forums for fixes, but as both games are available so cheaply in this Thief triple pack from Amazon at the moment it's hardly much of a risk buying them. Serious glitches involve multicore processors and the latest NVIdia drivers, but there are work-arounds for most problems. Thief III:Deadly Shadows is far more XP/Vista/Windows 7 friendly and should run on your gaming PC, and fortunately it's also the best game visually. Only Thief III deadly Shadows runs on our multi-cores 64-bit Windows 7 PCs - and only Thief III ran on our 32-bit Vista gaming PC, before we back-formatted it to XP Pro. With XP Pro, Windows 7 & Vista, Thief III still has the odd glide glitch, but that's overcome by saving and reloading or falling off something.

The totally convincing stealth aspect of the game-play is unique to the thief series, and the recreation of a rather surreal medieval Europe (with Gothic engines and electric lights) is engrossing. It's a world steeped in dark magic, holy scripts and religious fervour. You (the thief Garret) must creep around in the shadows, pick locks and pockets, stealing whatever comes your way unseen. You can knock out the odd guard etc. and drag him into the shadows (as if his body is found the alarm will sound). Everything you steal can be sold to a fence to buy more weapons or given to the secretive Keepers, guardians of the mystical glyphs, to help prevent the Age of Darkness descending. So no gung-ho charge with a BFG here, you will be overpowered and in Pavelock Prison seconds later, if you are lucky. You can fight back, but often at very high cost to your health. Game-play isn't really stealth assassin shooter, you shouldn't need to kill anyone at all, just creep in there and steal that fabulous object [or mystical artefact] undetected and get out of there intact ASAP. Or you may just be looking for information, via eves-dropping conversations or from books/manuscripts lying around. Game-play is always atmospheric and goes very creepy when zombies and spiders are about - although you can chill out in the shadows if no-one sees you go there or bumps into you. Guards are observant though, and they notice things like candles snuffed out or doors left open. As with any thieving, my advice is to just leg-it if you are discovered - after all anything is legal as long as you don't get caught. Although Garret is morally ambiguous, generally he sides with the forces of light against those of darkness, but he lives in the shadowy grey area between both, and if the price is right...

To me, the best levels are Thief III's trip to 'The Cradle', Thief II's 'Sabotage at Soulforge' and Thief I's 'Return to the Haunted Cathedral' - the latter is only let down by the relatively poor graphics. See the original games on Amazon for more details. Eidos are now working on the new Thief IV game, literally denoted in glyphs as THI4F. The exact release date for the latest THI4F is as yet unknown, but rest assured they are working on it. Those new to Thief should at least first try playing the Thief III game available here, although I always re-set the default action keys to left mouse: run and right mouse: attack, and adjust mouse sensitivity, or else it can be clunky getting Garret about. I've seen one wag call these games 'First person looters', and without doubt they are my favourite action games.

it say it got thief gold on it it also as dark projcet in also ^^ I was not exting at all. I have been playing this game I was a little girl at age 9, and I always wented to own it and now I do, it does not work very well on windows 7, you need a patch to make it work, easy to to be found, from that it works very good all 4 games you get in this one CD.
it is a easy game to play, if you 1st timer playing this, I tell u this now, have a play around on the 1st level and try to nock every one out and get all the gold, it is a good way to learn how the game play and you get us to it very quickly ^^. I am now 23 soon I been playing this game for 14 years, it never gets old.
if you into thiefs and hiding and trying to find evey thing you can do, this the game you would love to play, if you do not like playing any of this type, best not to are you will get very bord, it is quite game not much fiting going off, mostly you have to hide are run from them, that fun to do ^^ they never to see to get me hahahahah lol.

Don't be put off by the setup requirements - if you think you're qualified to play this game, then you've got to pass a basic 'desire' test to get it to work - veteran PC users did much more complicated configuration in the 90s for much less worthy titles. Anyways, after visiting the TTLG forums and downloading/installing the appropriate patches and setup files for this, I have TMA running at 1920x1200. Even though the graphics are around a decade old, the gameplay compares favourably with recent titles, such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, insofar as the sound, stealth AI routines, storyline and overall atmosphere are generally superior to Eidos Montreal's effort. In fact, Thief's atmosphere and immersion has rarely been matched by any title in the time since it has been released; it's managed to surprise and scare me after all this time.

I have marked it down a star because of the fact that the cutscenes are cut, but this remains the best sneak 'em up on the market today.

A very good game that doesn't loose any appeal or tension by it being a bit older in the graphics game genre. I had no problems in loading 'Deadly shadows' to windows vista, Thief 2 I managed to load following the advice of feedback from other reviewers (Ms. R. Porter, Keith Joseph etc, thank you)and I'm sure I shall be able load the original Thief Gold using their advice again. But even if only the two good games, for a fiver?! Recommended.

This is a lovely classic trilogy and a perfect purchase if one is waiting for the 4th game in the series to be released.

If you're here, the chances are you already know everything you need to know about the Thief series. So feel free to skip the upcoming paragraph.

For those of you who don't know, the Thief series is considered by many to be the ultimate in stealth games. Thief: The Dark Project redefined the role of the first-person action genre. Atmospheric in every sense of the word, from the moody mission briefings to the almost graphic novel styled cinematics, with a perpetual sense of fear and wariness woven throughout, the first two Thief games will make you want to come back for more and finish them on the hardest difficulty. You know exactly how visible you are, thanks to the 'visibility gem' at the bottom of the screen, and you can hear how much noise you're making. Once you start encountering enemies who aren't human and who can seriously ruin your night, you'll become fearful when you hear them moving around the next corner. While a graphical generation or two above the first two games, Thief: Deadly Shadows has received criticism for being too easy and not as atmospheric as its predecessors, but this is offset by a worthy story culminating in what long-term fans have praised as a 'perfect' ending.

So what better way to obtain these classics than to have all three of them, including the rare Thief: Gold Edition, on one DVD? This isn't a problem for most capable PCs with either Windows XP or Vista, but there may be disappointment for those of you with Nvidia graphics cards, which have never handled the first two Thief games very well. You will get error messages. A LOT of error messages. In some cases, this problem can be overcome by messing around with your resolution settings (I found lowering mine on the Desktop certainly helped), but in my case Thief II: The Metal Age wasn't having any of it. Thief: Gold Edition works for anything between 1 - 10 minutes before it cuts out on me. Ironically, Thief: Deadly Shadows, is pretty seamless, and runs at a smooth 60hz at full resolution without making my Nvidia card so much as break a sweat.

My advice is to check your hardware before purchase, do a bit of scouting on the Thief forums of the internet (of which there are lots), especially if you have an Nvidia card. You'll be pleased to hear that all current updates and patches for Thief games come installed on this DVD.

These are great games. If you haven't tried them yet, you're in for a genuine treat!