THE DUKE ON
THIEF - DEADLY SHADOWS
THIEF - DEADLY SHADOWS
Of all the things computer technology has offered us, I’m gonna go
ahead and assume the best of all to be the ability, via the “video-
game”, for to partake of any lifestyle one chooses, provided said
lifestyle involves killing folks at some point or other. Back in
the day, being around the 1979 or so, a man might have required a
fair dosage of imagination for to get the best from it all. It
takes a lot of visualising to construct a social reality in and
around, say, Centipede.
Thanks to the incredible “graphics” and such we get nowadays,
though, a fella could wander through a virtual world for days
before even considering starting to “play” the damn thing. Used to
be AI was nothing but the name of a fucking brilliant Steven
Spielberg film about a little boy sees dead robots or some shit.
Nowadays, though, what it refers to is the Artificial Intelligence
to be found within the video-games. You can have conversations
with folks, and most times they’ll even call you a fucker, or
maybe a FAG-QUEER if it’s on the web-net. Kids nowadays would
laugh their rectums wide as the ocean if you expected them to make
do with the creaky recorded voice that opened Impossible Mission
on the Commodore 64. Unless you can have a conversation about
“fuck you you fucking whore-fucking fuck” throughout the affair,
kids don’t want a damn thing to do with it. The games, y’see, as
well as getting all “advanced” with regards the “technology”, have
also decided to be much more “mature”, i.e, very very “immature”.
Saying “cock” and maybe having a fisting sex with a hooker is as
PG as it’s gonna get nowadays.
For the last couple months The Duke has been immersing himself in
the world of the PC-Games and such. You may recall my highly
incisive review of Manhunt a few whiles back. Since then, more
sleepless nights than I care to admit have flown past in the blink
of a reddened, watering eye.
Until it reached its conclusion just last week, the “program”,
(i.e., the “game”, but “game” sounds like something you forget
about once your voice breaks), what kept The Duke awake and
seething was none other than Thief – Deadly Shadows.
To return to the point of the opening paragraph, the great thing
about Thief – Deadly Shadows, is that I never once in my life
wanted to be a thief, running around medieval England, but fuck
it, since that’s what the programs all about, so screw you if you
were looking for to maybe be a space marine. In a very short space
of time, however, I find that my non-playing hours are spent
deducing how I would climb a certain wall, how I might best
position myself in the corner of a room, just who that taffer on
the bus thinks he is, anyhow?
In case you didn’t know, a “taffer” is what people were in the
olden days before folks realised they were motherfuckers.
In Thief, y'see, folks don’t swear like proper human beings, they
say “By the builder!” and “I see you, you taffer!” and all kinds
of wacky medieval bullshit. It’s not like in The Suffering when
every other word is “fuck” or maybe “bastard”. These medieval
types have all sorts of inventive gibberish to get on with, like
back when comic books didn’t swear neither, and they had to have
all those kooky /@## carry-on’s. “Taffer” is the modern equivalent
of /@##, is what The Duke would suggest.
“/@## Batman, you’re such a /@##ing motherfucker”, and so on and
so forth.
Thief – Deadly Shadows, or Thief 3 as you might wanna call it if
maybe you’re drunk at the time and trying to economise the number
of syllables required, is just about fantastic is what it is.
In case you didn’t know, and God knows The Duke didn’t, back in
the medieval times, turns out there were all manner of sects and
cults and beast-folks at each-others throats on account of some
prophecy or some such. Pagans, Builders, Hammerites, maybe even
The Talibans, they’re all involved in some conspiracy. Truth be
told, I've finished the thing by now, and I still don’t know what
it was all about. I do know, though, that it was a hell of a lot
of fun making my way through it.
Thief presents you with a half-dozen maps, and it’s up to you to
navigate your way through them from one part of the city to the
other, back and fourth, from The Docks to haunted orphanages to
graveyards and castles and all the shops and homes in-between that
you can break into and rob blind, should you so desire. It’s like
a first-person medieval Grand Theft Auto, except this doesn’t have
no radio stations or no shit like that. Probably back then they
were still listening to 2 Unlimited, so the developers decided it
was more hassle than it was worth.
No limits, motherfucker.
The whole thing is incredibly atmospheric. And scary as hell
sometimes, too. For sure, the aforementioned Haunted Orphanage
malarkey lasts a little longer than you might like, but it’s
freaky as all southern beejesus for the duration. Orbs float
about, the shadows of little girls scarring the stone underneath
them. Doors slam just as you approach them. Plus, it looks
amazing, a gothic monstrosity the worse for wear after years of
decay and gutting by fire.
What’s best of all, though, is that The Duke gets to live out his
most deranged Man With No Name fantasies, except I have a name,
but you get the motherfucking gist of it all. Living in the
shadows, is what, like Cliff Richard once upon a time, everyone
knows who I am, but none of the fuckers can lay a finger on me,
and if they do, or worse, lay a club or a sword on me, then it’s
F10 and back to where I can safely pierce their skulls with a
motherfucking broadhead.
Also, there’s no end of hilarity to be found in firing a moss
arrow at someone’s face and watching them choke their way to an
early death. Provided you run up and stab their guts mid-choking,
otherwise they just cough it all out eventually.
I haven’t much of a clue about what was going on, something which
renders the cut-scenes a bit of a pain in the arsehole, to be
honest. Folks blithering on about shit I couldn’t care less about.
Just let a fella do some more sneaking, is what. That thrill of
picking a lock as someone’s footsteps get closer and closer behind
you, and then the yacking about “Thought I heard something” or
“Come out, you taffer” and so on. That kinda shit is enhanced not
one iota by a “cinematic” interlude with some old git waxing on
about Glyphs. Shove your Glyphs up your CGI hole, is what The Duke
spits at the monitor. Let me get back to creeping up behind
someone and then hitting them over the head with a club.
It’s high-time you kids put down your discovery channels and your
“texting books” or whatever and learned something about the real
fucking world, is what The Duke would suggest, and I can’t think
of a better tool for such than this right here, being Thief Deadly
Shadows.
Good work, taffers.
Thanks folks
Fling The Duke A Satirical EMAIL
ahead and assume the best of all to be the ability, via the “video-
game”, for to partake of any lifestyle one chooses, provided said
lifestyle involves killing folks at some point or other. Back in
the day, being around the 1979 or so, a man might have required a
fair dosage of imagination for to get the best from it all. It
takes a lot of visualising to construct a social reality in and
around, say, Centipede.
Thanks to the incredible “graphics” and such we get nowadays,
though, a fella could wander through a virtual world for days
before even considering starting to “play” the damn thing. Used to
be AI was nothing but the name of a fucking brilliant Steven
Spielberg film about a little boy sees dead robots or some shit.
Nowadays, though, what it refers to is the Artificial Intelligence
to be found within the video-games. You can have conversations
with folks, and most times they’ll even call you a fucker, or
maybe a FAG-QUEER if it’s on the web-net. Kids nowadays would
laugh their rectums wide as the ocean if you expected them to make
do with the creaky recorded voice that opened Impossible Mission
on the Commodore 64. Unless you can have a conversation about
“fuck you you fucking whore-fucking fuck” throughout the affair,
kids don’t want a damn thing to do with it. The games, y’see, as
well as getting all “advanced” with regards the “technology”, have
also decided to be much more “mature”, i.e, very very “immature”.
Saying “cock” and maybe having a fisting sex with a hooker is as
PG as it’s gonna get nowadays.
For the last couple months The Duke has been immersing himself in
the world of the PC-Games and such. You may recall my highly
incisive review of Manhunt a few whiles back. Since then, more
sleepless nights than I care to admit have flown past in the blink
of a reddened, watering eye.
Until it reached its conclusion just last week, the “program”,
(i.e., the “game”, but “game” sounds like something you forget
about once your voice breaks), what kept The Duke awake and
seething was none other than Thief – Deadly Shadows.
To return to the point of the opening paragraph, the great thing
about Thief – Deadly Shadows, is that I never once in my life
wanted to be a thief, running around medieval England, but fuck
it, since that’s what the programs all about, so screw you if you
were looking for to maybe be a space marine. In a very short space
of time, however, I find that my non-playing hours are spent
deducing how I would climb a certain wall, how I might best
position myself in the corner of a room, just who that taffer on
the bus thinks he is, anyhow?
In case you didn’t know, a “taffer” is what people were in the
olden days before folks realised they were motherfuckers.
In Thief, y'see, folks don’t swear like proper human beings, they
say “By the builder!” and “I see you, you taffer!” and all kinds
of wacky medieval bullshit. It’s not like in The Suffering when
every other word is “fuck” or maybe “bastard”. These medieval
types have all sorts of inventive gibberish to get on with, like
back when comic books didn’t swear neither, and they had to have
all those kooky /@## carry-on’s. “Taffer” is the modern equivalent
of /@##, is what The Duke would suggest.
“/@## Batman, you’re such a /@##ing motherfucker”, and so on and
so forth.
Thief – Deadly Shadows, or Thief 3 as you might wanna call it if
maybe you’re drunk at the time and trying to economise the number
of syllables required, is just about fantastic is what it is.
In case you didn’t know, and God knows The Duke didn’t, back in
the medieval times, turns out there were all manner of sects and
cults and beast-folks at each-others throats on account of some
prophecy or some such. Pagans, Builders, Hammerites, maybe even
The Talibans, they’re all involved in some conspiracy. Truth be
told, I've finished the thing by now, and I still don’t know what
it was all about. I do know, though, that it was a hell of a lot
of fun making my way through it.
Thief presents you with a half-dozen maps, and it’s up to you to
navigate your way through them from one part of the city to the
other, back and fourth, from The Docks to haunted orphanages to
graveyards and castles and all the shops and homes in-between that
you can break into and rob blind, should you so desire. It’s like
a first-person medieval Grand Theft Auto, except this doesn’t have
no radio stations or no shit like that. Probably back then they
were still listening to 2 Unlimited, so the developers decided it
was more hassle than it was worth.
No limits, motherfucker.
The whole thing is incredibly atmospheric. And scary as hell
sometimes, too. For sure, the aforementioned Haunted Orphanage
malarkey lasts a little longer than you might like, but it’s
freaky as all southern beejesus for the duration. Orbs float
about, the shadows of little girls scarring the stone underneath
them. Doors slam just as you approach them. Plus, it looks
amazing, a gothic monstrosity the worse for wear after years of
decay and gutting by fire.
What’s best of all, though, is that The Duke gets to live out his
most deranged Man With No Name fantasies, except I have a name,
but you get the motherfucking gist of it all. Living in the
shadows, is what, like Cliff Richard once upon a time, everyone
knows who I am, but none of the fuckers can lay a finger on me,
and if they do, or worse, lay a club or a sword on me, then it’s
F10 and back to where I can safely pierce their skulls with a
motherfucking broadhead.
Also, there’s no end of hilarity to be found in firing a moss
arrow at someone’s face and watching them choke their way to an
early death. Provided you run up and stab their guts mid-choking,
otherwise they just cough it all out eventually.
I haven’t much of a clue about what was going on, something which
renders the cut-scenes a bit of a pain in the arsehole, to be
honest. Folks blithering on about shit I couldn’t care less about.
Just let a fella do some more sneaking, is what. That thrill of
picking a lock as someone’s footsteps get closer and closer behind
you, and then the yacking about “Thought I heard something” or
“Come out, you taffer” and so on. That kinda shit is enhanced not
one iota by a “cinematic” interlude with some old git waxing on
about Glyphs. Shove your Glyphs up your CGI hole, is what The Duke
spits at the monitor. Let me get back to creeping up behind
someone and then hitting them over the head with a club.
It’s high-time you kids put down your discovery channels and your
“texting books” or whatever and learned something about the real
fucking world, is what The Duke would suggest, and I can’t think
of a better tool for such than this right here, being Thief Deadly
Shadows.
Good work, taffers.
Thanks folks
Fling The Duke A Satirical EMAIL
