Watching the preview trailers, it's easy to understand why there was so much hype surrounding its release.

This first-person action- adventure game certainly ticks all the boxes.

It looks just incredible well, as incredible as a game set mostly at night can, and boasts an excellent game engine and plot that really sets it apart from the rest of the pack.

The closest game I can think of to Thief is the hugely successful Assassin's Creed franchise, and that hit the market many years after the original Thief game was released way back in 1998.

Thief is set in a Victorian era city, aptly known as The City, in a comparable time period of the early 1800s in England.

The protagonist, as has been the case in all the Thief games, is Garrett, a man regarded as a master thief.

Garrett is a man who will steal anything that is not nailed down from jewels and money through to more trivial items such as trinkets, cups and pieces of cutlery.

All of this rather flies in the face of him being labelled a master thief, but anyway.

The city has two faces - the rich live an opulent lifestyle ... then there is a side ravaged by poverty, homelessness and disease.

These downtrodden folk, however, have a new champion by the name of Orion, who is promising them equality courtesy of an uprising. It is here that Garrett finds his calling, by stealing from the right and giving to well, actually just himself.

As class warfare rages through the City, he finds himself locked in a battle against the supernatural.

Yes there are spectres with glowing red eyes that walk the dark alleyways and there's plenty of dark magic thrown in to the storyline to keep you amused.

But it is Garrett's thieving that keeps you busy. There is seemingly a never-ending supply of people to pickpocket, locks to pick, rooms to search, puzzles to solve and items to steal.

This all happens through a cleverly thought out and produced steal system that, for the most part, works pretty much flawlessly.

Garrett's main weapon is his ability to stay hidden thanks to a city with plenty of places to hide in an abundant supply of shadows.

You sneak up on opponents, to crawl past guards or to find a way into a building without raising suspicions.

If you do get noticed, then you will be forced to rely on your rather mediocre combat abilities which is probably why you're only armed with a bow and arrow and a blackjack for knocking out unsuspecting guards. That said, Garrett is usually only capable of fighting off one opponent at a time.

Any more than that and he's probably going to be in trouble.

In fact, you will spend more time using your bow to extinguish lights or distract people than shooting them.

Garrett also has a set of lock picks and a large grappling claw for climbing buildings.

Everything else he picks up along the way (ie the spoils of his thieving is instantly converted to money once he picks it up), so there's no real use for a full blown inventory system.

Garrett also has a special ability in the game, known as Focus mode.

When activated, it enhances Garrett's sight to the point where puzzles, valuable items and important aspects of the surrounds glow an iridescent light blue so they are easily distinguished from everything else.

There's a clever difficulty system that reminded me of the options available in Forza Motorsport.

Forget easy, normal and difficult. In Thief, you can fully customise various aspects of the gameplay to make things more difficult, or easier to achieve.

Now all of that makes Thief sounds simply wonderful, right?

Well now for a few of the things that irked me.

The seemingly random load screens that popped up during gameplay were very annoying and did nothing to keep the moment of the story going forward. And speaking of the story, the plot itself was hardly nail-biting or enthralling. The supernatural touch seemed a little silly at times.

And just to round out the bad bits, the non-playing character AI was either excellent or downright stupid and ridiculous. There's no excuse for an eighth-gen game to have characters getting stuck on each other and unable to move. It didn't happen a lot but it was annoying.

THE VERDICT

Overall, Thief is an enjoyable, excellent looking game that strikes a perfect balance between not being too easy and not being too difficult.

It looks and sounds excellent, although the characters themselves are a little wooden.

WE RATE IT

Graphics: 9

Gameplay: 6

Sounds: 8

OVERALL: 80%