It has an interesting premise, but its not really enough to carry the game through its entire runtime. There isn't much going on mechanically and the story does an awkward job of balancing depth with brevity. If you only play the original route then the game falls flat and doesn't offer enough substance to make the experience feel worthwhile, while playing the expanded version and true route inflates the story with more plot threads than the game can give justice to with its short runtime.

Mechanically, there isn't really anything of note. You solve a few simple puzzles and, while they occasionally involve going outside the game to check files on your computer and do similar stuff, it never felt all that meaningful to the experience. It felt like more of a reminder so you don't forget the game is all cool and meta rather than anything that actually pushes the experience further.

What OneShot does have going for it is its charm. Niko is a cute character and its hard not to have at least a little bit of affection for him. The general vibe of each area also works effectively at showing how the world is slowly decaying and falling apart. But while it did work, charm alone isn't enough to carry an entire game.

OneShot isn't bad per se, but it definitely fell below my expectations. While there are a few neat ideas at play they lacked enough depth to feel satisfying on their own nor did they have enough cohesion to work well as a patchwork of many small concepts. It's a short enough game that these issues aren't too grating, but it does mean this ended up being a much more forgettable experience than I was expecting.

It has an interesting premise, but its not really enough to carry the game through its entire runtime. There isn't much going on mechanically and the story does an awkward job of balancing depth with brevity. If you only play the original route then the game falls flat and doesn't offer enough substance to make the experience feel worthwhile, while playing the expanded version and true route inflates the story with more plot threads than the game can give justice to with its short runtime.

Mechanically, there isn't really anything of note. You solve a few simple puzzles and, while they occasionally involve going outside the game to check files on your computer and do similar stuff, it never felt all that meaningful to the experience. It felt like more of a reminder so you don't forget the game is all cool and meta rather than anything that actually pushes the experience further.

What OneShot does have going for it is its charm. Niko is a cute character and its hard not to have at least a little bit of affection for him. The general vibe of each area also works effectively at showing how the world is slowly decaying and falling apart. But while it did work, charm alone isn't enough to carry an entire game.

OneShot isn't bad per se, but it definitely fell below my expectations. While there are a few neat ideas at play they lacked enough depth to feel satisfying on their own nor did they have enough cohesion to work well as a patchwork of many small concepts. It's a short enough game that these issues aren't too grating, but it does mean this ended up being a much more forgettable experience than I was expecting.

Rather than the large and elaborate maps that characterized the earlier Thief titles, the reboot is little more than a linear series of rooms and hallways where you have to sneak past 1-2 guards in order to make it to the next 1-2 guards. Rinse and repeat until the game is done.

Thief (2014) is painfully simple. There are no longer any macro-level challenges related to exploration or puzzle solving. Everything you do revolves around finding a way past the micro-level challenge the game puts right in front of you. But with how oblivious the guards are and how basic the map is, there's little real challenge for anybody who has ever played a stealth game before.

Throw in a mess of technical issues and out of place action sequences and this game just fails at providing anything close to a satisfying experience. The underlying gameplay lacks everything that made the previous games enjoyable and replaces it with content that seems a better fit for Uncharted or some other 'cinematic' game. The final product is muddled, confusing, and boring. I really can't recommend playing this for anything other than morbid curiosity.