I might be jinxing myself here, but I’ve never had anything stolen. I was present when someone’s phone was nicked, though. It was the usual distraction tactics to sneak away a phone that had been carelessly left on a table. A little less glamorous than picking the lock on a front door and using a stethoscope to crack a safe. That sort of thievery is what generates the appeal of Thief Simulator. The idea of silently sweeping into a house and gathering up all of their jewellery is strangely alluring. Would certainly help to pay off my mortgage.
This is very much not a ‘gentleman thief‘ style of doing things though, given that we start off with a crowbar. Still, it’s an exciting premise. Unfortunately, Thief Simulator: Mastermind Edition fumbles the bag. The subtitle is writing cheques that the game can’t cash. The nice premise is shackled to a game that feels so clunkily put together. From the graphics, to the AI, to the overall gameplay loop, nothing fits right. What’s more, it doesn’t even acknowledge the emotional aspects of breaking into someone’s home. It all feels like we’re nicking trinkets from unfeeling robots.
Sticky Fingers
There’s not too much plot to speak of in Thief Simulator. We are are Mr. Sneak Thief, esquire, and we get a call from a chap named Vinny, who tells us to sneak into houses and lift the valuables. We’re clearly in debt to Vinny and he has a very mobster-ish name. That’s sort of the limit of the plot. It does go somewhere by the end, but the story is more of a string of tutorial missions. It takes you from breaking windows with a crowbar to swipe pots and pans, to disabling security systems with a special laptop to steal someone’s antique newspaper. There are quite a lot of tools and tricks, to be fair.
Honestly, the basic concept of looting a house isn’t bad. For one, before you break in you need to figure out the resident’s schedules. You don’t want to cut your way through someone’s window to grab their TV, only to find them halfway through Top Gear. We do this by staking out the place and marking the residents at set intervals, or by chucking a camera into their mailbox. You’ve then got to pinpoint your entry and exit points, and keep an eye out for cameras. If you’re seen at any point, in come the police and out come the tasers.
For the first few hours, Thief Simulator works quite well. There’s a nice progression from swiping basic kitchen stuff, to electronics, to nicking cars. There was some fun to be found in learning routines and picking the right moment to sweep in and stuff my bag with as much as possible before scarpering out the backdoor. As the houses got bigger, so did the security systems. Figuring out camera blind spots so you can shimmy up a drainpipe and stuff yourself into an upstairs window is quite entertaining.
Kleptomania
Unfortunately, Thief Simulator does its best to undermine that fun at every turn. For one, unlocking new tools requires experience points and a lot of cash, so it descends into a pile of grind from the midpoint onwards. I was breaking into the same houses and stealing the same things from the same places. I couldn’t crack anything more serious until the main quest had moved on. The Mastermind Edition adds some new maps and buildings but this just requires more tools. The basic loop is the same and it begins to get old after a while. After all, once you’ve cracked a house, it’s super easy to do it again, getting (almost) the same loot every time.
Partly that’s down to the rather peculiar AI. They tend to follow rigid routines, moving from place to place on a set path and switching routes at pre-set hours. So as long as you stick to shadows, they’re easy to get around. They’re also wildly inconsistent. I once nearly got caught because I opened a drawer too loudly, but the same AI didn’t respond to me throwing their TV and stereo system out of the upstairs window. The police aren’t much better, often being outwitted by hiding in a dark corner. As such, there’s very little tension. Once you figure out the right route, you can loot what you want by exploiting the dumb AI.
Thief Simulator also hasn’t made the move to the Switch without incident. While all the extra content in the Mastermind Edition is welcome, it feels like Thief Simulator had to condense itself down a bit too much. I don’t know what the graphics look like on more powerful platforms, but they are downright ugly on here. Lights pop-in a lot at night, and there are about five character models shared among citizens. Controls are a bit awkward too, like when you have to move the cursor over to the car key to start your getaway. It’s brought bugs along too. Residents have a habit of sinking into the ground, or sitting stubbornly in their living rooms when the game tells me they’re ‘out’.
Thief Simulator – Quantity Over Quality
Thief Simulator feels very much like quantity over quality. It has at least four lockpicking minigames, for one. Even one that mirrors the one from Oblivion. You know, everyone’s favourite. For me though, it misses the central interesting part of thievery: invading people’s spaces. As creepy as that makes me sound. I never found anything personal in these houses. They could all be police safe houses, for all I know. This isn’t a living, breathing world full of interesting people. It’s a town of soulless robots, all buying the same brand of TVs and leaving their necklaces in the same drawer as their baseball caps.
As such, my interest in Thief Simulator slowly burned out. The thrill of breaking and entering is lessened when you know you can pretty much just walk in and out at will. There is a good premise here. A small number of larger houses might have worked better. Some characterisation would have helped too. All we know about our protagonist is that he’s strangely resistant to explosions. As it is, while Thief Simulator might be amusing for an hour or two, this quickly steals away, leaving you feeling rather bare.
