I've long maintained that stealth games exist in a spectrum. They're puzzle games if their scenarios only have one solution, and they move further up the spectrum away from being puzzle games the more solutions they have. This first Thief game is probably somewhere around the middle...

Of course, it's the loud as fuck one and now EVERY guard knows where you are...

I mean, I think this is the thing. The original works because of the tight level design (and even then could be confusing at times), when you open it up the environments become just too... blobby, for want of a better word. That's why they almost had to add in a overbearing navigation aid.

I think, if anything, the original is even more refreshing now. It's so minimal in so many ways, it feels like the antithesis of where game design has gone in the years since.

Oh, I definitely think it's a shadow of the original, but that was always a freak one-off magic that was never going to be repeated.

Probably worth reminding ourselves that 'Mirror's Edge', now a beloved game, was pretty controversial at release, if not outright disliked. It sort of got rehabilitated years afterwards, and while I don't think 'Catalyst' is as good, I do think it's probably worth playing if you skipped it...

I suspect this is a case of people reacting negatively to it being different from (and in a lot of ways incompatible with) the original), but I dunno, coming to it almost a decade after its release, and distant from any controversy, I'm really enjoying it.

I presume it's to do with licensing.

I personally think so, but your milage may vary. It probably depends whether the game clicks for you and how into BSG you are...

The plus side is that it's on steep discount until it disappears, so consider nabbing it.

SC2K: "Systems are just too big to control, I'll try and work within them but I'm a bird in a storm, there's really nothing I can do"

TH: "Life is all about planning in minute detail, nothing is beyond my control or influence if I obsess enough about the details"

RCT: "People are playthings"

Insanely left field!

Speaking from the experience of having married a RCT player, I fear for the people around you.

Special forth category. Rare breed, well done.

I omitted it for brevity, but essentially that's the same category as 'Rollercoaster Tycoon' (but with less intentional mass homicide and more union breaking).