SINGAPORE — Thief: The Dark Project from 1998 launched the first-person stealth game genre, and now almost 14 years later, a remake has landed. With such an illustrious predecessor, can Square Enix’s Thief steal the limelight?

This remake shares a lot from its predecessor — you play as master thief Garrett, and The City is your playground where you rob, pickpocket and elude detection. For Thief fans, that is not all that is the same: Characters, or at least their names, also make a return.

The game is not just a thieving simulator, of course, soon you will be caught up in retrieving various ancient objects either for profit or as a favour, and just like the other Thief games, things go awry and it is up to you to use your wits and talents to escape.

This leads to gameplay that is often enthralling and engaging, as you move quietly from shadow to shadow to escape detection. But Garrett is no fighter, so things will get ugly quickly once you are discovered. Fleeing for your life is usually the safer choice, but you also get an array of arrows that keep combat, and even puzzle solving, varied. New to the series is “swoop”, which allows you to quickly dash from shadow to shadow, and a great way to quickly escape in a pinch. If you find that too easy, you can ramp up the difficulty, where even being detected means you can fail the level.

Sneaking and combat is enhanced by a skill called Focus, where time moves slower and key items you can interact with are highlighted in blue. This allows you to find hidden areas or escape combat faster, but it does run out, so you will need to buy or find poppies to replenish your Focus. It is a useful mechanic I found myself employing each time I got stuck, and it is also useful when you are doing other sorts of thievery, like lock picking.

Garrett, like many modern action heroes, is gruff and humourless, his kohl-lined eyes and pasty complexion paired with his grim demeanour makes for the most agile goth in history. At least he looks good — the graphics for the game are generally beautiful, whether it’s characters or scenery.

Traversing the city’s dark alleys and catwalks are a joy — the city, despite the gloom, pulses with life as it broods and seethes. Part Victorian and part steampunk, Thief feels like last year’s Bioshock: Infinite (especially with some poppy-inspired moments), and even more so, Dishonoured (which owed its existence to the original Thief). Tempting treasures glint in the shadows, and you will want to explore and get the city to divulge its secrets especially when you are faced with puzzles to solve. There are quite a few side quests for you to do that, but there is enough going on in the main quest to stop you from getting distracted.

Sadly, Thief suffers from a feeble plot.

Garrett, despite his grim demeanour and wanting to be left alone, ends up caught in something much larger than he is. That said, the plot does not detract from how fun the game can be, but it is with the controls where things can come to a halt.

For example, the swoop button becomes the jump button when the game decides it should, and some areas have invisible walls — and ends up making the tutorial mission more frustrating than it should be because any form of discovery then is an instant failure.

At its core, Thief, when you stick to the thieving, is just pure fun. I enjoyed being in the shadows, biding my time for my chance to move. There’s a lot of satisfaction in planning and timing a route just right, and discovering a secret passage is fun, but not as fun as picking a lock just as the guard you’re eluding turns the corner. Depending on your playing style, you can sneak, fight or backstab to complete your mission, and some arbitrary dead ends aside, most missions give you enough options to solve an objective whatever way you want.

During its development process, the game was plagued by complaints from fans of the old trilogy and bad press. Admittedly, during a press preview at the Tokyo Game Show, I almost fell asleep (in my defence the guy at the demo also kept yawning), so the final product we have is surprisingly good. There is not much innovation here, but for a remake the great graphics and fun levels make it compelling enough to stand on its own. Despite its flaws, I could not help but be enthralled by Thief.

Rating: 3.5/5