Clevercrumbish created a new topic about Melancholy in Porto,
Bring a Portuguese friend for a cute, fun time:
Melancholy in Porto is an odd FM. Two missions long, with a very tenuous and ridiculous plot (my friends and I giggled a lot at how extremely Not How Nuclear Power Or Anything Else Works the story was), no combat or enemies and nothing to do but hunt loot, it doesn't sound like normal Thief 2 fare. And indeed it isn't. What it is (at least the 2018 remaster, which you should seek out rather than the 2009 original even if details like a photograph of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa introduce some inte..., May 16, 2021, 5:25 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about The Cinder Notes,
Pretty decent and decently pretty.:
The Cinder Notes is a very aesthetically attractive FM with a large number of (comparatively) high quality assets (which I think are ripped from Thief 3, though the documentation was a little difficult to understand on that front) and some absolutely gorgeous lighting. The level is compact and makes good use of verticality and levels; more than once I found myself falling into a natural flow of spying an open window from another high point and shooting a rope arrow into its sill to climb up l..., Jan. 21, 2021, 10:37 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about The Turning of the Leaves,
Resplendent.:
I'm taking Nicked's word for it that this is a <1,000,000 units, because it sure as hell doesn't feel like it. This mission is massive, and utterly fantastic. It sees you go from nothing to so many items scrolling your inventory becomes more of a pain, it has Garrett doing magic, Garrett doing mad science, Garrett doing horticulture, Garrett wielding a frying pan, a cult, horrifying monsters... It's spectacular.

There's so much I could say about this FM but I really want people to play it ..., Jan. 17, 2021, 9:02 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about Sabotage in Eastport,
Pretty good and worth your time:
Sabotage in Eastport is supposed (as far as I can tell) to slot in inbetween Trail of Blood and Life of the Party in the official Thief 2 campaign, and in my opinion does so pretty smoothly- its plot (it details Garrett's attempts to prevent the installation of a much stronger kind of builder's child in Angelwatch before he can get there) never feels particularly necessary to include in the wider T2 narrative, but neither does it feel forced, awkward or out of place.

SiE is a small map wit..., Jan. 13, 2021, 3:03 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about A Sinister Night,
2Spooky4me... but unfortunately probably not for anyone else.:
A Sinister Night is an attempt at replicating exploration horror gameplay in Thief 2. It removes all of Garrett's weapons and items, save for a "lantern", which I was delighted to see after playing other FMs that have used the concept to help surmount the problem of darkness hindering the player as much as helping them.

Tragically, this lantern functions a lot more like the flashlight of your typical atmospheric horror game, illuminating whatever Garrett is looking at... sort of. It seems ..., Jan. 13, 2021, 12:22 a.m.

Clevercrumbish commented a topic about The Perdurance,
An incredibly clever and well-thought out horror experience, marred by some singularly odd choices.:
You CAN use a vent to get into the bedroom... if you know it's there. But this is unlikely to happen because both ends of it are just too dark. I just went back and looked and evening knowing the room had a vent in it I still had to guess and scrub along the wall to find it. And I normally play with my gamma above default! Goodness knows how other people will find it. Kinda feels like it should be visible on one end- I'd say the bedroom end, so you're rewarded for remembering it when it becom..., Jan. 11, 2021, 1:21 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about The Perdurance,
An incredibly clever and well-thought out horror experience, marred by some singularly odd choices.:
This will probably be a very long review, because there's a lot to get your head around in The Perdurance and I do feel a degree of duty to do its very weird collection of pros and cons justice. If you want a tl;dr: Is it good? Yes. Pretty damn good, actually, but its few design flaws work against it massively, and it could still be better.

This will probably be a very long review, because there's a lot to get your head around in The Perdurance and I do feel a degree of duty to do its very weird collection of pros and cons justice. If you want a tl;dr: Is it good? Yes. Pretty damn good, actually, but its few design flaws work against it massively, and it could still be better.

[NOTE: By necessity, this review includes spoilers for the plot in The Perdurance. Additionally a big part of this review is predicated on the assumpti..., Jan. 10, 2021, 8:27 p.m.

Clevercrumbish commented a topic about A Midsummer Night's Heist,
Classic, but mean and irritating:
To be clear: I haven't docked any points from this mission for not being able to find loot. Only the title is harsher than I would like, and that cannot be changed. I was conscious that, although I looked for the missing loot for a long while, I was privately streaming at the time and couldn't be *quite* as thorough as I usually am taking levels apart for loot because at that point the action stalls and it makes for a dreadful viewing experience. That said however, I feel that there surely mu..., Jan. 10, 2021, 4 p.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about A Midsummer Night's Heist,
Classic, but mean and irritating:
A Midsummer Night's Heist is your classic Burglary Simulator experience, the kind of map I love: No undead BS, no weird surprises, just a foppish oaf with a big house and lots of valuables. Excellent. An optional (yet still compelling) objective exhorts you to knock out no more than two people, and the rest is a standard one-big-target-plus-X-loot combo.

The map is well designed with many openable escape routes, secret passages and avenues for vertical traversal such that movement feels fl..., Jan. 10, 2021, 5:57 a.m.

Clevercrumbish commented a topic about Godbreaker,
An absolute Tour De Force:
It did read rather as something like that, I think the language in the first half maybe got a little too real in terms of tropes for what you were going for, the second half makes more sense as a more jovial piece of absurdism. Anyway, bum note in a symphony as it was, it's one weird readable in a massive, spectacular level made three years ago, it's hardly a hill to die on. Think nothing of it.

As to Broken Goddess, I have no idea what that is beyond a name that oozes what is quickly for ..., May 30, 2020, 6:30 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about Godbreaker,
An absolute Tour De Force:
Did you play T2X and get given a thirst for A. Campaigns of multiple fan missions that B. Involve a protagonist other than Garrett? You should play Godbreaker. Seriously. It's damn good.

Right off the bat something I will say is that this is a three-mission campaign. Yes there are "four missions", but one of them is a two minute long glorified cutscene with a single point of interactivity so don't come in looking for four full-length missions. To avoid unnecessary spoilers I shan't explici..., May 21, 2020, 11:19 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about My Favorite Year,
I know you're here Sindelli, you big taffing nerd. Where's my goddamn wine?:
My Favorite Year was the 20th anniversary contest FM I'd been leaving till last and thankfully, I wasn't disappointed. I was, however, surprised. The premise of the mission suggested to me this would be something in the vein of Bafford's Manor or Assassins, but the ultimate result is far more evocative of, specifically, Shipping...and Receiving and (later) The Thieves' Guild.

The mission is short- I completed it on expert in 42 minutes and that was with a great deal of faffing about on my ..., May 13, 2020, 2:20 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about Show Off,
Worth your time:
What can I say? Show Off doesn't exactly break new ground, but it's a solid take on a proven formula. A museum is always a fun environment to burgle, and while it's perhaps a little heavy on the empty open space, Show Off still manages to contend a believable museum, of similar size to several of the smaller of such establishments I've visited in real life. There's no map, but it's not really necessary since you're only ever directed to go anywhere even vaguely spatially confusing once, and t..., May 12, 2020, 9:29 a.m.

Clevercrumbish commented a topic about Feast of Pilgrims,
I want to like Feast Of Pilgrims:
Aha! Of course. Other participants in the contest have mentioned time constraints and indeed that makes the most sense. And honestly even a zone-based automap would be helpful- being able to look at your comprehensive map and conclusively say "Well there are four places that look like this and I'm not in any of these three" would be properly useful for keeping oriented and probably help learn the landmarks much more quickly.

I did know that automaps are based on room brushing, but not that..., May 10, 2020, 8:54 p.m.

Clevercrumbish commented a topic about Where the Unknown Lurks,
How do you solve a problem like rating Where The Unknown Lurks?:
If you didn't buff the zombies then presumably there was some sort of bug involved either in the FM or my installation, because Garrett's sword passed completely through them without even connecting. This happened multiple times with different zombies and made them completely impossible to backstab. Broadhead arrows did connect but didn't seem to do any damage, and the one zombie I did kill required three holy water arrows straight to the torso (I chose to kill the one patrolling the spiral s..., May 9, 2020, 10:59 p.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about Where the Unknown Lurks,
How do you solve a problem like rating Where The Unknown Lurks?:
Where The Unknown Lurks is a strange animal. It's a tiny, two objective in-and-out nick stuff mission with a much larger optional Bonehoard style space hidden under a secret beneath it. It's entirely possible to never see two thirds of the mission because you can simply avoid finding out about or completing the secret puzzle. The mansion space is small, cozy and sparsely populated, so the mission itself is a walk in the park.

The undead church level below, however, is a different beast. I'..., May 9, 2020, 8:50 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about Troubling Transitions,
Simple, fun, decent:
Not sure Troubling Transitions is winning any awards any time soon, but if like me you despised every official LGS level that mentions a cathedral you could do far worse than this for a panacea. It's not particularly difficult, but neither is it boring or poorly made, and tracking around the neighbourhood via various skywalks is a fun exercise. A solid effort.

A minor criticism is that there are a number of spelling mistakes in readables, and not all of them in places where this could be d..., May 8, 2020, 3:14 a.m.

Clevercrumbish created a new topic about The Pursuance of An Inscrutable Reciprocity,
Arrogantly presented and dull to play.:
Before I started this FM I was already given pause by the seemingly incredibly conceited manner in which the author describes the scale of difficulty. I was not aware of GORT as some sort of Thief FM impresario, and I'm skeptical of the idea now. True enough, there are additional axes of difficulty present in The Pursuance of An Inscrutable Reciprocity than in vanilla Thief 2: A very sparse amount of starting gold, a heavy sprinkling of steel-helmed guards, and a scripted system whereby guard..., May 8, 2020, 12:06 a.m.