The new Thief has a similar level: a haunted asylum. It has a shock scare early on (you will predict it, too obvious) and a few chills within but isn't nearly as scary as Shalebridge, not by a longshot.

Shalebridge still freaks me out.

I played through Dishonored several times because I was needing a stealth fix. The method of gameplay does affect the outcome but the number of those outcomes isn't huge (think Mass Effect 3's Pick-A-Colour ending). Dishonored was far too easy, I play on the hardest difficulty and ghosted it ending with a happy cutscene ending, hardest and killed everyone where plague rats ran amok and the end cutscene was rather grim and everything in between.

The Blink spell and Dark Vision spells made the game a walk in the park.

It's a very good game and does pay homage to the Thief series in a few parts. If you see it on sale, it's worth a buy if only for another type of stealthy-type game.

System Shock 2 is available on GOG.com for both PC and Mac. It is one of the finest FPS/sneak/RP games you will ever play. It is still is my #1 spot.

Because I am such a wonderful person, email me (address is visible above) with a random bunch of junk text then reply to this post with the same junk and I'll gift you the game. You can be playing it in an hour...

It doesn't help the story, add to characterization, flesh out the setting, etc, it's just there because someone wanted to get away with it and be edgy. Except that too much of it and it just becomes stupid and puerile, actively hurting the final product

Thank you! You explained my overall dissatisfaction with it far better than I did. It didn't help or improve Thief in any way whatsoever.

Save your preaching, they are only games.

We play the Thief series as pure stealth games, we don't kill (except perhaps monsters). It's like grown up Hide & Seek.

The stuff in the new Thief you see in the brothel is pretty nice (for a grownup :)) but I don't want my almost-8 year old seeing S&M or some whore riding a guy. Maybe you do, but I'd rather not.

Tell me, Freud, what is my main problem?

Oh yes, another failure is the lack of a jump button. What?! It has been replaced by a contextual 'action' button.

I love all things Thief and have since the first release of Thief: The Dark Project.

What the new Thief gets right:
- Stealth. Just as good as previous iterations.
- Lock picking. Similar to what we had with Thief: Deadly Shadows.
- Rope Arrows. Only because they are back after disappearing in Deadly Shadows- Lighting & atmosphere. I think they nailed it.
- Difficulty: Oh yes... they nailed this. The Iron Man setting looks great (you die, game over. You have to restart from scratch) as well as may other great tweaks. Like turning off that stupid Focus (see below)

What the new Thief gets wrong:
- Rope Arrows. Yay, they are back, but they can only be shot into special wood beams with rope wrapped around them. The original rope arrows could be shot into almost any type of wood, even walls and many trees, allowing for great exploration.
- Focus. This is Thief, not Dishonored. Fuck off, Focus.
- Swearing and sex. I'm not a prude, but I would have liked hearing more "Taffer" and "Benny's drunk"-type talk over "fuck fuck fuck fuck" and the hot sexness in the brothel. Some of us play these games with our kids.
- Scripted actions. Escape-type scenes. Very new Tomb Raider. Maybe it's part of 'reimagining' games that these scenes seem necessary.
I'm in to the third part of the story (the brothel) and while I am loving the new Thief as a die-hard fan, there are some serious shortcomings.

I guess those are YMMV problems. Though I agree about the screen brightness one.

They may not even need any fine print. Accepting compensation can affect your right to seek damages later.

Just today on the news some Canadian luge folks were lamenting coming in 4th. Some were suggesting the Russians slowed the track down for them by raising the track temperature. No proof, of course.

It was embarsssing to hear my countrymen spewing such sour grapes without any evidence. You lost, deal with it. Don't blame your suits, the weather, Russian subterfuge, cosmic rays, whatever...

...perhaps other countries just have better made and tested suits.

The music industry just doesn't get the 21st century. Their business model worked well enough (they get most of the cash, the artists got peanuts) in the day when the only way to get music was on physical media manufactured and distributed by them.

My empathy is 100% with the artists, not a thing for the non-musical side of the business.

... as beta continues to spread its AIDS among the geek population.

Funny, I've been just getting more back into /. as of late. Even if just to say how horrible Beta is.

Based on some of the obfuscated code I've seen? Hungarian.