Shortly after that fateful day when SEGA pulled the plug on the Dreamcast, over 100 titles ended up either being scrapped or reworked for other consoles. One of these casualties was Picassio, a promising looking stealth adventure that entailed sneaking into museums and galleries to steal valuable artworks. Development moved over to the PS2, but eventually it was consigned to the scrapheap. Although countless stealth games have come and gone since, Thief Simulator 2 builds on the rich and fertile groundwork laid by the creators of Picassio all those years ago.
Thief Simulator 2’s main menu presents two options. The lengthy Story Mode starts with a tutorial, in which you’re caught mid robbery and must escape silently, before becoming more mission focused. Missions are provided via muffled phone conversations, often requiring you to be in certain places at certain times. Thankfully, time can be skipped by parking in your SUV, with a typical open-world day-to-night cycle in place. Your criminal career starts out on square one, without even a lockpick to twiddle, and over time new gizmos and bigger opportunities arise, with the possibility of a lucrative heist frequently teased – but not until you’ve robbed the local neighbourhoods blind first.
Upon being detected, usually by foolishly trying to sneak into a house while the occupants are still home, the police attend and give chase. They can be given the slip, leaping into the SUV and tearing away GTA style, or hiding in bins or lockers. Being caught doesn’t spell ‘Game Over’ – it’s possible to escape from the police slammers or pay for a bailout. Amusingly, the police station can be robbed blind too. Laptops, keyboards, monitors – anything left for the taking. The only downside to this diversion is that you’ll need to find the key to the main doors.
Sandbox Mode is a tad misleading. Rather than give you the keys (well, lockpicks) to the kingdom, this mode also starts on square one. No money, no tools, no experience. The idea is to start small, stealing anything of value from abandoned houses located within two small suburban areas, before flogging hot goods at different locations, including a 24-hour garage. A real classy establishment. This not only builds up a stockpile of cash but grants valuable XP so that more crime-enabling skills can be unlocked, including lockpicking, safe cracking, computer hacking, and the ability to steal cars. Many of these skills are needed to go on heists – set in locations such as a bank and a museum – along with the floorplans, which require a modest outlay. You’ll also need to case joints, place mini cameras to discover inhabitants’ movement patterns and invest in drones. Search environments fully, and you may find an alarm code or key, making it easier to slip into a house undetected.
The Sandbox Mode also features a customisable rundown homestead. It’s more than just a place to stash and sell stolen goods, as it also includes dummy items to fine-tune your craft. More importantly, the bedroom includes a laptop connected to the dark web. It has both a shop to purchase crowbars, ski masks, binoculars, cameras, and other criminal paraphernalia (sorry to all the avid skiers and birdwatchers out there) and a site to cheekily sell stolen goods back to their owners. Extra XP and cash can be earned by taking on petty vandalism missions for revenge-filled citizens too, although only one of these quests can be taken on at once.
There’s a lot to explore and invest time into here, often surprising with the multitude of ways to steal and break the law. Buy a shovel and treasure hunting can be added to the agenda. The aforementioned seedy garage also has a parcel locker with codes to discover, and any ATM can be hacked once the hacking laptop has been acquired. It takes a long time to reach the point where the world is your crime-filled oyster, though, and this is Thief Simulator 2’s biggest downfall. It’s tricky to get a foothold – quite literally as you can’t even climb a trellis to jump a fence initially due to our anti-hero’s agility level being too low. The majority of properties are fenced off and off-limits, which makes it difficult to progress. I spent hours fruitlessly looking for anything not glued down to gain enough XP to level up and see what else the game had to offer.
It’s a shame that progress is so slow as this is one of the better simulators by Ultimate Games, even getting the UI and controls (mostly) right. There’s even an optional Survival Mode where it’s essential to eat, drink and sleep. For all its positives, it’s also an infuriating tease – so many of its ideas, as novel as they are, are locked away and require tedious grinding to unlock. In these days of instant gratification, it’s uncommon to play something that makes you work so hard for so little. Isn’t that the opposite of what becoming a thief is all about?
Thief Simulator 2 is out now on PS5 and Xbox Series. Published by Ultimate Games S.A.