I keep fucking doing this. It’s really freaking me out.

I’ll have all the lights out, right? It’ll be just me and the warm glow of the monitor. Thief 3 is humming away in all its splendid glory. I’m totally in the zone, completely immersed in the game. I’m darting from shadow to shadow, avoiding detection by everyone and everything. A Pagan guard turns his head to cough, and I make my move, scurrying past the torchlight.

Oh crap! The guard is turning this way! I’d better perform a smooth combat roll into the shadows, narrowly avoiding discovery. Press crouch while running to perform said maneuver. Garrett stops in his tracks and squats, right in broad torchlight, plain as day. Shit! I keep forgetting this isn’t Splinter Cell!

I don’t know what the problem is. It’s just the stealth setting of the game. I seem to have developed natural instincts born from many hours of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. If I’m creeping along the rafters, and happen to pass over some guard, my first instinct is to jump down and neutralize them. It’s gotten me killed more than once.

Oh well, save often, right?

I have finally decided what frustrates me the most about this game, however. It’s the fact that I have to wait until after dark to play it. I try to play it during the day, and it’s absolutely impossible. The entire game is nothing but shadows, but I play during the day, and with the screen glare, all I’m seeing is myself, staring back at me from the reflection in the monitor.

Today during lunch I must have been quite a sight to behold, sitting at my desk, with a heavy blanket draped over myself and the monitor, so that I could get my Thief 3 fix without waiting until sundown. I just can’t darken my apartment enough. Curses.

Also, if you play the PC version of Thief 3, I urge you to check this out. This guy, noticing that some of the textures in Thief 3 were lower quality than they needed to be, set about creating high resolution replacements.

I’ve been using all of his mods myself, and I absolutely love them. The higher quality textures are a real treat, but it’s his effects tweaks that really got me. He removed the bright arrow trails, he changed the loot glint from the bright obnoxious blue shine, to a more subtle golden sparkle. And the highlight glow, when you focus on an object to use/take, he changed to a very tasteful bronze color. I reccommend these mods to everyone.

I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, so I’m not sure what else I’ll be able to post.

Driv3r (Driver 3) is supposed to come out on Tuesday, so I’ll probably pick that up.

In closing, allow me to leave you with a link I got from my friend Xero. I have been a closet Transformers fanboy since I was a little kid, and no contest, Soundwave was always my favorite. So you can imagine that watching this over again makes me downright giddy.