Calling all Thieves! Thief Simulator 2 is out and ready for all the thieves to come out and do what they do best – steal stuff! Developed by CookieDev and Ulitmate Games S.A., and published by PlayWay S.A., make sure you’re ready to delve into the world of thieving, and hopefully, you’re not caught whilst doing so.

When delving into Thief Simulator 2, we’re required to decide what difficulty we want to play on, with the choices being Easy, Normal, and Hardcore. If you’re someone who just wants to do the stealing part without worrying about getting caught, easy is the choice for you, but if you want to be a hardcore thief, you can give hardcore a go. Your settings will be locked and if, or more likely when you are caught by the police, you will lose all the loot you have, and bailing yourself out will cost you all of your money. I’m not willing to risk it, so I decided to play Normal mode.

There is another choice to make before even starting your thief-hood journey. Story Mode or Free Mode? They’re exactly what they sound like. The story mode follows a narrative, whereas the free mode lets you do what you want when you want. I found the loading screens to be quite interesting, as you can click on the symbols that appear on the screen and get money from them. They don’t give much, but as they say, every dollar counts.

They’re also full of helpful tips. After loading in, your phone will ring, with a warning that the police are outside and you need to escape. You can also check your security camera if you don’t believe the person calling, but before leaving, you will need to go gather some equipment from outside – a Crowbar, a flashlight, and the key to the back gate so you can run to your car, make your escape, and get back to work.

As you go about your life of crime, you gain enough experience and level up. You can also sell your stolen goods at Crazy Joe’s Pawnshop or on the Dark Web where you can potentially earn more money. As you level, you earn skill points that can be spent on a variety of skills, with the first being “Marking.” It will allow you to highlight tenants by looking at them, and when you mark somebody, you will learn their routine and make it a lot easier to steal from them. This works really well with a simple-to-learn control scheme, where an on-screen prompt will let us know what button we need to press at what time.

There are three tiers of skills available; Common, Rare, and Epic. A lot of these are level-locked, but there are times when you’ll have the option of selecting which skill you’d prefer, and some can even be upgraded, though these may use more than a single skill point to do so.

The game plays amazingly well, although it does feel a little like a Bethesda title in the way it handles. After unlocking the Lockpick skill and buying yourself some picks, the unlocking mechanic plays out in a way that will feel very familiar to anyone who’s ever unlocked something in Fallout or Elder Scrolls.

In fact, most of the game mechanics feel very Bethesda-inspired in the way they play out, such as picking up items, the ways doors and cabinets open, and even the way your torch shines out into the darkness. If they added in V.A.T.S., S.P.E.C.I.A.L., and the ability to switch to a third-person view, you would almost think Bethesda had made it.

There isn’t much music during gameplay, but it’s understandable as to why. Thief Simulator 2 is quite realistic in that we really only have music when we’re in our truck, or if we walk past a house where they have a radio playing.

Occasionally you’ll have some suspenseful music, like when the police are called, but otherwise, it’s mostly the sounds of nature, or you breaking into someone’s house and liberating their property. It all sounds super realistic, which is brilliant.

The voice acting is great, although it can feel a little one-sided at times, the NPCs genuinely sound panicked when they find you rummaging through their house, and the police are intimidating when they’re looking for you. Breaking into a house is just as scary for you as it is for the resident, as the sound of shattering glass draws a lot of attention, and it really gets the heart pounding.

The graphics are great, and just like the mechanics, feel a little like they’re inspired by Bethesda games, only more modern and like a suburb you could drive through in real life. The town layout is also fun to explore. It’s not just a basic design with a couple of mission-related buildings – most of them can be accessed in one way or another, and they’ll typically have an occupant or two going about their daily life, interacting with the various items that bring life to the environments. Even though there aren’t many NPCs roaming about, the way the buildings are laid out leaves the world feeling lived in.

Thief Simulator 2 is a really fun and interesting game, and being able to do something you wouldn’t do in real life makes things even better. I love being able to choose the difficulty and how I want to play, as sometimes I don’t feel like playing a story, so having the ability to choose is brilliant. My only complaint is the load/wait times, it can take a couple of minutes to even load into an area. Goodluck Thieves!

Written by: Mitchell Batchelor