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SCREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After a year of production, I finally own this amazing zine from @onehelluvazine made with passion by a lot of artists I adore, I’m so much happyyyyyyy THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR WORK ON THIS!!!!
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** Permission to post it was granted by the artist
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Please, support the artist on their pages too **
Artist : @ryosuketarou
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Thief Of Thieves
Thief! Someone stole my time!
Where on Earth is Carmen… or rather Celia? A renowned burglar and protégée of the master thief Redmond, she’s now in Europe to prepare for a new heist alongside a crew of criminals she recently joined. Between planning, breaking and entering, infiltration, and larceny, the mission promises to be a thrill ride. So, is the loot worth the candle?
❤ The art direction clearly steals the show. Based on a comic book by Robert Kirkman, it borrows all its codes and stages them to create a sort of interactive comic book: cel-shaded visuals, speech bubbles, and sound effects accompany the more narrative scenes, or blend into sprites during gameplay. For the latter, the models appear in 3D this time, a bit simplistic, but without breaking with the overall aesthetic. We can feel the care that went into the visual side of things, especially in the well crafted and richly detailed environments. If the game is all about stealth, one thing’s for sure; this art style, on the other hand, does not go unnoticed.
+/- The few characters who make up the adventure are certainly not lacking in personality and have something about them that makes us want to learn more. Unfortunately, we struggle to form any real attachment to them. Celia, our protagonist, has enough badassery and sarcasm to intrigue, but that’s about the only thing that defines her in the end. For someone new to the comics, we ultimately learn nothing about her life, her ambitions, or her motivations, leaving us completely in the dark… okay, that’s the whole point of the mission, but still! As for her new accomplices, they get a bit more exposure but it relies on a pattern that is far too repetitive and not natural enough: each debriefing session offers an opportunity to chat with them, and they take that chance to dump their entire backstory on us. In my opinion, having these exchanges woven into cutscenes or during missions would have allowed for a more organic character development and would have made us feel more invested in their fate. But while their uniqueness is undeniable, the likability factor misses its mark.
+/- On the audio side, the voice cast, quite impressive, breathes real energy into the dialogue and even gives the characters a certain depth that the story fails to explore. The music also effectively accompanies the adventure, with orchestral themes of decent quality, but very easily forgettable, not to mention the fact that they cut out at times for no reason. Being stealthy during the mission is all well and good, but that wasn’t its job.
+/- When the city has gone to sleep, one, two, three, four, five little thieves go tip toe tip toe… Well, that would have been the case if the gameplay weren’t so rough around the edges. And yet, we were starting from interesting foundations: dialogue choices that strengthen or weaken bonds with our partners, different approach options during missions, all leading to various branching paths that affect the course of the story. However, several issues keep constantly throwing a wrench in our plans. First, the camera offers two very limited angles that constantly obscure the important areas. Then there’s the NPC AI, which never reacts the same way twice and completely lacks readability, making any margin for improvement after a failure nearly impossible; this, by the way, led to some rather silly moments that completely shattered the tension. Finally, while the environments are detailed, they are barely put to use given their glaring lack of interactivity. Given the expectations that had been built up, what we’re left with is a pretty meager haul.
✖ The story is really not appealing. I don’t know if this is an episode directly based on the comics, but the narrative seriously lacks pace and clear stakes, to the point where it never manages to generate any tension or surprise. Nothing is ever given to us that would allow us to fully invest ourselves; no wonder we walk away empty handed.
✖ Several minor bugs seem to be interfering with our plans, from characters and NPCs getting stuck in the environment, to sudden crashes, to subtitles that disappear mid-dialogue… enough to sound the alarm.
✖ The autosaves will be your worst enemy: they occur irregularly and at the worst possible moments during missions, which can make situations quite tricky in case of failure. Indeed, the respawn can put us in a tough spot, sometimes even softlocking us. Instead of watching our backs, it ends up trapping us.
I’m coming up short from this heist that promised me a rather thrilling adventure but ended up offering me far too little engagement, given its clunky stealth and its characters who feel hollow. Carmen Sandiego has the flair, Arsène Lupin has the cunning… Celia doesn’t yet have the goods to measure up to them. She didn’t manage to steal our hearts.
took me a while to find time to finish this..
this clip still lives rent free in my head 🫦
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