Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam’s 2012 article singing the praises of videogame cities which are more than mere reconstruction, but are built from the bricks and mortar of ideas.>

I’ve been visiting various cities recently, which always fill me with confusion and wonder, then Dishonored made me think about how much I miss Looking Glass. Put the two together and this happens. Join me in a meandering word-search for cohesion and theme in the use of the city across Thief, and the selected works of Rockstar and Charles Dickens. Be warned, there are spoilers for all three Thief games.

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Will Just Cause 3 have multiplayer? Just Cause 2‘s wonky-but-ace Multiplayer Mod showed that – surprise surprise – running and driving and flying and grappling-hooking and exploding all around an open world with your chums can be pretty fun. An actual, proper, made-with-access-to-the-source-code multiplayer mode could be something special. But Just Cause 3 won’t have one, Avalanche Studios have said. Probably. At this point of the game’s marketing campaign, it’s hard to tell how much of this is a firm declaration, how much is uncertainty, and how much is The Official Marketing Line. Don’t get your hopes up, in short. But maybe don’t be surprised. Oh, I don’t know!

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

This one’s regularly cited as a cult classic that didn’t quite get the acclaim it deserved at the time, but it bears repeating: Blood Money is io’s stealth game at the peak of its powers.

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A mod removing the mid-level loading from Thief: Deadly Shadows is a good thing. We cooed a bit at the Thief 3 Gold mod before in May when the first beta version arrived–coo!–so now that Version 1.0 is here we’re duty-bound to coo longer, more intensely. CoooOOo! Along with smooshing mission segments into single load-free levels, Gold makes a few other tweaks, including adjusting wonky guard paths and positions.

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After the disappointment of Hitman: Absolution, developers IO Interactive came to the Internet with their collective hat in their collective hands. Without quite admitting that Absolution’s small levels, linear missions, wonky AI, more personal story, and bottomless pockets didn’t pan out, they did write an open letter mentioning that they plan to do away with all those things for the next Hitman game. Reminding people that it’s still being made and they really did mean all that, IO have shown off a little concept art including a building which, they say, “on its own is larger than any location in Hitman: Absolution.”

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With Square’s Thief causing a great many of the Looking Glass/Ion Storm faithful to adopt a bulldog chewing a wasp facial expression for the best part of a month (I’m kidding of course – they’ll retain that expression for at least twenty years), interest in Garret’s earlier tealeaf adventures has heightened. Even the series’ former red-headed stepchild, Deadly Shadows, has itself a new moment in the sun. Assorted fixes have long been available, but a newish and very appealing one is the removal of all loading screens from the game’s notoriously chopped-up missions. … [visit site to read more]

Sometimes you want to charge guns, swords, and words a-blazin into a game world and tame the land until Iron Maiden writes a song about you. Other times, you just want to heft your heavy eyelids, sip a light tea, and gently sail through friendly old places made new again. You’ve got a long day ahead of you, but you don’t have to venture out into the cruel sadlands of life just yet. Remember better days. Here, let me help with videos of the original BioShock and Deus Ex: Human Revolution re-realized in Unreal Engine 4. They’re quite a sight.

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Well now, here is a brilliant little surprise. Who’d have thought the best game set in the Thief universe this year would be an itsy bitsy isometric Ludum Dare 29 entry? Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but Beneath The City really is a smart (though sadly brief) execution of a really fun idea. In short (but undeniably stout), it’s a real-time turn-based stealther set in Thief’s City. Each time you dash in any direction with a lithe tap of an arrow key, so too does every guard on the map. There’s also light sources to account for, water arrows to fling, and a mystery to partially unravel. Garrett – the real> Garrett – would be proud.

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Texture packs, replacement models, and post-processing mods can do a lot to pretty a game up, but they can’t conceal that jagged old level geometry. It’s an awful lot more work to re-do and update levels but by gum, the folks at Deus Ex: Revision are putting in the time. The Caustic Creative team have been tarting up and reworking Deus Ex‘s levels with more props, more decorative architecture, and fancier lighting.

Version 1.0 of the “re-imagining” mod had been due on May 12 but due a mysterious alluring offer it’s pushed back into the nebulous “near future,” those PC Gamer chaps have spotted. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with a new video showing off a few of the reworked levels.

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News of the now: there is a newish Deus Ex game on Steam. Deus Ex: The Fall is a conversion of the mobile game from a few years back, one that did an okay job of squeezing down to be prodded and poked at by commuters. I warn you, despite being a slice of Human Revolution-esque Deus Ex, the launch trailer below makes it look pretty bad. Better augment your eyes before watching.

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