Parent's Guide: Thief - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Thief is a first person stealth game that rewards cautious play. Staying in the shadows, looking for your chance, and sneaking past guards without getting caught is the order of the day here, as you try to get in, and out, of various buildings and warehouses, without getting caught.

Moving the emphasis away from combat, Thief is a game with a slower pace. Lurking in the darkness, you'll have to scout each area out first, looking for anything you can use to your advantage - a light you can snuff out with a water arrow from a distance, a guard you can distract by smashing a bottle, or even a ledge you could leap up to, to bypass the scene entirely. Requiring some precise dual analogue stick skills - after all, you wouldn't want to push the stick too much, and end up making too much noise, or worse still, accidentally knock over a pot or something, Thief is a game that's all about awareness and planning.

While seasoned players will likely have little trouble with this, those new to games like this may find the stealth requirements a bit too much. Sneaking around everywhere isn't all that easy, even for adults, and even on the lowest difficulties, guards can still spot you if you put the slightest foot wrong. Forget to check the floor ahead of you while moving, and you may trample some bits of broken glass, alerting a guard to your presence, for example. Requiring a lot of patience, a lot of observation, and a lot of forward planning, this is one best left to older players.

As a game that has you sneaking through the shadows, Thief does all it can to lead you away from violent confrontations - and the ones it does have aren't actually all that gory. While you can press a button to perform a takedown on a guard, all it does is let you bonk him over the head with a truncheon, or sometimes knee him in the back to the tune of cracking. There is, however, very little in the way of blood, with what little gore there is disappearing quickly.

While swearing doesn't come as thick and fast as in other games, it does pepper the dialogue, and is mostly unnecessary, with s**t and f**k dropped into dialogue alongside other more exotic terms like gutters**te. The strongest content to be found, however, is the nudity and sexual content, which is mostly found in the game's third level, which takes place in a brothel.

While most women are reasonably clothed in the brothel itself, later in the level you'll be expected to peer through holes in a wall (as part of a mission objective), which means you'll end up spying on the women and their clients. Needless to say, these scenes are very sexually charged, from topless nudity in one room, to another where you see a naked couple having full on sex, complete with sound effects. While you don't see any of the downstairs bits, you do essentially spy on a naked couple having intercourse.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4