I was ready to be done, or maybe jump to the divisive Thief 3, but the more I played, the more people tried to tempt me to try stuff in the FM or 'Fan mission' community. Thief has a series falls in the same place as Doom, with a little bit of Bethesda Game energy. These are games that are kept alive by their communities. The history of these games is inseparable from the history of the people who keep them alive, not only with new content, but even working at all. Like Doom, the Thief...

At the end of my Perfect Dark revisit, I mused about the difference between US/European and Japanese game design in regards to realism in the 80s and 90s. To summarize, the trend I noticed is that Western games often tried to simulate reality. Fall damage, ledge grabbing, a particular fondness for momentum, and the much hated limited ammo. Strategy games tend to be military tactics simulators. You see the stealth game born in the wonderfully archaic Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple II...