I spent most of my evening yesterday playing through the beginning few chapters of Thief: Deadly Shadows, the last title from the fated Ion Storm development team. This game first caught my eye a few years back when I saw it in the possession of a girlfriend at the time. I had never played the prior two games (I'm really not much of a PC gamer for anything other than RPGs), and was immediately intrigued by its premise: pure stealth.

I've been a longtime fan of well-implemented stealth...