A Night in Rocksbourg 3: Ink and Dust

A Night in Rocksbourg 3: Ink and Dust

Created By: DrK

Again I find myself reviewing an FM that pretty much everyone has already unanimously agreed is fantastic and almost everyone has probably already downloaded.  That’s okay though, with the fact that it’s really good out of the way it gives me room to talk about other stuff in my review…like..uh…did anyone see Star Trek yet? What was up with Spock and Uhura?!  There’s some sorta thing goin’ on there.  You know when Kirk gets the Vulcan death grip?  That’s exactly what should happen to anyone who doesn’t download this FM (GOD that was an awesome segue).

“A Night in Rocksbourg 3″ is of course the sequel to “A Night in Rocksbourg 2″ which was itself a sequel to “A Night in Rocksbourg 1″ (I know, my head is spinning too).  The campaign starts out with Garrett taking a much needed vacation to Rocksbourg only to have his plans ruined by a zombie invasion because like all videogame characters he is the single most unlucky bastard in the universe and God hates him with every fiber of His being.  By this point in the series, Garrett is in the sewers running from zombies and haunts and really big icky rats when he’s taken in by a dude who comes out of a giant white doorway and talks like Darth Vader’s big scary uncle.  It turns out he’s from a mysterious faction simply called “The Order”.

Let me stop right now and say this is one of the things I really loved about this FM, this new faction is stupidly awesome (that’s a good thing).  Now I love the factions in the Thief series as much as anyone (if they sold keeper or hammerite plushie dolls I would be on that like some sort of analogy about something being on another thing.  Bobble heads?  I would say I’d be on that even faster but frankly I think my head would explode from all the awesome) but frankly, it’s time for some new faces.  Dr. K brings us a brand new faction here that’s equal parts creepy and intriguing.  An easy way of describing them is that they’re basically keepers if they all became groupies for a death metal band and you dipped them in a giant vat of dirt- but EVEN THAT isn’t doing them justice!  But you want to know what does do them justice?…

…The voice acting (man, TWO amazing segues- there aren’t enough high fives in the world for how great I am).  The voice overs in this FM are without a doubt the best I’ve ever heard in a fan project.  Much credit has to go to Quincy Jones Wannabe (dude, we all want to be Quincy Jones, but chasing this dream will only bring disappointment and a restraining order, trust me) who turns in such a fantastic performance that it’s a shame more people won’t hear it- this is just a fan mission with a limited audience.  This guy needs to get into professional voice acting.  In fact I’m going to be his agent.  THIS KID IS GOING STRAIGHT TO THE TOP I TELLS YA.  Also I get 30% of everything…

You know what though?  WAY more than 30% of everything in this mission looks absolutely amazing (…I’ll stop now…)!  The level design is beyond fantastic.  The first room you enter in “The Order” compound is legitimately breathtaking, and while it isn’t ever quite that grand in scale again, it doesn’t get any less impressive from that point.  All new textures are used and for the most part, new objects are used as well.  What this all means unfortunately is that you need a decent computer to run this FM properly.  On my last machine, a pentium 3 with 512 megs of RAM, my computer saw the first room and I started to smell something burning.  Any modern machine will handle it fine, but be warned that if you’re running thief on a dinosaur system, this FM will go all hungry lion on the unassuming grazing gazelle that is your computer.

And now we come to it, the one thing that everyone has to talk about when they mention “A Night in Rocksbourg 3: Ink and Dust” (I’m getting tired of typing that, I think I’m just going to call this mission “Bob” from now on).  The Dark Zone.  This small bit of the mission has to be the single most crazy scary section of any FM I’ve ever played.  Mind you the mission up to this point is unsettling in a “I feel like I have to take a shower after playing this” kinda way, but nothing can prepare you for the full out mind ravashing you’re in for once you take the elevator down into what is essentially hell near the end of the mission.  There’s a scare near the beginning that worked so well I didn’t just jump, I jumped and made some sort of girlish held back shrieking noise.  I also may or may not have actually physically yelled “GET ME THE F*** OUT OF HERE” through a fit of tears near the end of this segment when you hear a siren going off and getting louder and are trapped in a pitch black maze.  I’m pretty sure that if I went to a doctor immediately after playing through this I would have been clinically diagnosed with the “heebie-jeebies”.

So is “Bob” worth downloading?  Oh, you better believe it is sir.  It’s not quite perfect- the excessively dirty looking textures make it a little too difficult to find certain hidden switches necessary to proceed and it gets a little maze heavy in its second half, but these problems don’t really matter much in the end.  Like all truly great FMs this is not only a great gameplay experience, but also an excellent piece of fan fiction.  You know what else is an excellent piece of fan fiction?  My “The Seven Sisters” review which is also on this site that you should totally check out (SWOOSH, and I score again).