Th3 Plan review

A great man once said, “The one thing men want more than anything else in the world is to be a part of a heist,” (OK so Dane Cook may not be a “great man” but he is a greatly funny man). Crave entertainment’s new game, Th3 Plan, wants to and give us all the high tech thievery and action of Heat, but it ends up decidedly lukewarm.

The plot revolves around a group of seven thieves, employing thier own unique skills (sharpshooting, demolition, acrobatics...) to steal two Rembrandt paintings. In classic crime caper style, your first task is to break your partner out of a jail after he was put there by a clichéd double cross in the opening cut scene. This first prison level, while not nearly as exciting as the one in Splinter Cell: Double Agent, is a fun training mission that introduces the game’s most interesting feature: split-screen team control for up to three crooks at a time. Picture the split-screen styling’s of TV's 24, where each character has a screen that you can switch to on the fly, or have one of you buddies take control of.

This character swapping is where Th3 Plan really stops knocking off of other games and makes a pass at an original big time heist. You’ll constantly be multi-tasking, such as when you use one character's skill for talking to guards then switch to another thief to pick the locked door behind him, or take a photo of the location of a surveillance camera you’ll need to know about when you return to actually pilfer that painting.