If you're still grumbling and griping about the direction Eidos Montreal's Thief takes the classic stealth series in, or you simply fancy stealing things and knocking men out, give The Dark Mod a bash. Version 2.0 of the first-person sneaker inspired by Looking Glass's classics today launched, turning it from a Doom 3 mod into a standalone game.

The Dark Mod is about as close as developer Broken Glass Studios could get to Thief without infringing the copyright and risking foxing. It plays essentially the same as the classic games, and is set in a similar gothic-y steampunk-ish world with magic and monsters. It doesn't have its own campaign, instead relying on oodles of player-made missions which you can download in-game.

As well as going standalone, by replacing every Doom 3 asset it used, v2.0 brings oodles of changes. AI gets a big overhaul, now responding better to sounds, turning towards doors that open unexpectedly, searching for you better, and calling for help. Then there are improvements to character models, heaps of new sounds, better sound propagation, and loads more.

The official website and mirrors are overloaded, so for now you'll need to download it from a torrent.

"We have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy replacing all the sounds, textures, particle effects, and models that we had been using," Broken Glass said. "Hopefully this will open up a whole new audience of people who didn't want to have to purchase a different game in order to try The Dark Mod."

Here's a little teaser demonstrating just how welcome the AI improvements will be: