Quote from: Cranewings;476967Wow, I was thinking about picking it up but I hadn't decided. GW is a harsher critic than rotten tomatoes. I might go for it now.

It's your choice. Lot's of people rave about the game. It doesn't bother me if other people enjoy it at all. But don't be fooled into thinking the game is the kind of experience people make it out to be. The dynamics of the gameplay are what let it down and the boss fights are the perfect example of this. They just spoil the experience completely.

I would also recommend people don't try for the pacifist achievement, not only does it force a style of play that's not fun at all (you can't for instance turn the turrets you might hack against their owners). Also if you kill people during the intro/tutorial bit you will fail it. I only learned this yesterday. It might seem obvious on reflection, but you are only given a rifle during this sequence and the takedown move requires you be augmented and you aren't during this sequence. I don't really see how you could sneak through that part, but there you are (nor why you would want to as it's a tutorial sequence that teaches you, among other things, how to use guns, should you want to).

Quote from: Peregrin;476938SPOILER

I thought the biochip recall was a fairly obvious ploy to fuck you over, mate.

That said, you don't need any augmentations, and every single bossfight in the game has lethal ordinance littered around like candy.

1.  Boss appears.
2.  Take as many potshots as you can take without dying.
3.  Hit sprint and run round the outside of the area until you regain enough health to repeat 1 & 2.


Seriously, I thought the people on this forum would enjoy this sort of stuff.  The ideology spouted here has my back.  I mean poorly designed, arbitrarily difficult boss fights are a hallmark of vintage video-games!  It's a feature, not a bug!  It's real challenge!

Don't get me wrong I was fully expecting there to be a sequence where your bionics are switched off. It's an obvious game design ploy I call 'Black and White stage 3'. However the problem is that in doing so the game just becomes a headache. I made the choice to get fixed up without knowing what was going to happen specifically, which is as it should be, but I suspect that either way, at some point, you'll get screwed like that. There'd be no point to it otherwise.

Quote from: Peregrin;476982Much better than any of the Mass Effect games, IMO, in terms of attempting to combine action and RPG elements.

Also, adding third-person cameras for cover was the best thing they could've done.  The extra awareness it gives you keeps the stealth play interesting and fun rather than frustrating.  It also allows you to really scope out rooms during combat to help you plan an approach.  

I know some hardcore "immersion" dudes (Warren Spector himself, possibly, since he made comments to the effect of "I wouldn't have done that") may dislike it, but the first-person perspective in shooters is really much more limiting for spatial awareness than "real life" anyway, so adhering to the perspective as some sacred doctrine would've been a poor decision, IMO.

ME has a better story but worse gameplay. However the kooky relationship and sex stuff is just pandering and superfluous.
The gameplay isn't so much the problem in DE it's how it handles the inventory and targetting, which can be very fussy. If you play non lethal, as I have, you don't have rifles and guns. So in the boss fights you have to run aroudn the map, while avoiding hot molten death, to ransack the lockers and caches placed there for players like me. Unfortunately it's a pain in the ass having to deal with the selection system and a tiny inventory while trying to pick up the right kind of ammo. The guns come loaded with far too little and during the selection process (when you click the locker to see what's inside) the game doesn't pause, which means neither does the boss. This isn't fun.

Quote from: Peregrin;476938Seriously, I thought the people on this forum would enjoy this sort of stuff.  The ideology spouted here has my back.  I mean poorly designed, arbitrarily difficult boss fights are a hallmark of vintage video-games!  It's a feature, not a bug!  It's real challenge!

I really laughed out loud at this

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;477007It's your choice. Lot's of people rave about the game. It doesn't bother me if other people enjoy it at all. But don't be fooled into thinking the game is the kind of experience people make it out to be. The dynamics of the gameplay are what let it down and the boss fights are the perfect example of this. They just spoil the experience completely.

Hey, Ghost Whistler, would you be interested on starting a thread on games you really liked and why?

I am an avid user of Steam and one of the best things it has is that it alows me to get some "old" games and run them smoothly on my PC (which was top gear 3 years ago). These days, for example,  I'm trying out some shooters I missed back in their day (probably I was playing WoW) and it's great to be able to run them with all the specs turned to the max.

So, I would be really interested in some recommendations from you, if you have the time.

Posting an entire thread just to effuse about my choice of games seems rather self indulgent.

I just completed Deus Ex. I also didn't say it was a bad game. I said it was a game let down by some flawed game design. Boss design like this may appeal to 'vintage' video gamers, but it does nothing for me. I would rather evolve game design. I also think that, in games like this, story more often than not gets in the way. Fortunately for ME it doesn't cross that line, though it certainly flirts with it constantly.

I saved right before the choice of endings, but on reflectioon I won't watch the rest. I think my experience should be unique and singular.

Games I've enjoyed:

Arkham Asylum because it gets Batman, though it is short (about same time as DE).
Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory because the stealth works and the game doesn't take your toys away like it does in the next two games (more so Double Agent) and sticks wot what works. It's also written well and plays well.
Fallout 3 because the setting is well done, varied and, despite almost impossible to see frag mines, has a lot of gameplay. Rough around the edges (especially New Vegas) but playable.
GTA San Andreas because it's the pinnacle of the GTA series, has excellent characters and a ton of gameplay. Even flying the planes is fun. It's got way more to offer than GTA4 ever had.
Spider Man 2 because it's a great sandbox and the spiderman mechanisms work really well, including combat (IMO). That said the Mysterio statue of liberty sequence has aged me 10 years.
I always liked Mortal Kombat, and fight games in general (Soul Calibur especially, though 4 was bollocks incarnate), but the recent game was a joke.

I think the problem is, as evidenced by the reboot of Mortal Kombat, that current gen iterations of long standing franchises like these, and Soul Calibur or GTA, have failed to live up to expectations. I really liked San Andreas and was expecting GTA4 to be more of the same only with next gen oomph. It wasn't. It isn't a bad game, but it's no comparison. Mortal Kombat is ok, but the story is shite (especially the bonkers ending) and the online is broken. I can say much the same about Soul Calibur - who the fuck thought including characters from Star Wars was a good idea!?!

These are a few of my favourite things, on the console.

Everyone knows the best fighters are niche Japanese 2d titles.

Plus I haven't seen a Western developed get sticky physics right, so I still refuse to play MK (any iteration).

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;477026I always liked Mortal Kombat, and fight games in general (Soul Calibur especially, though 4 was bollocks incarnate), but the recent game was a joke.

I think the problem is, as evidenced by the reboot of Mortal Kombat, that current gen iterations of long standing franchises like these, and Soul Calibur or GTA, have failed to live up to expectations. I really liked San Andreas and was expecting GTA4 to be more of the same only with next gen oomph. It wasn't. It isn't a bad game, but it's no comparison. Mortal Kombat is ok, but the story is shite (especially the bonkers ending).

I thought the storyline was handled really well in this incarnation of MK.

Quote from: Imaginos;477077I thought the storyline was handled really well in this incarnation of MK.

The story mode is very good (apart from the unskippable cut scenes), but the ending is complete bollocks - and that's taking into account that it's Mortal Kombat.

Having finished the game today...

Quote from: Peregrin;476982I know some hardcore "immersion" dudes (Warren Spector himself, possibly, since he made comments to the effect of "I wouldn't have done that") may dislike it, but the first-person perspective in shooters is really much more limiting for spatial awareness than "real life" anyway, so adhering to the perspective as some sacred doctrine would've been a poor decision, IMO.

Warren Spector shot his credibility in the head when he endorsed the game design choices in DX: Invisible War. I am pro-first person, but the third person angle worked well enough here that I didn't mind.

Also, I stand by my comment that this is a great game. It does not live up to DX1 -- that one had better readables, a pathos that gave it its own edge, and was better paced -- but it does so many things well that the faults are easy to forgive. And besides, when the basis of comparison is DX1, falling a bit short is nothing serious. It is way better than anything I have played in the last few years.

Quote from: Melan;477970It does not live up to DX1 -- that one had better readables, a pathos that gave it its own edge, and was better paced -- but it does so many things well that the faults are easy to forgive.

That speaks to my questions about it... the original is my all-time favorite game, right up there with the first three Silent Hill games... but my favorite thing about Deus Ex, that had me playing it over and over (I did the no-kill thing last time... which was like a whole new game) is the mood... that dark and empty feeling running through it.
You become so intimate with the world and how broken it is that the choices at the end feel profound and like real choices... because by that point you care how it's all going to turn out. It's not the sort of game you race through just to beat it... the longer you take the more there is to take in.
Eidos made some other games I really liked, such as Project Eden... which had a similar feel to DE in places... a bit bleak and hopeless and sad.
Even the original Tomb Raider had a bit of that...

I've seen decent argument for why DE1 is unique and probably not the sort of game we'll see again any time soon... mostly for money/resource reasons... and because the majority of gamers don't really care for that degree of detail.

So does this new one have a definable mood? Does it 'feel' like Deus Ex or is is just a cyber-ops game with that name stamped on it?
Is there much/any continuity with the first game?

It does have its own mood. More personal and somewhat downcast. DX1 was comic bookish in a good way; DX:HR not so much. The links between the two are present, but aren't pushed in your face. You will get them if you have played DX1.

Speaking of Deus Ex, Project 2027, a Russian-developed mod, has been released last week in its English version. It is pretty nice, with a cloak-and-dagger atmosphere. Not as freeform as The Nameless Mod, and since you play a mech-aug, your options are significantly more limited than in standard DX, but I am liking it so far.