I don't normally post about the first reviews for games, however apart from Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is literally the only PC Game I really give a damn about.
PC Gamer has the honour of the first review. Scans are here. 94/100 is their verdict.
The reviewer makers their love for 'Deus Ex' apparent from the beginning; they state that they consider the original 'Deus Ex' to be the best game ever made. Their overall opinion then is nice to hear; that "this is the Deus Ex of our time."The only reason it didn't get full marks was because Human Revolution apparently shys away from the "improvisation" of the first game; remember the bat-shit-crazy stuff you pulled off from the first game? Not all of it is possible, and there are areas where you don't have the option of thinking off the wall.
I must say, I'm now looking forward to this. I just pray it sells; Deus Ex wasn't a finacial hit - I hope this one is.
Edit:
Well, hold your horses folks. Missed this interesting development.
Thoughts?
Actually this game is not that good when compared to games like Deus Ex 1 or Vampire Bloodlines. But compared to the sorry state of today PC game market it is good enough. PC version also suffers a lot from being a console port. I would guess that people who complained that Witcher 2 felt a lot like a console game would hate it in this game even more.
@OMG_Jongalt26 The quicksave key is F5, it'll alway save in the same file, just like the first game did.
So far the game hasn't failed to live up to my expectations. The only gripes I have with it would be the absence of melee weapons, although, that only serves to increase the difficulty. I haven't found any way to recharge energy, other than protein bars and those big jars, no more maintenance bots to do the job. This also increases the difficulty of the game by a lot.
The story is a lot more directed than it was in Deus Ex, just about every crucial point being a cinematic. Speaking of which, it would have been nice of that division of Square Enix that did the trailers also worked on the cinematics. In terms of atmosphere, the game is fantastic. The world is rich with detail, at one point I just stopped playing and stood in one spot, listening to the radio that started to play the Deus Ex 1 theme.
There could have been a few more open air levels, like Liberty Island, or the warehouse one from Deus Ex, there may yet be, since I'm far from finishing the game. Regardless, the degree of freedom of movement you have in the game is great, and after I got the springy legs and electric parachute upgrades, I was really going places .
I heard the game had in game advertising, but so far I haven't noticed it, either that, or the ads are really well integrated in the game. Lastly, how do I bypass/disable mines? I've tried sneaking past them, I've tried EMP, I've tried asking nicely. Nothing worked.
Torin,
I hear you on that, but you are comparing a sequal to two games that are easily on the short list of best games of all time.... Add system shock, quake, Doom, Warcraft, starcraft, morrowind, Demigod and your MMO of choice and that could round out the list lol.
There definitely is some consolization, my main gripes, after playing more, is the save games system sucks. I like naming my saves. Deleting them is a PITA as well. Im glad there are 100 now as opposed to the original 20, but it would be easier to cull a list of 20 lol. I hit the 100 mark yesterday just because its quicker to save a new one as opposed to overwriting. (I tend to like to keep a few of the last saves just in case i realized i screwed something up, e.g. purchased a useless aug, or blew away my nukes / stop worms or ammo on something that wasnt worth it etc.)
There are a few other consolization issues as well but they are minor. When compared to DX2 though, the gripes are minor.
Thanks for the info Unacomn! I finally found it and wondered why it wasnt listed in the keyboard commands lol.
I miss melee weapons, a crowbar and crates there arent any more crates in games these days. Kids dont know what they are missing lol.I also wish there were maintenance bots, the damn bars dont add enough E. The lack of E definitely influenced how i spent my praxis points.
I agree with you in regards to the cinematics. I also wish they were rendered at a higher res. They seem kinda pixelated....
The stylization and detail in the game is amazing, perhaps the best i've seen since Tron 2.0 (There are definitely others out there that are great as well but I loved Trons style)
Note to self: get the springy legs and parachute lol. Hopefully im not too far into the game, just made it to montreal so hopefully not even 50%.
I havent seen advertising yet either... maybe it was regional or people in other forums were complaining when it didnt exist...
I havent been able to figure out how to get past mines without shooting them. Even with invisibility they go explode... Let me know if you figure it out lol !
j
The Montreal portion of the game disappointed me a bit. At some point, you'll have to leave the tower, and the game directs you to descend to a certain level, in order to exit the building. My first instinct was the exact opposite, going to the roof, and getting ready to take a nosedive into the pavement, and hoping that the Icarus upgrade would prevent me from turning into a fine red mist on impact. I couldn't do that sadly. The game has a reason for that, since you still have some stuff to do in the building later on, but the acknowledgment of that insane option would have been nice. I used to jump off buildings a lot in Deus Ex, like right after you send that message to the NSF, in New York, that's how I escaped. I broke both of JC's legs, but he lived, and I didn't have to murder anyone.
Speaking of which, I'm at the second visit to Hengsha, and so far I've managed to not murder anyone. Even when they deserved it. Sadly, people still see poor Adam as a cybernetic killing machine. I hope the game realizes at some point that over the course of the game, as a result of my actions only one person died so far, the first boss. The second I think was still alive, I tried to drag her to the jet, but she wouldn't fit, so I left here there... so probably she was incinerated when the aircraft took off.
To get past mines, crouch and hold the walk button at the same time. You can walk up and activate them to disable them then activate again to pick them up.
Never thought of that, never tough it would work, never thought to use walk during crouch. Damn, this opens up a whole lot of possibilities, now I need to restart the game
This was a fantastic game. Great mix of stealth, action, and a decent story.
Why should I be happy that I will never play a game of the quality of the older ones?! (while I can agree on most of your list, I have no clue how you managed to put Demigod in there LOL; unless you are not thinking of Stardocks Demigod, a MOBA game)
My main problem with consolization is the obvious console interface. Like all the buttons don't work when you click on them, but you need to find the exact spot and it needs to highlight first. Inventory is also very clunky to use as it was not modified to work well with a mouse. Hacking minigame also has a slow response time to clicks, as in the options open much slower then they should and you lose time trying to click on them "properly".
And yes, save games are bad, when overwriting the game keeps the original name (of an area when you originally made it) while also not letting you put any name you want.
Combat is also a bit slower, the whole cover system is console stuff, as in it is too rigid and not modified to work better with a mouse and keyboard.
There are more stuff here but this list is big enough.
Yeah, the hacking mini game drove me nuts at first, click..... wtf why did it use my time stom worm when I wasn't near it..... time to load on an easy ass rank 1 hack...they needed to add hot keys if they were not going to make clicking work properly. Good game overall.
I've been trying to avoid killing as well. I've been half thinking that i would end up changing sides lol. I definitely have more than 2 kills though (definitely both bosses) and when existing TYM. All those guys standing in a circle was just to hard to resist finally getting typhoon, going invis and dropping it right in the middle lol. I think we get more XP points for not killing though.
Its not so much the quality of the game per se, but the newness of the idea and the expectations. E.g. Portal 2 could never be as good as portal 1 because no one was expecting portal 1. The first time i loaded DX i wasnt expecting an awesome game, or even a mediocre game. I dont know of many games (or movies for that matter) where the sequel was better than the game / movie before it. The only 2 i can think of off the top of my head are Empire Strikes Back and possibly Oblivion or Quake 3.
I added demigod because thats why im on these forums and i did love the gameplay, when it worked.... I still think its one of the best MOBA games created as far as the gameplay / strategy. I hope to see a demigod 2 that fixes the connection, matchmaking and other issues.
I hear you on the console interface, its frustrating at times. I dont like the conversation selection either. I keep clicking ont he text forgetting to highlight the damn button. The hacking minigame is laggy though too, im more thinking that it is built in though as opposed to a console dingleberry. I don't use the cover system at all. I did use it in the first level just to peek around corners but have since abandoned it. Console noobs need it though.
And speaking of console noobs. PC gaming wouldnt be in this position (the position being that games studios have to dumb down the games to the lowest common denominator - consoles) if people didnt buy consoles and console games.... So dont just hate the console, hate your friends who play on them as well.
(I do own a PS3 but i just watch blu rays with it and i have a wii that hasnt been turned on in over a year lol) Thats not to say consoles dont have their place.... they are good at playing blu ray movies, and um... well... fighting games, sports games & multiplayer games where 2 (or more) people are playing on the same system.
im done ranting for the time being lol
I would say Baldur's gate 2 was much better then BG1. One can argue the same for Diablo 2 over Diablo 1.
And HoMM 3 was certainly better then HoMM2.
Well this game is better overall than the first IMO. Better graphics and comparable freedom to choose. Better hacking and stealth. Sweet takedown animations that let you choose to kill. Boxes galore!
HoMM 2 is GOD!!!
Finished Deus Ex H+, finally. The story structure, endings and absolutely no closure when it comes to 90% of the characters is by far the worst part of the game. Especially the story structure, that won't let you circumvent, alter, or muck about with events like you used to be able to in the first game. Still, the gameplay and atmosphere are good enough to make me ignore that.
The story probably feels so limited because they couldn't do much. The plot of DX1 and JC Denton's impact on the world had to be preserved, so Jensen simply couldn't burrow that deeply into the rabbit hole otherwise it would sort of ruin what JC did in DX1.
I understand that, but in DX1 you could short-circuit certain events, like plating a bomb under Anna Navare and saying bye bye, or just skipping over certain situations, like the hostage rescue in the subway. You can't really do things like that in Human Revolution. It's a much more linear progression that doesn't allow you to screw with the plot. It even keeps all the critical characters locked in cinematics or in areas you can't use your weapons, out of fear I may murder them like I keep doing to Manderley and just about everyone else. They could still do that and make a plot that leads up to Deus Ex, because everything would be self contained.
I didn't remember it being possible to screw with the plot that much in the original DE, other then the whole Anna Navare thing (which didn't really change the plot that much other then letting you skip a mission). I could be wrong but it seemed like the overall story unfolded in a pretty similar way no matter what. But then I guess I never tried just randomly murdering everyone.
In DEHR I also completely ignored the hostages in the factory (granted it wasn't on purpose) and there are also a lot of fairly plot important missions at the city hubs that you can choose to completely ignore.
Killing Anna by laying mines before the cutscene was exploiting (from the character's perspective) future knowledge that you shouldn't know about anyway. I've got no problem with them closing that loophole.
Deus Ex was more on rails than it appeared. I still remember trying to kill your brother and him just responding with "Stop kidding about, JD" no matter how much ordinance you threw at him. And Faded's right - for all the satisfaction of choosing sides in that scene, within a mission you were following the exact same path again anyway.
If anything the magic of Deus Ex was that it made the world (as opposed to individual missions) feel a lot more freeform than it really was by throwing in little touches and references to things that had happened earlier. So the world WAS responding to your actions and it made the world seem infinitely malleable. But a replay or two made clearer how small the canvas really was...
I understand what you mean, I remember trying to kill Gunther for hours on end after the airport scene, but was never able to, since he was immortal. But the game still let you be there, it didn't isolate the encounter in a cinematic, and you could still do certain things out of order, even if it was just for the sake of keeping up the illusion of freedom. It even gave you the option to deal with certain fixed issues, like bossfights, the way you wanted.
The third bossfight in HR was especially hard, since all my gizmos were offline, and I was using a character designed for stealth infiltration. Thankfully, Adam has a good understanding of weapons handling from the get go, and I managed to beat the guy with a crossbow. Which reminds me, I never killed anyone during the game, except for the guys at the beginning when Adam was still human, and yet, everywhere I go he's treated like some murder machine, with no option to remind people I haven't killed anyone. The game barely acknowledge my achievement, so on playthrough number 2, I'm ditching the tranquilizer in favor of a sniper rifle with a silencer.
Actually if you finish the game without killing anyone (including people before you became augumented; I am not sure about bosses), you get an achievement for it. And as I heard not many people managed to get that one.
For me, the game is a mild disappointment. The only interesting area is the story and the gameworld lore - both are superb. Even the characters are interesting.
However, from purely gameplay perspective, the game is mediocre. It suffers heavy consolitis in all the worst aspect we know it. The cover system among them, the game tries to guess what you want to do, often ducking the wrong direction. There is no melee combat system whatsoever - you just press the button and animation plays. Not even a good one - no proffesional operative performs a silent takedown by tapping the opponents shoulder, then punching him in the face. Because the melee takedown is so trivial, the devs had to limit its use, so they came up with ridiculous limit - it depletes energy, and to replenish it, you must eat. So you brutally massacre one guy, and then cannot do scratch, because you are suddenly "out of energy" But enter the fray with a box of candy bars in the pocket (you consume them instantenously), and you massacre everyone. Stupid.
Most problems can be solved by finding a vent behind a box.
Graphically, the game screams "low texture and polygon budget" everywhere you go - bland textures on walls, cubic, rectangular design everywhere. The NPCs are just signpost with a few sentences, doing nothing but standing somewhere. The closest thing to an activity was those chinese chefs frying meat. Compare this to Gothic 2 with night and day cycle, where characters actually slept, cooked, patrolled, and fought among each other. Nothing independent of the player ever happens in the game - no gang war, nothing. The world is dead and flat. The AI is also very weak, with opponents shooting walls, standing in the open, and not noticing things. I was infiltrating a police station, and climbed out of a vent in the interogation room where cops were questioning a suspect. Nobody even raised a brow. Shoddy.
The hacking minigame is annoying as hell, and there is no way around it.
More impressions - I was rather disappointed when by powerful-looking sniper rifle with many upgrades turned up to be a glorified BB rifle. Crossbow twice as powerful than a rifle? Ridiculous.
Actually both snipers and crossbow suck unless you hit them in the head. I used an upgraded revolver to kill anyone.
Well I disagree with many of your complaints, but I do agree that the energy system is weak. I like the way it was handled in the original DE much better.
Fantastic game with good, varied gameplay options, good level design, and an enjoyable story absolutely ruined by a completely contrived ending that invalidated everything you had done up until that point.
I'm not talking about the possible endings and the story consequences, though I thought those were a bit weak, I'm talking about the way the game ends.
Hours and hours of gameplay leads to... pick one of four buttons? Seriously? No matter what you've done, who you've killed, you get the same four fucking buttons. The end of the game up until that point is fantastic. Just the right amount of tension and "what comes next" anticipation. The story provides just enough suspense that you're always waiting for another surprise.
And then you're hit in the face with the game mechanic equivalent of a giant Louisville Slugger full of railroad spikes. It was like they looked up one night and had an "Oh shit, we're out of time! Throw in something that will let us run our four endgame cutscenes! Quick!" moment.
At that moment I honestly felt like someone who had a nearly perfect weekend end by getting robbed and then kicked in the nuts.
Abysmal.
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