Deus Ex: Human Revolution Impressions (spoilarz)

[salm]

So, I beat it. This game was terrible.

I don´t know but if a game is terrible you have to admit that it´s pretty fucking stupid to play it all the way through.

[Joviwan]

Or maybe the most qualified people to make the claim are the ones who have taken the time to explore all the content.

[Chardok]

Or maybe the most qualified people to make the claim are the ones who have taken the time to explore all the content.

This.


Also - Los you can't just say "Terrible game is terrible" without expecting some pushback. I'd like some elaboration as well. I'm rather enjoying putzing around, and the story is basically Robocop, after all, so it's not without it's merits.

[salm]

Or maybe the most qualified people to make the claim are the ones who have taken the time to explore all the content.

Heh, i never said he wasn´t qualified. I said it was a stupid thing to play a game you hate.

[Zac Naloen]

Also, I'm playing on the PC which seems to be the superior version of the game with regards to AI & bugs etc

I'd love to hear you substantiate this.

You know that's damned near impossible to do. I can only go by internet mutterings and my own experiences compared to the complaints raised in this thread. Such as that the AI in some instances, other than intentionally dumb metal gear solid like search patterns(from the first page) can't shoot through windows and drops dropping the wrong ammo just haven't happened to me.

Add in some internet mutterings from some gaming podcasts which pretty much said "PC version seems to be better" I don't really have anything else to go on having not played on any other platform to compare it.

Here's an example from the IGN PC review that echo the what I've been hearing

"The PC Perspective

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is great on every platform, but the PC version is the version to get if you've got the kit. Eidos Montreal employed PC developer Nixxes to give the original home of Deus Ex some special attention. All of the visual sliders and tweaks you'd expect are in place, and there's additional DirectX 11 support in the form of better screen space ambient occlusion, a huge number of anti-aliasing modes, and subtle tessellation support for smoother character models. It also runs great on a wide variety of hardware. Stability is generally good, but we have experienced some occasional lock-ups on load screens, and users online have reported issues with black screens at cinemas. Our caveat? Save often. Oh, and Nixxes has "upgraded" the AI, which appears to mean that enemies will headshot you on the regular at higher difficulties. No joke."

I don't agree about how well the game ran, my framerate was all over the place and I had a couple of crashes.

[Stark]

So by 'bugs' you mean 'not bugs'; I haven't seen any problems beyond quest-scripting problems that crashes the game on either platform. The AI really won't shoot through the unbreakable glass; this is visible throughout the game. Didn't you pay attention?

And by 'AI' you mean 'they turned the conefire down'. That's probably to serve the same kind of PC sperglords that they included the ability to turn off inventory auto-arrange to please. :V

Back to good old tetris inventory and how it adds nothing to the game; since theres auto-arrange and there isn't much stacking in the game (oh wait, mines stack but nades don't, yay), simply using an unbounded inventory display with the same images etc and counting the total squares used would have been exactly the same, beyond the 'never happened' edge cases of being unable to arrange to fit something you have enough squares for. The anal could even arrange it any way they liked!

The software being on Atari cartridges is funny enough without them taking inventory space and apparently stacking infinitely, unlike everything else. The chocolate bar != box of chocolate bars thing is hardly the dumbest shit in the game, after all.

PS discouraging people from playing games they don't like might be why asking the internet about something is stupid. But can anyone come forward and hold the attitude that all the reviews talking about mature social commentary and insightful technological themes weren't dead wrong? Please note, the game's stupid and shallow examination of transhumanism cannot be fully appreciated without viewing the endings, all of which are varying levels of fucking stupid.

Wish i'd just preordered rage or Skyrim instead

While Skyrim is going to be yet another bland tree simulator, it will absolutely have more content and last longer than DEHR. There's what, a dozen sidequests in DEHR? Apalling.

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm just astounded to be watching a game with serious balance problems happen before my eyes. In a development team consisting of at least 40 guys, their is no way they couldn't have noticed the stupidity of things like tying melee into charge.

The balance problems are plenty but they'd all be simple to fix. Pistol makes for easy headshots? Just make the laser dot visible to enemies, or prevent armored enemies wearing fucking helmets from being susceptible to instagib headshots.

Stun gun powerful? Limit it to point blank range and give it some noise generation so a mook 2ft away won't be totally oblivious when he gets his head smashed in.

Melee attacks are powerful so it's necessary to limit them. Ok, how about we just do what Gears of War did years ago and just make the animation loud, interrupt able, and more complex than one button press. Even a QTE would be better than how they designed it.

The whole way they designed charge is retarded. It's a step up from Crysis but that's not saying much. Just give Jensen a charge system that depletes over time and depletes faster with the use of special abilities but can be recharged by eating or drinking at street vendors or buying food, etc. Jensen won't have to worry about realistically running out of food anyway since he presumably receives money from the huge multinational corporation I thought he fucking works for.

As for fixing the shitty skill tree? That's a whole chapter in itself.

[Stark]

The takedowns KINDA make sense as a permanent takedown, but breaking a guy's collarbone and then flipping him being 'stealthy' and 'silent' is just retarded.

If only Jensen had a knife or a nice bit of rubber hose?

To fit the 'awesome' third person animation in they actually move both the player and the victim at times, which can lead you to be more exposed or even push a guy through lasergrids. Such a horrible idea.

[Chirios]

I'm just astounded to be watching a game with serious balance problems happen before my eyes. In a development team consisting of at least 40 guys, their is no way they couldn't have noticed the stupidity of things like tying melee into charge.

The balance problems are plenty but they'd all be simple to fix. Pistol makes for easy headshots? Just make the laser dot visible to enemies, or prevent armored enemies wearing fucking helmets from being susceptible to instagib headshots.

Armoured enemies wearing helmets aren't susceptible to instakill headshots. What difficulty are you playing on?

Stun gun powerful? Limit it to point blank range and give it some noise generation so a mook 2ft away won't be totally oblivious when he gets his head smashed in.

Stun gun is point blank range. You can't use it from more than three feet away. And the point of the stun gun is that it's a stealth weapon, so that people who don't want to run around getting into massive fights every three seconds can knock people out without needing to use the melee attacks.

Melee attacks are powerful so it's necessary to limit them. Ok, how about we just do what Gears of War did years ago and just make the animation loud, interrupt able, and more complex than one button press. Even a QTE would be better than how they designed it.

And that would be good how? Interruptible fair enough, but if it was loud it would take away from the whole point of the melee attack which is that it's supposed to be sneaky stealth.

The whole way they designed charge is retarded. It's a step up from Crysis but that's not saying much. Just give Jensen a charge system that depletes over time and depletes faster with the use of special abilities but can be recharged by eating or drinking at street vendors or buying food, etc. Jensen won't have to worry about realistically running out of food anyway since he presumably receives money from the huge multinational corporation I thought he fucking works for.

So you're problem is that melee isn't easy enough?

Why do you think that's because the game was rushed? Since when was it rushed?

Maybe rushed is the wrong word. But I think that a game with a harder levelling up system and more sidequests would've been better. They've built a huge and detailed world and then after the first location they ferry us through it to try and get to the next plot point. There should've been some sidequests that you had to "discover", so you make decision A in location A, then next time you return to location A then sidequest B starts up. Or you fail sidequest A and then that starts sidequest C etc. Without that refusing to do sidequests is pointless, because otherwise that's just refusing free XP.

[Stark]

You're not describing a rushed game, rather an unbalanced or shit one. Things like hacking, the skill tree, or the overpowered stunners would have been obvious in testing, just like the stupid script, the lack of global flags to let quest results change anything, or that the cloaking device was a really, really dumb idea.

Protip - trying to be GITS is not a good plan.

[Chirios]

You're not describing a rushed game, rather an unbalanced or shit one. Things like hacking, the skill tree, or the overpowered stunners would have been obvious in testing, just like the stupid script, the lack of global flags to let quest results change anything, or that the cloaking device was a really, really dumb idea.

Protip - trying to be GITS is not a good plan.

Sorry, what's GITS?

[Stark]

Sorry. Ghost in the Shell is a manga/anime/movie series that explores similar issues and has a similar tech level. However, in GITS most decent badguys have alternate senses or are at least aware of cloaking, unlike the guys in DEHR (who can be tranked by injecting sedatives into their mechanical arm and react to footsteps with 'huh' and 'wuh' and 'I guess it was nothing').

[CaptHawkeye]

If only Jensen had a knife or a nice bit of rubber hose?

Both previous DE games had lethal and non lethal melee weapons too! Police batons, clubs, knives, even a fucking Katana.

[CaptHawkeye]

Armoured enemies wearing helmets aren't susceptible to instakill headshots. What difficulty are you playing on?

I'm playing on max difficulty and have been experiencing the lame-ness of the silenced pistol turning everyone into a walking bullseye. Yes, headshots most definitely kill armored enemies.

Stun gun is point blank range. You can't use it from more than three feet away. And the point of the stun gun is that it's a stealth weapon, so that people who don't want to run around getting into massive fights every three seconds can knock people out without needing to use the melee attacks.

It also makes the entire stealth mechanic non-challenge mega cheese.

And that would be good how? Interruptible fair enough, but if it was loud it would take away from the whole point of the melee attack which is that it's supposed to be sneaky stealth.

It'd still be quieter than a gunshot and would just make it impossible to conga-line kill a whole group of enemies with NONE of them figuring out what the fuck is going on. A well designed game might adjust these things though based on the difficulty level, but no, as usual different difficulty levels are just a way to award or handicap player or NPC health bars.

So you're problem is that melee isn't easy enough?

My problem is that it doesn't jive with the other mechanics. It is *incredibly* easy. Hence why I recommended the items above.

[Stark]

But melee combat in first person looks stupid. The solution is third person takedowns to go with the third person cover in a first person game.

But it's too powerful because the AI sucks and they're silent despite inflicting unimaginable agony! The solution is to limit it by power - making a simple punch the same as destroying a concrete wall - and the only recharging the first battery no matter how many you have! This will fill the terris inventory with consumables!

The real lame about melee, though, is that it's an insta-kill, even against guys who are totally alert, prepared, bigger than you, and may have more hitpoints. Just press B! Time will be frozen, you'll play a silly animation, and they're down. The animation won't even line up on the big guys; their head is not where you punch or flip or crush. :V

Of course, if you used quiet footsteps to reach them, you can't melee because the only battery that charges isn't full anymore. Solution? Start your cloak, then start munching chocolate bars! Entire battles can be fought this way, because eating is instant, the menu pauses the game, and each battery lasts 7 seconds.

[Stark]

The best GITS-related lol is that in a game 'about' 'transhumanism' and augmentation etc, it really has a lot of dumb shit and not a lot of interesting shit. Aside from augmentation being new and yet the augs being amazingly advanced to the point of full-body replacement and near-indistinguishable limbs (and dermal plating on your fucking face, lol) nothing about combat or mechanics reflects this. In GITS, guys get their arms blown off and don't care, because they're mechancial arms, not real ones. Melee combat and ranged targeting have to adapt to an individual's level of augmentation, because you can't wrist-lock a guy with a cyberarm and shooting someone in a heart he never uses is useless. Some of the animations actually show you destroying someone's mechanical arm, and this somehow disabling them - even the near-full body replacement guys, who should laugh and step on you.

In DEHR, Jensen can't even read fucking emails without walking to his fucking computer across town. Nobody does that NOW, for fuck's sake! TRANSHUMAN SINGULARITY!

[Losonti Tokash]

Also - Los you can't just say "Terrible game is terrible" without expecting some pushback. I'd like some elaboration as well. I'm rather enjoying putzing around, and the story is basically Robocop, after all, so it's not without it's merits.

Took a nap, sorry. Anyway, here are the things I liked:

-Art style is really cool. Liked the way the mechanical augmentations looked, especially on the MCBs who had theirs all chromed out with platinum on them. Thought it was a nice touch.

-Some of the takedown animations were good, mostly the ones where Jensen just punches a dude right out or chokes him. Then you get other stuff where he breaks their arm in 3 different places and the dude in the adjacent chair doesn't hear a thing. They missed an opportunity to have the takedowns be contextual depending on whether the enemy was aware of you or not, I think.

Everything else:

-Jensen is an idiot. Gets sent down at the beginning to investigate an explosion and then never reports back to anyone. Never even tries. Reads the emails Sarif sends him on his background and then acts totally blown away when he reads the exact same email during a side quest.

-The game never reacts to anything. None of your choices matter in any real way (oh boy I gave this guy a gun and he later gave me 2000 credits), and the game ends in a room of 4 buttons regardless of anything you've ever done in the game. The big payoff is one line in the ending monologue that reflects how many people you killed. Yay.

-The dumbest AI I have seen in years. It really defies description how completely blind and deaf and idiotic they all are. Except for when they're alerted to you and have a psychic awareness of your presence (unless you use the totally broken cloaking system).

-The worldbuilding is so poorly thought out that in the year 2027 there are payphones and newspaper kiosks all over the place and people with radios and cellphones in their head still whip out their PDA and mobile phone to talk.

-The FEMA detention center should kind of be a big deal? They run across it and just go "oh well guess the government will put people in concentration camps some day."

-All the acting is terrible. This was encapsulated at the end of the first mission when a lady was upset her husband died and let out some bizarre dinosaur cries while vaguely gesturing with a smile on her face.

-Fuck the bosses. Did they add anything? Other than a guy with a gun arm named Barrett, no. They were the worst parts of this game, particularly the chick. Who, of course, wore heels and tights that showed off her ass.

-What the hell is with all the racial stereotypes? You run into Letitia 5 seconds after leaving the office and are immediately offended by the game. But you haven't gotten to the real fun part of Hengsha, where it defies description. It's like some goddamned WWII propaganda. And this is ignoring the fact that Jensen apparently has an auto translator, along with the fact that as the dominant military and economic power in the world, I would expect Chinese people in China to speak Chinese. If nothing else other than to turn the tables on the Americans.

-Get augments shut off, grunt a little and have fuzzy vision. Nevermind that Jensen is almost a total body replacement, including parts of his brain. He should just collapse into a heap of flesh and metal, not be able to point a gatling gun like it weighs 5 pounds.

[Chirios]

The best GITS-related lol is that in a game 'about' 'transhumanism' and augmentation etc, it really has a lot of dumb shit and not a lot of interesting shit. Aside from augmentation being new and yet the augs being amazingly advanced to the point of full-body replacement and near-indistinguishable limbs (and dermal plating on your fucking face, lol) nothing about combat or mechanics reflects this. In GITS, guys get their arms blown off and don't care, because they're mechancial arms, not real ones. Melee combat and ranged targeting have to adapt to an individual's level of augmentation, because you can't wrist-lock a guy with a cyberarm and shooting someone in a heart he never uses is useless. Some of the animations actually show you destroying someone's mechanical arm, and this somehow disabling them - even the near-full body replacement guys, who should laugh and step on you.

In DEHR, Jensen can't even read fucking emails without walking to his fucking computer across town. Nobody does that NOW, for fuck's sake! TRANSHUMAN SINGULARITY!

tbf, augmentations in this universe aren't new. They're supposed to have been around since '09.

[Stark]

They SAY that, but aside from gangers with gold-leaf cyberarms, the lack of discourse makes it stupid - almost as stupid as giving poor people cyberarms and making them debt slaves forever. INSIGHTFUL! MATURE! NOT STUPID AT ALL!

And seriously, 'the universe' is most of the problem with the writing. Tying into DE means your plot is stupid, your villains are stupid, your motivatinos are stupid, and hamfisted shit like THE EVIL CHIPPU IN UR BRAAAAAAAAAIN is considered an 'exploration of transhumanism'. Dont' even get me started on amazingly stupid crap like the Hyron project.

The melee takedowns being huge overmatch to deal with augmented badguys is fine, but you'd think they'd at least target useful stuff (ie the head, since everyone appears to retain their actual head) isntead of useless pain-insensitive shit like replacement arms. Good thing the dermal plating that can stop a sniper bullet can't stop a trank dart!

[Losonti Tokash]

Those ones they talk about actually exist. But they're just prosthetics, not the "my arm is a gun and my torso also happens to shoot out smartbombs while I am invisible, ps my smartphone does not have 4G connectivity" stuff we see.

[Chirios]

They SAY that, but aside from gangers with gold-leaf cyberarms, the lack of discourse makes it stupid - almost as stupid as giving poor people cyberarms and making them debt slaves forever. INSIGHTFUL! MATURE! NOT STUPID AT ALL!

And seriously, 'the universe' is most of the problem with the writing. Tying into DE means your plot is stupid, your villains are stupid, your motivatinos are stupid, and hamfisted shit like THE EVIL CHIPPU IN UR BRAAAAAAAAAIN is considered an 'exploration of transhumanism'. Dont' even get me started on amazingly stupid crap like the Hyron project.

The melee takedowns being huge overmatch to deal with augmented badguys is fine, but you'd think they'd at least target useful stuff (ie the head, since everyone appears to retain their actual head) isntead of useless pain-insensitive shit like replacement arms. Good thing the dermal plating that can stop a sniper bullet can't stop a trank dart!

Hyron?

Maybe they should've just rebooted the entire series. You're right that the whole: it's a secret government conspiracy, takes away from the honest examination of issues thing. If they wanted to do an honest examination of the issues what they should've done is just kept it with corporations, say it's industrial espionage or something like that, make Jensen former CIA instead of SWAT and then have extrapolate from that, and if they couldn't ignore the conspiracy thing, maybe they should've just made the series a reboot.

[Losonti Tokash]

Jensen's background is another thing that's not consistent. He's ex-SWAT but regularly worked with detectives solving cases?

The Hyron Project is the quantum computer at the bottom of the ocean that tortures women plugged into it for no reason.

[Stark]

They should have rebooted, because DE was built on jamming all the stupid 90s conspiracies into a single narrative. Tech has changed, the times have changed, and that is just stupid. You can make transhumanist fiction and you can make serious, meaningful games, but starting frmo DE (and actively trying to play into it as a prequel) is a bad start.

The Hyron project is a fucking lol. You need linked quantum computers run through women in bondage gear stored in ovens to ... stop a big hole from collapsing?

If only Panachaea made ANY FUCKING SENSE AT ALL?

[Vendetta]

They should have rebooted, because DE was built on jamming all the stupid 90s conspiracies into a single narrative.

And Assassin's Creed stole that story

[Stark]

Using all those conspiracies to tie into DE and not really looking at how that affects anything is a serious problem; nobody really reacts to the FEMA camp and it's suggested that the country is on the verge of martial law due to social pressures... and... nothing.

The 'illuminati ending' is my favourite for stupid. Everyone shoudl go watch it. Keep an eye out for Tony Blair's cameo!