Deus Ex: Human Revolution Impressions (spoilarz)

[Stark]

You get more xp for non-lethal, and more xp for melee takedowns. It's the tune of 20xp though, it's not a big deal unless you're taking down every single guy in the game (which isn't very stealthy).

I'm describing what the game is doing. It tries to prevent you from fighting too much by absurd ammo limitations (and, arguably, most of the guns being shit) and yet don't actually reward you with anything special (even plot revelations or whatever) if you penetrate entire facilities totally undetected. People who like to shoot would actually have more fun with a sensible amount of bullets (and maybe a decent inventory) and people who like stealth don't care either way.

I think the logical result of the game's limitations is the way people like myself play; using stealth to defeat the awful AI and stungunning or headshoting everyone with the pistol. If you do it another way, you're penalising yourself just because the devs said 'must nerf combat'. Indeed, as far as I could tell the only difference on hard vs easy is that the badguys have far more hitpoints than you, which FURTHER works to push people away from combat (at least, towards the broken kind of combat like headshots and stunguns).

[salm]

Ah, I see what you mean. Up until now i´ve stealthed everything since I like that kind of game play. Figuring out patrol patterns then planing and either sneaking around them or taking them out with melee.
It´s a bit like Tenchu minus the cool grappling hook.

[Stark]

Most of the game is 'set up' for that kind of play; the guard patterns are open and fixed, and there are only a few spots where guys watch from above to make sure someone hasn't stungunned everyone. Since you're on hard, I really don't recommend trying to fight 'normally'; a hobo literally has more hitpoints than you. Just remember that cameras need to 'work out' you're suspicious before they go hostile, but robots and turrets will go hostile instantly.

[salm]

Ok, looks like I´ll just continue stealthing.

What´s up with the saving system? Sometimes when i press the "load latest save" button the games loads a completely random save. Very irritating. Especially with loading times like that.

[Stark]

One of the load options on at least one screen is load latest auto-save, not latest save overall. It's pretty annoying.

[salm]

Nah, i thought that I might have accidentially pressed the last autosave button but I tested it and the load last save button just fucks up.

[Stark]

Does PC have quickload/save buttons? Maybe it's confused.

[Anacronian]

Does PC have quickload/save buttons? Maybe it's confused.

F5=Quick Save.
F8=Quick Load.

[Joviwan]

They didn't exist before the first patch, though, and nothing in the game actually tells you about it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was broken, somehow.

[Darth Ruinus]

I guess you never noticed he has mental problems,.

Jesen doesn't actually have mental problems. The private investigator Sarif hired digs up Jensen's psychological report from his time in the SWAT, and comments that it "read like a piece of fiction" and that the psychologist who made the report didn't even want it see the light of day because it was forged. All of Jensen's police buddies also speak highly of him.

[salm]

I´m playing the Xbox version and i had similar problems with Gothic 4: Arcania. Whenever i saved the game it would randomly shuffle the save games around and i´d allways have to check the play time to find my last save when loading. This is awesomely annoying if you have 20 or so save games. Now in Gothic I could delete save games, so after noticing the save bug i limited my saves to 3 and that solved the problem. However, I have yet to figure out how you can delete save games in DEHR.

[Stark]

I'm not sure how a psych evaluation from his SWAT career is relevant to his obvious problems dealing with the fact that his boss had him butchered like a pig. Why do you think he smashes mirrors? Cause he's so well-balanced?

The only save shuffling I saw was that it always called save 2 save 2, even if it was now at the top, directly above save 9. It was always sorted reverse timestamp, just the names were dumb.

[Joe Momma]

You get more xp for non-lethal, and more xp for melee takedowns. It's the tune of 20xp though, it's not a big deal unless you're taking down every single guy in the game (which isn't very stealthy).

You also get two special bonuses for making through entire areas without turning anyone hostile (Ghost - 500 XP) or having anyone trigger and alarm (Smooth Operator - 250 XP). If you also use non-lethal melee takedowns without triggering either of the above, you can rack up 50 XP per opponent and still get the above bonuses. Stealthy players are also arguably more likely to use vents and other hidden passages which add their own special bonuses (100 to 300 XP each for a vent or hidden area).

Those can add up to push it even further toward stealth being the preferred play-style. On my second playthrough, by combining the stealthy approach above with hacking everything even if I had the codes, I've been able to get of the worthwhile augs almost entirely maxed out before completing the Montreal level, even while buying some less useful items for personal preference (like the Icarus Landing System) and skipping a few XP opportunities.

The stun gun's probably a bit overpowered as well, at least on easy mode. I managed to gank Barrett with it easily -- you only need to hit him once, after which he twitches helplessly longer than it takes you to reload so you can just keep zapping him in the head with it until he passes out. Don't know about the other bosses yet as I didn't try that gun on them the first time through and haven't gotten to them on my second run yet.

[Anacronian]

Stun Gun is pretty much the bane of all the bosses no matter the difficulty they all seem to need around 8 shots before they go down.

In my latests playthough on the hardests difficulty i thought Yelena Fedorva might be a problem because i don't cary any weapon other than stun gun and tranqulizer rifle so i had prepared all kinds of mines and whatnot but when i finally confronted her i just stun gun spammed her to death..quite pathetic really.

[Stark]

I think ghost and smooth are proportional to whatever your main reward is, as I've seen different values. But yeah, if you sneak around the first two missions you'll have all the non-useless mods by TYM or Montreal and end up buying useless stuff to see if it's any good. It's even worse if you have a preorder, as the auto-unlocker means you definitely don't need hack 5 and probably not hack 4 either.

[salm]

The saving bug is completely fucking up the game. I´m trying to find my save game and have loaded for the 6th time now or so. God damn it.

[Mr. Coffee]

I'll just leave this here...

[Bluewolf]

Heh, oh dear.

[Chardok]

So far, I've taken all crap mods, methinks.

I got strength because I want to see what's behind soda machines, hackstealth 3, and social analyzer of whatever.



Haven't had a chance to use the analyzer, though. is it triggered during conversation or automatic?

[salm]

Somebody told be today that installing the game to hard drive will significantly reduce loading times. How is that done? I checked the manual but it doesn´t say anywhere.

[Joviwan]

From the xbox home menu, hover over your disc and hit Y for options (it might be B). One of the choices is "install to hard drive."

[salm]

Ah, thanks. That makes it a lot better.

[Stark]

Haven't had a chance to use the analyzer, though. is it triggered during conversation or automatic?

It puts up the 'personality type' boxes, so when you press lb to win you can choose the right option. When you're in a SOCIAL BOSS BATTLE it covers the screen in sepia pictures of hearts and skin layers and other useless crap.

[salm]

What´s up with the augmentation that is supposed to make the view cones visible. It seems to work only sometimes...

I found out about the save shuffling bug. It was actually the XBoxes fault not the games. The guy I got the XBox from had set the date to the year 2005 and the time zone to Tokyo. After adjusting this there´s no more shuffling.

[Chardok]