Deus Ex: Human Revolution Impressions (spoilarz)

[Stark]

Imagine how funny that would have been if 'combat bosses' wasn't more well known than the game's subtitle?

The mods you have are only peripherally related to the bossfights anyway; a more apt complaint would be having your inventory full of stuff that wasnt rocket launchers or gas nades.

[Erik von Nein]

Hilariously, the last two boss battles in the game (the merc and the chick-computer) were cake walks due to max stealth and candy bars. The field never dropped and NOBODY can understand where the bullets come from. Too funny.

I had shit for combat augs and the two previous mercs were pretty easy, as well. Well, once I stopped fucking around, anyway.

[Stark]

The first one can be annoying with his nadespam, but if you bought rockets he dies in seconds anyway. Emp and gas ruin all the bosses and are basically useless elsewhere.

With the preorder grenade launcher, the last boss takes literally seconds to die.

[Vympel]

Well I got my copy yesterday - I'm certainly experiencing no load time issues at all. Of course, my computer is a beast so ...

[Xon]

Load times were patched. It used to only access a single file at once at ~1mb/s regardless of the underlying disk subsystem and was hardlocked to the framerate! So if you alt-tabbed out it stopped loading.

Now the PC version will hit every file it can and loads a lot faster. I think alt-tabbing out still pauses loading however.

[Tolya]

I just finished the Police Station level. DEHR policemen are idiots.

Not only the desk sergeant did not say not only "no" but "hell no" to my request to grant me access to a corpse secured with Men in Black protocol (tm), but he turned out to be some Jensen's ex-SWAT leader (helluva coincidence) and promptly engaged in eye watering activities over how unfair life is to him. After finally hearing some absolving and comforting cliche sentences (it wasn't your fault!) from Jensen he let me in (wtf?).

I wonder how such loser came to be a SWAT team leader at all. Tough luck, you shot a kid and you pay the consequences. Deal with it or GTFO.

The proper course of action for that scene should be: "Hello, how can I help you?" "Yes, I want to steal a vital piece of evidence in an ongoing investigation, a brainchip from a corpse in your morgue, please let me in" "GTFO". Thus forcing Jensen to break in via the normal route: open airducts leading straight to be dissection table (you know, the usual).

In the morgue the brainchip was literally HANDED to me by the technician who assumed that I was from Homeland Security (why ask for a badge?).

At that point I was so WTF that I decided to go to the armory and grab some stuff from there. The door was open there and I saw one (!) guy doing something inside. He told me to GTFO, but had I had some ammo for my tranq gun the DPD police station would have to requisition new firearms, starting from handguns to assault rifles and grenade launchers.

DEHR is much easier to enjoy when you are a 15 year old, since guys who designed levels (an apartment block without ground floor exit that you can get into only via the fire escape ladder? Check!) were clearly in early teens. Im 27 and such blatant idiocies are really spoiling the fun for me.

[Stark]

Well I got my copy yesterday - I'm certainly experiencing no load time issues at all. Of course, my computer is a beast so ...

If only bragging fixed bugs? Lol! PS, load times are fine on a shitty 360. Oh dear? BEAST!

Toyla, wait till you see the later industrial areas with no logic around level design. The highlights include laser sensors set up to only obstruct movement some of the time and guards that don't notice giant mechanical arms moving with deafening slowness directly above their heads.

Haas is probably the worst conversation in the whole game; his transformation from PTSD to beatific happiness was so overblown I was waiting for the punchline. The game never gets any more subtle.

[Vympel]

If only bragging fixed bugs? Lol! PS, load times are fine on a shitty 360. Oh dear? BEAST!

So maybe load times are just shit on 6-year old duct-taped PCs?

[Joviwan]

Load times were 20-30s on WD Raptors and SSDs, devices which are specifically designed to be ultimate hyperfast read times.

You didn't start playing until this was no longer a problem. So congratulations.

[salm]

Yeah, convincing the guy at the counter in the police station was a real lol.

Level Layouts are stupid if you apply real world logic to them. But that´s a problem of very many games. Just look at Mass Effect 2s nonsensical layouts. If the levels work for the game I don´t find that too problematic.

What I find worse is that the level designers failed with the Detroit city layout. It´s supposed to look like a large city but feels like a bunch of facades stuck together. That alone wouldn´t be that problematic as it doesn´t affect game play but the city is very small but still hard to navigate. They could have put up a couple of weenies, better landmarks and other navigation help. The gas station is a noteworthy exception for a well placed landmark. Or at least signs saying "LIMB that way" and stuff like that. Signs are a cheap way to make levels easier to navigate but they´re better than nothing.

[Losonti Tokash]

There are signs all over Hengsha, but hilariously they point to passages blocked by dumpsters and whatnot you have to crawl through, rather than to, you know, a proper street. The poorly designed map just adds to the confusion for funsies I guess.

[CaptHawkeye]

Or just loads of content that was intended but never finished in time. Honestly I knew as soon as this game got delayed in February that the developers were in over their heads. In all of their journals and dev diaries it's been the usual "all talk and no play".

[Anacronian]

They have already announced a DLC for October.

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution conspiracy grows deeper in The Missing Link. During Adam's quest for the truth in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, he mysteriously vanishes for three days. Where was he? What did he find out? The Missing Link reveals it all.

After being tortured by Belltower agents and having his augmentations disabled, Adam Jensen must rely solely on his basic capabilities to escape from a freighter, destined for an unknown location. While fighting for his survival on the ship, he uncovers another layer to the conspiracy that he never would have suspected. As Adam, befriend new, mysterious allies and fight ruthless enemies to discover what was happening in the shadows during the events of Deus Ex: Human Revolution!

-New layers of conspiracy unveiled
-Sprawling new environments
-Brand-new characters to interact with
-Rebuild Adam's augmentation set from scratch. Build up a brand new Adam!


What is The Missing Link? You'll find out soon...

Linky

[Stark]

Or just loads of content that was intended but never finished in time. Honestly I knew as soon as this game got delayed in February that the developers were in over their heads. In all of their journals and dev diaries it's been the usual "all talk and no play".

How is a street sign pointing at a dumpster-blocked hole a sign of cut content? It just 'gamey' Metroid map design. Salms right and most games have stupid map design, but what's forgivable in a space pew pew game is less in a 'mature' 'insightful' 'real world' game.

How does the DLC work if you don't get your Augsburg turned off?

[Anacronian]

I guess the game play will be like it was before Adam was augmented because that was awesome...yeah.

[Stark]

Remember having to run past all the guards to do pacifist? Fun!

[Anacronian]

And having no takedowns what so ever double fun.

[Stark]

If the game was good, when doing a pacifist run and not killing anyone, there'd be consequences for the story that Sarif would have literally no idea who hit them at all, not even bodies.

Then again, it's fucking bizarre that they wonder who did it anyway, when they were in Belltower uniforms. I WONDER???

[Chirios]

There are signs all over Hengsha, but hilariously they point to passages blocked by dumpsters and whatnot you have to crawl through, rather than to, you know, a proper street. The poorly designed map just adds to the confusion for funsies I guess.

I genuinely believe that over the next year or so a lot of those blocked passages will mysteriously become unblocked as DLC is submitted.

[Losonti Tokash]

If you have the proper mods they're not tricky to get through. They're just confusing as shit since they're basically street signs that seem to point to nowhere.

[Tolya]

Well, I finished the game. Replaying it on hard now.

It is not a bad game. It suffers from many design flaws that existed in the original Deus Ex. It is the THIRD GAME ffs, learn from past mistakes. Luckily, the option of "prod or gas grenade?" never occured after the first chopper ride with Sarif, so I may let that one slide.

The thing about the game is that it never achieves it's full potential. The AI is on the level of Splinter Cell games (which is BAD), the inventory system is shit (and there were so many games which at least tried to make it better), the plot really never takes off (Deus Ex for all it's flaws was an innovative take on the subject and the plot was really interesting back then) and the last boss fight is... well, I had the feeling that Zhao would be dead regardless of what I did.

The game tries to do everything at once and as a result is pretty mediocre in all respects. Gunplay isn't satisfying enough because of ammo shortage and stupid enemies.

Stealth is clunky because of the uneven viewing cones: one time I could sneak past the guard looking at me from across the hall, other times he would immediately spot me.

Dialogue system... well, there is no excuse for a clunky dialogue and persuasion system since Alpha Protocol was released. For all it's clunkiness AP has had an EXCELLENT dialogue system where you really had to make quick judgements of character instead of "read his file and choose the correct answer. You have 30 minutes. Go."

Even the visuals look dated somewhere. Look at the sky sometime, in Detroit it looks as if it was low-resolution. Also, the only characters that look good are the ones clad in heavy armour. The rest are like... made of gum.

I also do not understand what is the sense of the choice of letting Windmill live or die. The game only rewards you if you help him, but that is just stupid: you just shown the world that there is nothing bad in taking a contract against you, fuck you up and then say that you were just a contract worker. There should be consequences to both "good" and "evil" responses. Letting him live will make him grateful but could also spawn a wave of cyberattacks against SI. Letting him die would... well, make him dead, but also send a clear signal to the merc world. Jensen is a security chief of a big corporation, not a fireman who sees a kitty on a tree.

Oh, and what the hell was with the jacked in bondage chicks in the end? I could just kill them and be done with it. But even throwing a grenade into the glowing orifice would just deactivate the life support system but without any damage to the chicks themselves. Wtf?

[Stark]

Some elements are just crap, but I think much of it is crap because they were so self-consciously trying to emulate a 15 year old (massively overrated) game. So it pretends to have choice but doesnt, like DE. It has really old-fashioned gunplay. It has laughable stealth and awful, forced weapon balance. The awful inventory is only the most obvious example, because it pretty much solely exists to make fat people happy rather than be a good solution to a design challenge. Doing things just to 'be like' a really old game means you end up with an uneven and primitive game full of things that make players say 'wow, that could have been better'.

I just love how 50% of the world population has cyberarms or legs replacements, and not one of them has a jump mod, lift heavy things mod, or don't die to gas mod. Imagine how much more vibrant The combat could have been if there was a broader sweep of player-like capabilities instead of 'wow this guy has a lot of hit points'.

[Tolya]

The ending is also laughable, because you get four buttons - each of them plays a similar movie with different commentary. It's like cable TV.

They could have done it like Fallout.

The problem I have with DEHR is that all the mediocre elements for some reason make for an enjoyable game. For all of it's flaws I had fun playing it.

Usually many mediocre elements just make for a mediocre game. There is something good here but I just can't seem to quantify it.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for Cyberpunk style gameplay.

[Anacronian]

Am i the only one who wish that the game was in third person perspective all the time(like AP) rather than jumping from fist to third when taking cover?

[Stark]

PC gamers complain it ruins immersion.