Deus Ex: Human Revolution Impressions (spoilarz)

[Chardok]

Well, I put an hour or so in last night. Don't remember every nuance on account of Ambien, but it's slowly coming back to me. Key points: Stealth is broken. I mean broken. Stupid broken. don't bother trying to get the no-kill achievement. There are times when a guy will literally come up to where you are standing, look at you, standing there with your gun, shrug, say "hmm.." then walk away. Still other times, they will somehow spot your crouching behind a crate from a mile away and announce to you "I SEE YOU!" and "I'M COMING TO SHOOT YOU NOW" and just in case your froget, he will repeat it every 5 seconds as he's COMING TO SHOOT YOU BEHIND THAT CRATE WHERE I KNOW YOU ARE HIDING BECAUSE I SAW YOU THERE BEHIND THAT CRATE WITH MY EYES SO I AM COMING TO GET YOU. (I'm embellishing slightly, but that's almost 100% accurate)

Next Item: Story.

Man, you can tell Square for suresies had SOMETHING to do with the writing/execution here. There's a lot of weird pauses in the dialogue, some REALLY ham-fisted exposition about there being a relationship between two of the characters, and some horrible Canadian Voice-acting. I mean Dead Rising 2 levels of VO suck. It seems to be a pretty cool story, with some social commentary, and hint of ethical dilemma re: augmentation (By Hint I mean "HEY AUGMENTATION WOULD TOTALLY PISS LOTS OF PEOPLE OFF, RIGHT? THINK ABOUT IT. SEE? I'M RIGHT, RIGHT? ALSO ABORTION.") Also, the main character TOTALLY gets Commander Shepparded.

Next item: Music.

Apparently they kidnapped the guy who did the music for Mass Effect and forced him to make the soundtrack for this game, except instead of writing new music, he just sort of shuffled around a few notes so it didn't violate copyright and get Square/Eidos sued.
Other than that, it's Mass Effect's soundtrack.


Graphics:

I dunno about this one. the CG scenes aren't great, everything has that weird Unreal engine shininess to it, you know? like there is a thin layer of sweat on everything, but they tried to hide it with some kind of weird smudgey filter...very strange. Also, it appears their animators really tried to over animate the mouths on the CG scenes. The world looks pretty cool, and it's what you've heard, all black and gold and Mass Effecty except totally not because smog, ya dig?


Gameplay:

Fuck the controls in their stupid face. Maybe there's a way to remap the controls, but I didn't see it. In MY first person world, LT = Aim, RT = shotz, B is crouch, cover is handled with the bumpers, and sprint is LS click.

Apparently no one cares about that, especially Deus Ex, because sprint is LB, cover is LT, transition from cover/round cover is tap/hold A, Y = holster weapon, B is crouch, I think. Oh, a is jump, which so far is useless, but it's an FPSish game, so I expected nothing less.

Oh, to unstick from cover? Yeah, LT again. I hate that. Maybe because I'm retarded. Nah, that's a legit Gripe.


Synopsis:
This is a game that exists. You can play it also, if you want to. Because, you know, it's a game that you can do that with.



Oh, there's dialogue "trees" I guess. fully voiced. That is a thing as well.

[White Haven]

The dialogue pauses are weird; I get the feeling that it's less a 'Square doesn't understand timing' thing and more of a load time issue. It becomes especially noticeable when the game is preloading 3-4 conversation options for Jensen, rather than just buffering the first few seconds and screaming the rest based on which choice the player made.

As for control complaints, hah hah, PC, hah hah. Seriously, the PC controls have given me no grief, and I admit to taking a certain obscure pleasure from that given how many bad ports I've played with shitty console-to-PC control shenanigans. Shoe, other foot, kicking, etcetera.

So far, I've been enjoying it. I've just started to find some of the really goofy weapons mods, and I haven't gotten into a real firefight since then, so we'll see how those go. A revolver that shoots bullets that explode? Sure, I'll roll with that. Combat rifle with bullets that can curve in flight to clip a fool? Why not. I'll find out how they work in practice tonight; the only combat I've had since I picked them up has been low-intensity few-guys stuff, for which my silenced, armor-piercing 10mm handgun works just fine.

Oh, and before I forget, the hacking minigame is kinda cool. The vast amount of augments required to become actually good at the hacking minigame is not at all cool, and needs to be stabbed with fire. Eidos took a cool concept and burdened it with such a vast amount of skill-tree-weight that it becomes an active burden to try to spec into hacking to any real degree.

EDIT: To clarify, off the cuff, you could max out all hacking skills. OR with the same points you could max out your inventory, gain the ability to punch gaping holes in walls, gain the ability to lift and throw dumpsters and vending machines, completely nullify weapon recoil, see through walls, double the size of your starting radar and gain the ability to see enemies on it that you haven't spotted visually, and gain partial dermal armour protection. Yes, there are way too many points to invest to become worth a damn in hacking.

[Losonti Tokash]

The no-kills achievement currently appears to be impossible since the game counts the boss fights as kills, with no non-lethal options.

[weemadando]

Amusingly I also heard that the AI is busted in that it won't shoot through breakable glass. So you'll have guys spot you and shuffle back and forth in their aim animation spouting abuse, but they won't ever actually fire through that pane of glass.

[Xon]

The frustrating with loading is I can see the game using fuckall CPU and only doing ~5mb/s disk IO off an intel 180gb g2 ssd.

[Chardok]

Amusingly I also heard that the AI is busted in that it won't shoot through breakable glass. So you'll have guys spot you and shuffle back and forth in their aim animation spouting abuse, but they won't ever actually fire through that pane of glass.

They talked about that shit on Giant Bomb, But I didn't see it. Of coruse, I'm pretty not far in, and that 2nd mission where you pick with the stun gun or the gun gun those dudes can see you from MILES away, so, I'm not diggin g the stealth aspect. In the prologue mission, though I know there's breakable glass between you and the dudes, and they saw me one time NOT crouchwalk past the glass, and came after me through the door without just shooting me through the glass, but I attributed that to the fact that they knew they were just going to hose me toot suite anyways, so why waste a prefectly good window. Also, the room was filled with gas canisters and maybe they were afraid they would hit one of those things and get unconcioused.


Well, here's to hoping the rest of the game is more interesting. So far, I'm liking this about as much, but not more than AP.

[Chardok]

okay, I'm hearing that the stealth is NOT broken, I'm apparently just stupid.

[Stark]

What constitutes 'broken' stealth? Psychic guards, or line-of-sight spotting like AP and Metro?

[Chardok]

Line of sight is busted as hell, but I think I really should've said that the AI is busted, not the stealth, necessarily.

ref: There are times when a guy will literally come up to where you are standing, look at you, standing there with your gun, shrug, say "hmm.." then walk away. Still other times, they will somehow spot your crouching behind a crate from a mile away and announce to you "I SEE YOU!" and "I'M COMING TO SHOOT YOU NOW" and just in case your froget, he will repeat it every 5 seconds as he's COMING TO SHOOT YOU BEHIND THAT CRATE WHERE I KNOW YOU ARE HIDING BECAUSE I SAW YOU THERE BEHIND THAT CRATE WITH MY EYES SO I AM COMING TO GET YOU. (I'm embellishing slightly, but that's almost 100% accurate)

[Stark]

Yeah, the 'cheap' way to do stealth is to let the player be 'invisible' sometimes but allow the AI to know where they are anyway. Crysis 2 is a recent example.

Its amusing that people are so used to 'gamey' stealth that they hated 'you stepped on noisy shit or walked in front of a light and people saw you' stealth.

[weemadando]

Lots of reviewer types on twitter have been joking about building cardboard box privacy screens around terminals so they can hack them without being spotted.

[Havok]

Are you saying FattNerdsTM Gamers FattyNerdsTM only want realism if it doesn't impede their MACHISMO?!?

[Stark]

Lots of reviewer types on twitter have been joking about building cardboard box privacy screens around terminals so they can hack them without being spotted.

EMERGENT GAMEPLAY WITH DYNAMIC CONTENT.

Or, box puzzles.

[Chardok]

You know, I find it strangely annoying that the duedz will totally tell you when they see you, how long they know/suspect you are where you are, and when they've given up the chase. It kind of breaks the whole "dangeR" of being Stealthy but getting caught. I mean, now I know when I can move no matter what, I know when I'm spooted immediately, and I know where they are, and how long they spend looking for me. Takes all the nail biting away.


I liked in FC2 (sorry to keep going back to that) how all you would ever get was "hmm?" occasionally. or, if duedz were in a group or had backup, they would taunt you while looking for you, but very often, you got nothing indicating they found you until you heard the rapid reports from their PKMs.

[Stark]

In Thief you ended up listening for the different rhythm of footsteps when guards where walking slowly and listening/looking for you, and in Metro alert guys would mutter as they peered into the darkness trying to spot you again.

Instead of Sarevok-style 'FLANK LEFT' and 'AT THE SANDBAGS' and 'OH WELL IT WAS NOTHING'.

[CaptHawkeye]

Some aspects of the game are just pretty jarring at points. Playing through at max difficulty it's still astounding to see the sorts of things the AI will let you get away with. Who's this strange person crawling into the air vent right next to me? Eh, must be the janitor. Chards was right about the graphics, they're so-so. A lot of the long distance textures and scenery are downright ugly. The CGI and motion capture was pretty flimsy all around.

I have no problem with the controls, they make enough sense to me. Overall though, this game has very little challenge. It was clearly designed with the wannabee tough guy fanbase Stark hates in mind. Even if the AI and other mechanics were working properly all the time, their is a really strong sense that the game is basically handing itself to you.

[Stark]

I'm blown away by how broken and 1993 some elements are. Your pistol fires at an artifically limited rate to prevent it being too useful, you are a hugely augmented cyborg working for a huge company and they give you six (6) bullets for a critical mission, dead guys drop bullets for guns they didn't even have, etc. I'm rolling in stun gun darts, and a) I don't have a stun gun and b) they don't either.

I got more bullets from a factory locker than I did from the CEO of a multinational company!

The tetris inventory is awful... not just because it's a tetris inventory, but because of the semi-random shapes and sizes for things. The combination of very limited inventory space and half a dozen bullets per gun means your inventory is constantly full of guns to use all the ammo types... but the ammo stacks!

[CaptHawkeye]

Yeah forced balancing is present at almost every turn in the game. This new development team is really starting from scratch as it seems like none of the Ion Storm guys were involved in development.

We also can't be sure what else Square Enix has pruned from Eidos in manpower and equipment. They flat out shut down Eidos Hungary, the developers of the Battlestations games.

[Ford Prefect]

Overall though, this game has very little challenge.

I don't see how this is the case. I'm playing on normal and combat is extremely lethal, though admittedly I haven't bought any durability upgrades. The stealth is fine, there's no meaningful difference in its system compared to, say, Alpha Protocol.

[White Haven]

The stealth is... a bit wonky. 90% of the time, it works quite well, enemies have long sight-lines, no retarded 'you're outside my coooone!' at medium range, guard alert times are lengthy enough to avoid 'hide in a corner for twenty seconds' methods of ditching pursuit. And then you get wierd special cases in close quarters where enemies will just utterly fail to notice you for several crucial seconds.

Guards also need a whole subset of AI scripting relating two dealing with vents, however. If the guards know you're in a vent, they do saturate the mouth of the vent with fire for a while, which is good. They very, very rarely 'nade the vent, and they never ever send anyone into the ventilation system after you.

The game is hardly alone in needing an 'I saw the last guy do (x) and he got capped in the skull. New plan.' system. I enjoy a good mount of loot bodies as much as the next guy, but the classic stealth-game 'cap the guy investigating the dead body' tactic works just as well as it always does, over and over in the same fight.

So far, I've been somewhat impressed with their desire to work consequences for actions into the game. It's no Alpha Protocol, but I've had a few incidents where an earlier decision has either paid off or bit me in the ass. Both, once.

Also, combat rifle lock-on seeking bullets and blind-fire are awesome together, and should be a part of every balanced breakfast.

[Justice]

This game does a lot to make prove itself as a successor to the original Deus Ex. While I knew that there were no Ion Storm members helping out, if you played both games back-to-back they'd feel like they were made by the same creators... with all the good and bad that entails.

- The controls works well for the XBox 360. I'd get the computer version normally, but I just haven't upgraded my comp in so long I decided to be lazy and just get the console version. Outside of undoing my typical FPS muscle memory, I rarely had a problem with the controls. The only problems I did have were occasionally missing a contextual Augmented slam, and when I was switching between nodes in the hacking game I felt like it didn't register my commands. However, the latter may have been me trying to move too quickly.

- The graphics, as people have mentioned, are meh. They feel a couple years behind, though I wouldn't say they look bad. The most distracting thing, as per usual with a lot of games, is the lack of facial animation and mush-mouth animations. But it didn't bother me too much. On the music, this didn't sound like Mass Effect to me, but maybe that's just me. I did like the aesthetics style of the game in terms of environments, and I'm surprised that the Neo-Italian Renaissance style grew on me.

- I liked the story, as simple as it was at times. They put a lot of effort into creating their own story, but hitting similar beats to the original. It's not quite shouting "ORDER VERSUS FREEDOM" like the last game, using the Augmentation debate as a backdrop. I'm not going to claim it's brilliant, but it works well. It also helps that, if you look around, you'll see that all the big players from the last game working things behind the scenes. None of it felt like Square, though, so I don't know where you get that. The voice acting felt like the last game too, but in a bad way. The weird pauses were there in the last game, too, though I think the voice actors are okay. At the very least, Adam Jensen sounds a lot better than JC Denton.

- Gameplay is good. Stark's right, it tosses out realism for game balance when it comes to loading people up: I live in Detroit, but there are simply not that many people who are hiding munitions in their drawers and closets or simply placing them for all to see on their coffee table. But I'm okay with that; I'm not playing this game for realism, I playing for a challenge. You want to give your cyber-enhanced super-soldier 5 tranquilizer darts for his rifle and nothing else? For me, I guess it's a bit nostalgic to the original, though I can agree that it's a bit stupid. You shouldn't have to buy ammo when you are the security head for a massive multi-national corporation: You should just have it waiting for you when you gear up for a mission. Now if you want to buy a mod for your weapon, okay, but ammo? Yeah that's stupid, but it doesn't kill the game for me in any way.

- The problem with Stealth is that the vision cones for the enemies are likely too restricted. Instead of giving them a better field of vision, they tend to do what a lot of games do and just add more guys and make bigger patterns for the guards to walk in so that you have to really make sure you are picking the right guard, otherwise it's a long reload before you try again so the alarm doesn't go off. I'd prefer to have fewer guards, but less leeway when it comes to shit-kicking the guy behind him and the guy not noticing. I don't think I ever felt the computer unfairly got me, though.

- I like some of the things they try. They have what basically amounts to a "verbal boss battle" which is a great idea... and they only half-execute it. I like getting away from the Mass Effect Dialogue Tree (Good, Dull, Douchebag), and they give you this neat little personality write-up. Maybe it was just me, though, but sometimes it was a shot-in-the-dark between what to choose. The system needs refinement, but the idea is there.

- The Hacking minigame is absolutely great: it feels like you really are "hacking" in the sense that you're raiding a computer system in a movie and you need to be smart in how you go about it. The different nodes and how they can interact are nice, and the tricks are simple but useful. You only get two, but you'll use them both enough for them to feel useful. White Haven is absolutely right on how over-extended the hacking upgrade tree is: There are essentially 4 trees which you can upgrade on: System Level (What systems you can hack), Drone Hacking (Being able to hack turrets and robots), Fortifying (Upgrading the security on a node so a trace will take longer), and Stealth (Ability for the system to catch you). There are 5 system levels when there should be three, while Drone Hacking and Fortifying probably could be attached to those levels. It would have been nice to have been a great hacker as well as had a few more augs to have fun with.

- The worst part of the game that I can think of are the boss battles, which just have no rhythm or feel. They aren't particularly good at avoiding fire so they tend to sponge bullets in obscene ways. The second-to-last one really frustrated me as I almost ran out of ammo for my lethal weapons! Admittedly I was more of a stealth/hacker guy, but that just went on way too long. Oh, and the endings are less endings and really more "Justifications that we've already heard from other characters". I wanted details, damn it, not a speech.

- The best part was probably one of the scenes where you have to defend a buddy, and you can fail and continue on. I was distinctly lacking in the heavy weapons I probably needed, but with judicious use of the sniper rifle as well as running like a madman to draw fire, I managed to save the character. I suppose I had handicapped myself, but it forced me to do some ridiculous jumping around to keep the heat on me, and the entire sequence was really satisfying in the end.

I could say more, but I'm already in tl;dr territory. Suffice to say, it's really good followup which tries different things... though it probably could have polished those ideas a bit better. Could have stood to be a little bit longer or at least give us one more city to wander in, too.

[Stark]

The combat is lethal in that you have less hitpoints than a hobo, but the ai/stealth is so cheesy that once you get into the headspace for it, the game becomes very easy.

The 'multiple approaches' are exactly as disappointing as anyone should have expected; most areas have two sets of corridors. Hacking isn't a 'path' because you can't use it to replace actually going anywhere, and it essentially forces any character to invest heaps into it because of the ludicrous free stuff it gives you.

And seriously, no knife or flashlight says it all.

The game has nice art and good atmosphere when it isn't trying to be pretentious, and if they hadn't given the plot away in the intro the story could have been interesting.

[Chardok]

Yeah, I, uh....you know, for a ZOMG SUPERSOLDIERAUGMENTROFFLEPOWER, you seriously have like 5 hitpoints. I mean, I get that he's still a "dude" But man does it feel like you're just dead instantly. I can counton one hand the number of times I've not been killed when spotted. It doesn't make the game harder or more realisitc, just more annoying (IMO).

[Stark]

While he isn't a full body replacement, he might as well be; his chest, arms and legs are replaced. Replaced... with breakable stuff.

I mean you CAN die if you fall 9 feet off a scaffold and die unless you use a fucking parachute.

In the first level, the terrys can take more hits with the pistol than you can. That's pretty embarssing, but it's irrelevant later when everything is silenced.

That said, the use of power to attempt to keep the melee kills from being overpowered is a complete failure. Not only does it fill your inventory with fucking boxes of chocolate bars, but the stungun is better in every respect and has plentiful ammunition... and you won't accidentally punch a guy across the room into full view because RANDOM MACHO TAKEDOWNS. Crouching behind a guy waiting for your battery to fill up while you aim a taser at him just highlights how crap your cyberware is.

The game handles stripping ammo really badly, too. If you don't have a gun, you literally can't strip ammo; if you do, you can't double up on guns (which frankly is good, because mule looting is lame). However, if your inventory is full, and you have a modified gun in there, you can't pick up the unmodified gun for ammo... unless it's in your hand. Very strange, and it means you can't build up your supplies of ammo without wasting huge spaces of inventory on guns. Would 'hold x to pick up ammo' have been so fucking hard? Why does the tetris inventory even exist? What does it add, besides the need to leave a pile of crap somewhere when you can't carry it?

[SylasGaunt]

So far, I've been enjoying it. I've just started to find some of the really goofy weapons mods, and I haven't gotten into a real firefight since then, so we'll see how those go. A revolver that shoots bullets that explode? Sure, I'll roll with that. Combat rifle with bullets that can curve in flight to clip a fool? Why not. I'll find out how they work in practice tonight; the only combat I've had since I picked them up has been low-intensity few-guys stuff, for which my silenced, armor-piercing 10mm handgun works just fine.

I'm early on, but you gotta love the weird ass tech floating around. The armor piercing mod for the 10mm pistol? Quantum tunneling.