Deus Ex: Human Revolution

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Matt
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Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:27 am

James should find some way of playing this game.

It's on sale on Steam right now (I got it before this) for £9.99.

I know you were a big Deus Ex fan, James, and I feel this is fairly true to the original. It also serves as a prequel. IT's very pretty, too. It runs on Mac, so perhaps there's an OpenGL method of running it?
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Chewi » Sat Jun 23, 2012 5:54 am

It's been on my radar since it was first announced but by the time I actually get around to it, it'll probably be cheap as chips anyway. I don't really want a Steam version. I bought #2 on eBay for £2 or something silly. :D Last time I checked, it did run under Wine so fingers crossed.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by kaos » Sat Jun 23, 2012 6:23 pm

As long as you don't put it off for too long.
I'm fairly convinced that the game wont age well.
matter of fact I think the wrinkles are starting to show.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Chewi » Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:34 pm

I probably won't have that problem. I didn't finish #2 until four years after its release and because I hadn't played anything else nearly that new, I thought the graphics were amazing. :lol: I do have the 360 now but even still, I'm not a harsh judge when it comes to graphics.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by kaos » Sun Jun 24, 2012 12:44 am

I don't mean just graphically, even though that's definitely one of the major areas.
I feel like the design and gameplay itself are some of the things that wont hold up well for too much longer.
I talked with Aero a breif bit about it.

While I did thoroughly enjoy the game, and found it was memorable. My recently attempt at a 2nd play through didn't pan out, and left me with a lot of questions for why certain design choices were even considered at all.

I'm not the type of person that feels the status quo is the best way to go, but the game felt like it was built using a different set of standards from a more youthful time of the game industry, and not really concerned at all with pushing them.

In fact in a lot of ways it felt a lot like Metal Gear.
and I know its blasphemy... but I don't like Metal Gear.
at least not anymore.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Sun Jun 24, 2012 1:45 am

I'm currently on my second playthrough right now and pinning a lot on S-E making another title with this formula, or more DLC, or just something. I'm loving it. It being a touch on MGS is one of the reasons why I like it so much, especially the missing link DLC and one of the more tougher achievements (foxiest of hounds: Image) resembling the guards from MGS. Though, I'm a real big MGS fan.

What design decisions and such didn't you like, Kaos? The only bad part I can think of was the "ending-tron 4000" or whatever else Ben Croshaw dubbed it, and of course the inability to non-lethal resolve (or miss entirely) boss fights. There's some back tracking and the lack of "hub worlds" such as Detroit and Hengsha, though I read there were supposed to be at least 3 more of those but they were cut due to budgets or something (as such is game dev :( ). I only ask cause I'm blind to whatever faults you may see, but I'd like to see them. DX11 and Tessellation make it look pretty nifty. There's some mean lighting effects too


Also, James, I bought the retail copy from GAME, but it activates on Steam so you may have to grab the 360 version (though it wouldn't be so wrong if you bought it and then Yarr'd a copy of it and tried it with Wine?). It's definitely more fun with the mouse and keyboard and the inventory system seems much better.

Oh and Invisible War is £1.49 on Steam... is it worth a shot?
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Chewi » Sun Jun 24, 2012 11:51 am

Matt wrote:Oh and Invisible War is £1.49 on Steam... is it worth a shot?
I'd say so. It got mixed reviews for a variety of reasons. I really liked it but it's quite short. The first game literally took me years, this one took a week. The environments are smaller but I think that came at expense of the graphics. They were quite advanced for the time and it ran like molasses for most people, if it even ran at all, because it required a card with pixel shaders. You won't have any trouble now though. I maxed out the settings at 1280x1024 and it ran fine on the Radeon HD 2600 PRO I had at the time.

Some commented on the freedom of choice and moral ambiguity and those really stood out for me. At one point, I found myself pointing a gun in the face of a character after I'd tracked them down with every intention of killing them. My finger wavered over the mouse button as they gradually talked me down and I eventually changed my mind. I could have killed them if I'd really wanted to. It was entirely my choice. I'd never experienced that in a game before. I must stress that if you abuse the freedom of choice and play unrealistically then the game will feel unrealistic. Play it in a natural fashion and the experience will be rewarding. There's obviously only so much they can do.

Also, the text size in the PC version is ridiculously huge. Luckily for you, I worked out a way to mostly fix this. Stick this in your user.ini file.

Code: Select all

[FontMappings]
HudFont12__D=DX2_Font,0.5,0.80
HUD_Convo__D=DX2_Font,0.4,1.0
HudFont16__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
HUD_HelpText__D=DX2_Font,0.5,0.80
HUD_Inventory__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
SmallFont10__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
MediumFont16__D=DX2_Font,0.5,0.80
HUD_CornerHelpText__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.8
HudFont14__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
HUD_DataLink__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
HUD_SmallText__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Sun Jun 24, 2012 12:14 pm

I may well have £1.49 left in my PP for it, then. I'm super skint now until September :( The poor life of a student and all that.

I happened upon a boxed version of Deus Ex from way back in 2000. You know the ones with the super large boxes and the CD jewel cases? It was a in a big box of games someone gave me. I sold off most of the others but that, and Age of Empires II, I kept as keep sakes. I also did this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/243946/h ... _7_pc.html to my copy of Desu Ex. The new textures make it look somewhat more appealing. On my playthrough of that now too, but I've gotten side tracked by Human Revolution... I still highly recommend you play it on the PC in some way. It only came out last August so I dunno about aging badly.

Still, wanna know what Kaos thought of it. Having to go through Games Design last year (and this year, thread later) I found myself blind to some design decisions that others thought sucked. It needed them to explain before I could see them. Need to try and become more subjective!
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by kaos » Sun Jun 24, 2012 1:50 pm

ok.

Chewi turn your eyeballs off.
when you experience this game you should experience with a clean slate.
so go away.


ok then.
It really boils down to the character in question and his presence or lack there of in the game.

So the first thing I wonder about is the Hybrid point of view.
its been done in other games before, and in those games I feel like it really works better.

however in Deus, I see it as a constant obstacle that compromises or confuses the idea of the game.

A First Person view gives the player a direct link the the game which arguably heightens the experience/immersion/etc. it Basically makes YOU the character.

A 3rd person view typically gives an on screen presence to work through by proxy. this character can potentially have his own look and personality, and you pretty much just work through him. You're not you, You're the onscreen character, and for the most part expected to behave as such. Batman: Arkham A&C, may be the best recent example of this.

Because they went hybrid in DX:HR.
I feel unsure on whether or not I'm expected to play the game as Adam Jensen or Johnny.

knowing this is a game about freedom and personal choices etc. "Johnny" is the initial decision for a play event...
but then theirs Adam, Adam more than occasionally jumps into view with a great character design aesthetic and almost demands the opposite, tossing Johnny to the sidelines temporarily.

I feel that the game could have been much better had they gone exclusively one way or the other.
Played strictly from a FP view theirs no questions about identity at all. and as such no influence over the choices that must be made.

Played from 3rd person, the question of Identity isn't as apparent, and I can just 'be' Adam.

That leads me to my 2nd issue.
my initial thoughts on Adam after the first 30 or so minutes of play weren't very high.
somewhere in the game that changed or at least became a non factor.
But the the initial thought was..."oh god, another game where I have to play as some guy I don't even like."

So in a game that bills itself as another one of those freedom choice type of games...
Why was the visual component to "Character Creation" completely non existent?

Had I some input (however limited it might be) in the characters visual appearance. anytime he came on screen in a 3rd person view would have been fine. as it still would have been "Johnny" or at the very least a character of my own design. making the proxy character an Avatar of myself.(elder scrolls bioware)

This is a good example of what I mean by the standards of the game, and the standards of the industry not being in sync. Many other games in the genre, seem to realize that because of the genre, the narrative ultimately belongs to the player. And so right from the beginning, they encourage you to take part in the details of the lead character, and allow for at the very least subtle differences in the story based on them.

I think even if it had been as limited as gender and skintone and a few hairstyle, it could have been much better.

Even though Jensen has a great visual character design, he is not a great character. However my point is, he should have never had to be a great character.
Mass effect isnt high on many peoples charts lately, but for all Mass Effects faults, “Commander Shepard” is a character who is largely created be the player. She/He is a work in progress from the start till (just before) the end. Even in the conversation system, you are creating a personality for him/her

by contrast the conversation in Deus Ex, seemed less about the personal choices of my character, and more about figuring out how to “win” the argument with the person on the other end of it.


Could you imagine how much more impressive the game could have been played from a female perspective? No? How about the dialog based around the Prostitues in Hingsha on becoming augmented?


so "character creation" or the lack there of.
even if we forget the non-visual creation aspect. what we're left with is basically a simple skill tree.
On its own a skill tree is not a bad thing. As a matter of fact I'm in full support of actual skills versus stats and numbers.

However Deus sets up its skills with very few actual "branches" and even worse seems to encourages you to obtain all the skills it offers. that alone undermines the idea of directing the character growth, if regardless of your early choices, the end result is the always same.

Not to mention there seem to be many points in the game were you are nearly forced to choose a specific augmentation, even if it was never in your plan.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Sun Jun 24, 2012 10:16 pm

I see where you are coming from but I'm going to be flawed as I quite liked Jensen as a character. He reminded me heavily of "JC Denton" from the first game. No matter what you called your character in Deus Ex, he was called Denton as it was a codename to mask his real name (one you choose) but that real name does periodically show up in scripts on computer terminals and such. Jensen even has the kind of "monotone" voice of Denton and there's also a few cameo's and if you dig deep enough in the terminals and pocket pc's, mentions of characters in the next game (as this is a prequel to 2000's Deus Ex)

I found myself role playing as Jensen and trying to choose the options I feel he was like as person, like as an ex-cop my instinct straight away was to diffuse volatile situations (trying not to include spoilers here) and also talking my way into places instead of running and gunning.

There was a lot of stuff I felt was capture perfectly from Deus Ex (the first) such as the multiple routes in which to carry out a mission and non-lethal ways of resolving or going about business. But this I can agree with:
by contrast the conversation in Deus Ex, seemed less about the personal choices of my character, and more about figuring out how to “win” the argument with the person on the other end of it.
Most definitely, they dropped the ball there. It feels more like a "which is going to be the 'best' way of doing X or Y" instead of just doing what you want to do in that situation.

I haven't really played Mass Effect so I can't draw the comparisons but I do see where you're coming from. I didn't mind that much and really enjoyed playing as Jensen, but I think being able to choose more would've made for an interesting play.

As for the third/first person stuff... Again, I didn't mind. I quite liked the way that worked, it felt like a reverse Metal Gear Solid; first person 70% of the time, first the other 30%.


One complaint I do have:

The hardest difficulty... isn't that difficult. I'm playing Stealth. I'm on my second run-through and both times I haven't used the armour or the aim steadying or anything like that, so the toughest parts are the boss battles. You'd think they'd place more guards around to make it much tougher but they haven't. So, so long as you're sneaking and not getting seen it's still just as difficult as the other two settings.

You can so kind of exploit stuff. There's one part with a gang (again, no spoiler attempts) and my second time through I cleared them out before the related missions and they were all still cleared out... making my missions a lot easier. I'm unsure if this is a complaint or whether it was a good move.




Still, I've just gotten to the Tai Yong Medical, playing through on Hard, going for the pacifist and no alerts achievements. =D

edit:

Another thing that won me over, and I'm not sure if I mentioned this, was the soundtrack. I was really impressed because I don't usually take to a game's soundtrack like I have with this. Each time the main theme quietly creeps into the game I just love it.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by kaos » Sun Jun 24, 2012 10:57 pm

Yeah the sound track was sweet.

Matt. Make sure Mass Effect is on your backlog.
You don't have to buy them, but you should at least play them.

Many people have a problem with the series few inconsistencies and especially how it ends. But that by no means means it should be skipped. There are many things it does extremely well.

It's a game that really knows how to stick it to you over a decisions make.
That said. You never really feel pressured into certain behaviors or like you've made a "wrong" decision.

If you can get the ME1 interactive comic and jump right into the 2nd game that'll speed things up.

After you finish it. I recommend you look at YouTube vids of the final game. The differences in some of the scenes are pretty striking.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Mon Jun 25, 2012 1:48 am

I have ME1 on Steam =D Grabbed it one time when it was dirty cheap. It's on my "to-do" list with a few others. I did play some of it and was interested until I hit a space station where I got pretty bored... I wasn't really after any slower RPG-y games at the time, though. I kind of flip and flop between genres at times.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Mon Jun 25, 2012 9:12 pm

...Quite pissed off. I've just carefully ploughed through the game making sure I didn't set off any alarms but I didn't get Foxiest of the Hounds achievement :( Sad Panda. Think it may have been while rescuing Malik. She's a dirty whore.

..Still, got the two for the hardest difficulty and pacifist. I supposed I can play through again now, killing everything in sight with all the cool weapons like I wanted to :D
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by kaos » Mon Jul 02, 2012 12:53 am

I'm thinking that a guns blazing play through would be pretty stunted.

The game never once gave me the impression that it supported the ammo requirement for that kinda thing.
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Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Post by Matt » Tue Jul 03, 2012 10:46 am

I managed the Foxiest Achievement. I congratulate myself on getting all the Steam Achievements on a Steam game for the first time since 2004.

And it could if you placed your shots, I think. I always ran out of cyberboost bars but always had an inventory full of weapons I didn't use. I haven't used the machine pistol in 3 play throughts. Since getting the silenced sniper rifle I just use that and the pistol :D

I got my stepson it during the sale on Steam and he's been hooked on it, though it took him a while to get into the style of play needed. He ended up a mix of guns blazing and stealth. Though, he had to start playing all over again. He got to the [spoiler]Po po station[/spoiler] and instead of trying to talk his way in or sneak him, he tried to shoot the shit out of the place. He ran in and out a couple of times triggering the auto save twice and screwing up because he hadn't made his own saves. A lesson learned ;)
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