Throw out your no man's sky lad, Deus Ex 4 is out and apparently it's pretty good according to critics or maybe not according to people getting mad and score-bombing it on steam and metacritic because of performance issues, day one DLC and micro-transactions.
Who's played it!? What do you think!? WHERE'S MY COPY, AMAZON!?
It's just more Human Revolution, which is fine by me, but don't go into it expecting anything new and fancy.
Invisibility is still utterly gamebreaking. There's a sequence at the end of the first mission where a huge firefight erupts, a sandstorm rolls in, and you have to disable a helicopter while also trying to ensure an ally doesn't die. I tried a couple of times normally, and couldn't take out the helicopter before my ally was killed, or without killing any enemies.
Then I just went invisible, sprinted from the starting point to the helicopter, and hit the prompt on it to disable it. Flawless victory.
I can't wait for them to make a Deus Ex game that takes place in JC/Paul @Denton's time and place.
A truly prophetic sig...
At 8/24/16 04:19 PM, TheMaster wrote: It's just more Human Revolution, which is fine by me, but don't go into it expecting anything new and fancy.
Hey, as long as it reaches the standard of Human Revolution, I'm a happy camper.
Any complaints apart from what you've mentioned? Anything worse than before? Anything improved?
"Death upon death... Nothing but death in this barren land. Who can we pray to? There are only demons and fiends here."
~The Journal of a Man Who Wandered into Another World
At 8/24/16 05:50 PM, TOXlCITY wrote: Hey, as long as it reaches the standard of Human Revolution, I'm a happy camper.
Any complaints apart from what you've mentioned? Anything worse than before? Anything improved?
Now that I'm a good 12 hours in, I can say both the plot and characters are significantly less interesting than the previous game.
Makes you appreciate how good Pritchard, Malik and Sarif were. The new ones are all extremely underdeveloped. It's not that they're bad characters, they're just non-characters. Exist only to drive the plot, no real life to them.
Thus far it's definitely feeling like the lesser of the two experiences.
At 8/24/16 04:19 PM, TheMaster wrote: It's just more Human Revolution, which is fine by me, but don't go into it expecting anything new and fancy.
This is what disappointed me when it was first announced but I think my hype is in check by now. Should've just expected Human Revolution 2, rather than hoping the next DX would be as much of a jump from HR as HR was from the original.
Invisibility is still utterly gamebreaking.
I don't actually remember invisibility being that good (never enough energy bars), or accessible too early on. I mainly just used it to move between cover or to quickly close some space between me and an enemy.
At 8/25/16 04:07 PM, Jackho wrote: hoping the next DX would be as much of a jump from HR as HR was from the original.
Original > HR
At 8/25/16 04:20 PM, Dean wrote:At 8/25/16 04:07 PM, Jackho wrote: hoping the next DX would be as much of a jump from HR as HR was from the original.Original > HR
That's not what I meant. They didn't play anything safe with HR, it's a drastically different setting, art style, main character, gameplay style etc. while still staying close to the spirit of the original. That's more what I expected in future, rather than taking everything from the previous game and just doing it again.
Even if the changes were as basic as picking a different colour (than the yellow/gold) to build the aesthetic from, it would be something. HR felt like a whole new, unique thing when it came out and MD just cheapens that effort to an extent.
Finished it.
Super disappointing on the whole. If you're desperate for more Human Revolution it might be worth a shot, but on the whole I feel extremely let down by it.
19 hours to finish it, and never once cared about the main story, and there's only one really memorable side quest. That's damning for an RPG. What's worse is the setting itself. Prague is a far less interesting place to explore than Detroit or Hengsha, and the world itself (in a post-Augmentation boom era, rather than during the boom itself) feels less engaging. Occasionally you'll be flung off to some new setting, but these areas are always very linear and usually quite short, then you're right back to Prague's bland streets and copy pasted apartments once again.
Real shame, I'd been looking forward to this for ages.
At 8/24/16 05:41 PM, Painbringer wrote: I can't wait for them to make a Deus Ex game that takes place in JC/Paul @Denton's time and place.
I am really looking forward to that aswell! There's a big chance the'll be making a remake though. I hope not.
At 8/24/16 03:12 PM, Jackho wrote: Throw out your no man's sky lad,
I was so hoping for that game to be good... instead it's just a glorified tech demo with repetitive plants and animals without proper space exploration. Guess I'll have to move onto Mankind Divided to fill the void created by NMS
Bumping. I've put 20 hours into this now and think I'm about two thirds into it (assuming it follows the same general structure as HR). Playing on hard mode, no kills, stealth only, and taking my time.
Loving it so far. Gameplay and level design is excellent, story is interesting, sidequests are good and the aug segregation setting is very interesting too. I love Prague way more than either hub in the first game. @themaster can fight me irl.
HR is more respectable for it's ambition but this is just as good a game. The characters are a valid complaint though, being split between multiple organizations means everyone gets developed half as much as the Sarif employees did and in particular there's no one to fill Pritchard's shoes. Miller and Vega should both have a much greater story presence. Viktor McBadGuy is pretty dull too. You used to be able to argue a it with Sarif when he sent you on errands.
At 9/2/16 02:14 PM, Jackho wrote: Bumping. I've put 20 hours into this now and think I'm about two thirds into it (assuming it follows the same general structure as HR). Playing on hard mode, no kills, stealth only, and taking my time.
How. I did all side quests, no kills, no alerts on Give Me Deus Ex and finished it in 19 hours.
I just finished "I Never Asked For This" mode, the one with the perma-death.
I love the overall concept of being able to progress however you want and then replaying to find a path or method you never thought was there or possible.
But I hated the body dragging mechanics.
If Dishonored and MGSV taught us anything, it's that carrying bodies is better than dragging them.
The bodies keep getting stuck on corners or even the very floor they fall unconscious on.
A bitch when you need to quickly hide them before a guard or camera sees them.
I also despise the hacking mini-game, due to how it's pretty much dictated by RNG.
If the game wants to screw you, you'll get discovered when capturing your first node, even when your hacking stealth is maxed out.
And when you managed to hack without getting discovered, it's pure luck and there's no satisfaction.
At 9/2/16 02:22 PM, TheMaster wrote:At 9/2/16 02:14 PM, Jackho wrote: Bumping. I've put 20 hours into this now and think I'm about two thirds into it (assuming it follows the same general structure as HR). Playing on hard mode, no kills, stealth only, and taking my time.How. I did all side quests, no kills, no alerts on Give Me Deus Ex and finished it in 19 hours.
Finished it last night, 25 hours or so. I was playing the same as you but perhaps limiting myself a bit more, didn't carry any non lethal weapons, didn't activate any "cheap" or offence augments (cloak, typhoon, the stun thing), and on top of that I reloaded often to see the other dialogue outcomes and make sure I'd got the "real" conclusion to a sidequest. Or maybe I'm just shit and died more.
The tranq rifle is possibly the best in the game so I had to sell it. Completely silent, long range, perfectly accurate, non-lethal and doesn't even alert someone when they're hit by it, and it's ibe of the starting weapons. MGS games have this issue too, going non-lethal should be the harder moral-fuelled path, but the tranq pistol is one of the best guns in the game and makes the non lethal approach literally the easiest and only logical choice by any measure, in that case even if sleeping bodes are found they don't raise suspicion.
Tranq guns are a broken mechanic in general I guess, but you could at least need to find the silencer upgrade and scope yourself. The stun gun has some of the same issues but at least it has very short range to balance it somewhat.
Didn't get the foxiest achievement for no alarms since one that's out of the player's control triggered in the GARM facility, it depends on whether you choose to call Miller or Vega at the start of the mission. That's some stupid bullshit, seriously thats the kind of thing that makes me hate options within game narratives, it's such an abstract nonsensical thing for a purely arbitrary, unnecessary choice of who to talk to would void an achievement tied to a gameplay mechanic that you've been working on for 20 hours now, there's no logic, there's no story consequence, it's retarded. I was already leaving Prague again by the time I looked it up so I was past giving a shit. At least I know where it went wrong and it's not just down to a filmsy definition of "alarm" like the last game.
I was planning to go full rambo next playthrough, kill everyone and get the most out of all the offensive augs I didn't try, but I might put it on easy and just cloak through the main quest for the alert achievement.
The one major disappointment, and I'm surprised you didn't bring this up, was the last chunk of the game, it started to feel significantly lazier and more hastily designed as it went on, even in sidequests, and then it ends quite abruptly without any resolution but a hook to lead into the next game. There's not even a half decent twist. They've gone and franchised it. It's so obviously built as one minor piece of a story rather than a whole, self contained one like each Deus Ex before it, and I can't imagine Eidos Montreal doing that so I'll just blame Square Enix and their horrible business practices. This game would be truly immense if the end was rather the half way point and it just kept going into the Janus stuff. This is one of my all time favourite series and that approach has dampened my enthusiasm to the point where I might not even play the next one.
At 9/4/16 12:01 AM, Goldsickle wrote: I just finished "I Never Asked For This" mode, the one with the perma-death.
I need to try that too, though I'm a bit disappointed you can't select that on new game+. I like the idea of a very hard perma death mode but with all your augs to play with, rather than being basically restricted to another stealth only playthrough.
If it were me I'd go full-on Crank and have a time limit too, like Jensen gets orchid poisoned in the first mission and you need to beat the game/get the antidote in a set amount of hours. That sounds fun to me. I'm glad they added the mode, but if they're gonna name it after a meme and everything they could've gone a bit more creative and set it apart. Permadeath, no time to fuck around, but all augs available (well maybe not cloak), should be a mod for that.
But I hated the body dragging mechanics.
I think the issue is more with the collision dtection that the dragging itself, I actually like being limited to dragging in theory but the one mission where you kidnap the Dvali guy was a nightmare. You had to drag him up two flights of stairs, through two cluttered rooms, off a balcony into a bunch of garbage and then into a storage locker. It would take Jensen maybe 20 seconds to walk it but it took me probably at least 10 minutes to drag that fucker and I had to reload multiple times as he got hopelessly stuck in objects. The narrow double doors to the balcony was like threading a needle, if he hit the doors at all he'd get glued to them and keep springing backward into the room, and once you get him off the balcony he's liable to phase through the garbage bags and get permanently stuck in them.
I also despise the hacking mini-game, due to how it's pretty much dictated by RNG.
If the game wants to screw you, you'll get discovered when capturing your first node, even when your hacking stealth is maxed out.
I don't quite agree, it's not perfect but of the 130+ hacks I did (the game tracks the number) only one was genuinely frustrating due to bad RNG luck. It's quite tense when you try to capture a high level node and it might or might not trigger, and really intense when you beat the countdown by a few miliseconds. I never had disproportionate luck with low level nodes triggering or anything. Low level locks aren't rewarding to do flawlessly but they shouldn't be, and there's some genuine relief when you get past a node in a high level lock that you statistically shouldn't have. It's the type of feeling you usually only get from D&D.
Although I got the remote hacking aug near the end and I might prefer that. It's much simpler but more skill based, more rewarding when you hit it flawlessly and probably more punishing to fail as you're likely left quite open for several seconds.
(spoiler here)
Also I was wondering did either of you (@themaster) check on Koller when you return to curfew prague? He'd been murdered in mine and I don't know what caused it. Reading Radich's email a bit later revealed it might have been him, as in Radich killed Koller because Kollar couldn't supply what he needed, because Kollar's own his supplier was the guy in Golem city that Otar tells you to get rid of. That was the one story moment that hit me with a shock and it's probably easily missable. Half teh reason I want a kill everything playthrough is to stop that, and to see what happens in one of the later story mission if both dvali leaders are dead.
fucking text walls dude
Forgot to mention the ending itself, where it's a still angle of Eliza monotonously going through everything you did, is one of the worst and most mind numbingly boring i've seen in an RPG. Doesn't help that I literally hate everything about Eliza though, her whole concept, design and writing is contrived and her acting is terrible.
Wanted to bring up the side quests since that's kind of the meat here story-wise - @goldsickle, @themaster what were your favourites / least favourite?
-The Harvester was pretty great I thought, fascinating concept of imprinting partial personalities to overcome mental issues. Really enjoyed playing Detective Jensen in this and Fade to Black, bits like digging dirt on the politician to prove his innocence were great. This also showcases my issue with the end game feeling rushed though, the second part of this is very abrupt with little actual content, instead having you walking back and forth multiple times between two city areas and the excessive loading screen between them just for one conversation. At the end of it Montag just walks into frame after appearing out of absolutely fucking nowhere, coming from an illogical direction in a area he had no reason to be in just so he and Daria could talk. It's laughably lazy, and after that the mission just ends without you ever removing the chip and bringing it to the doctor like you had agreed.
-01011000 I liked for the same reasons, though I wasn't too into Helle and the whole cryptic babble. The store clerk was one of my favourite interactions in the game, could've done with more of that.
-The Golden Ticket, it's just okay overall but showcased some things I wish the game had more of, involving many different characters, areas, gameplay options and dialogue trees all at once. Springing the big choice on you at the end was excellent
-Cult of Personality was super over simplified and a bunch of missed potential. Could've been great, ended up being whatever. I notice a lot of these quests feel like they end prematurely, like here it's over as soon as you expose the guy and he basically becomes a non interactive npc when you could've got significantly more dialogue out of him and his followers.
