Deus Ex Human Revolution

[TwwIX]

I agree, the cut scenes are of very poor quality.

 

[MJ12]

Definitely looked like cutscenes from an early 2000's game. Even similar to Invisible War's.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Spoiler

So Megan goes on to make what becomes the gray death? And I wonder what happens to Jensen...

I didn't get the pacifist achievement since I killed those ****ers at the beginning of the game (pre-aug). Oh well, I know I played the rest of the game non-lethal and that's what matters. Now for a lethal and direct path playthrough.

 

[MJ12]

I think it's weird so many pacifist players killed the enemies in the intro level. They weren't that hard to avoid.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

I didn't try, too excited (night of release). Then they gave me a gun.

 

[Gargantou]

I didn't try, too excited (night of release). Then they gave me a gun.

Same.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

...It was in my last hour of playing that I discovered F8 is quickload. Rage.

 

[Krynn72]

And F5 is quick save.

I wasn't intending to play a pacifist game, and I did kill some people

Spoiler

like the ones who tried killing Mallik

So I wasn't even thinking about avoiding the first enemies.

 

[Ren.182]

I've not killed anyone yet except the first boss which doesn't count. Just got to china. Gonna try make it all the way!

 

[Shift]

Am I the only one who isn't enjoying this game? I got it a week ago and I've barely played it, its just not really gripping me that much I don't think..

 

[Unfocused]

The "CGI" looks worse than the in-game graphics, if I'm being honest. So dark and grainy, and it doesn't seem like they even changed out the models or anything, just slapped on a few more shaders.

I agree, I'd rather see all the cut-scenes done on the game engine or, best case scenario, have the quality of the trailers' cinematics.

BTW, it's pretty interesting how the the trailers show a sort of alternative reality, where events happen differently than in the game - like the attack on Sarif Industries, Barrett pounding Jensen into concrete blocks, the hacker "suicide".

 

[Acepilotf14]

I agree, I'd rather see all the cut-scenes done on the game engine or, best case scenario, have the quality of the trailers' cinematics.

BTW, it's pretty interesting how the the trailers show a sort of alternative reality, where events happen differently than in the game - like the attack on Sarif Industries, Barrett pounding Jensen into concrete blocks, the hacker "suicide".

I think it was just a way of making the game look super cool without giving away any of the real story.

 

[Lobster]

A little trainer has been released that enables a debugging mode within the game, that allows you to (among other things) disable the splash screens, and also regenerating health, if you want to ramp up the challenge a little more.

http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=121245

 

[ríomhaire]

Can you get all augs from the start of the game? That could be fun. Might disable Steam updates for the game to prevent a patch breaking the trainer.


I've decided to do two parallel playthroughs, one trying to get the pacifist and no-alarms achievement and the other going for a lethal playthrough where I don't buy any hacking augs.

 

[Barnz]

 

[Lobster]

Haha, that is really well done.

I know its sheepish, but I kinda hope they offer the preorder exclusives as DLC at some point. I hate not being able to own the complete version of a game I like.

 

[Gargantou]

That video is hilarious.

Made me want to replay Deus Ex 1 too.

 

[Nabobalis]

I enjoyed it but it only took me 15 hours on normal and according to my achievements, I only missed out on two side quests. So I'm a bit puzzled.

 

[stemot]

I enjoyed it but it only took me 15 hours on normal and according to my achievements, I only missed out on two side quests. So I'm a bit puzzled.

If you played on Steam, some of the achievements are hidden. Look at view global achievements to see them all.

 

[ríomhaire]

My review:



Just for clarity I played the PC version on highest difficulty with highlights and cover notifications turned off and cover mode set to toggle.

This game is very good. Lets start with that. Everything works very well. I thought the cover system and jumping between first and third person constantly would annoy be but it didn't at all. The cover system is smooth. Transitions around corners and between different covers works perfectly. I have no complaints about it. Similarly for the takedowns. At first the idea seemed stupid but to be honest they're just fun. Many of them are pretty funny or just cool (especially the double takedowns) and the way it uses power prevents spamming them. A much more fun system than standard melee attacks.

Regenerating health is thankfully not the wait five seconds for near-instant recovery sort and it actually takes some time to heal you back from the brink. Not something you want to be relying on in the middle of a fight, especially against tougher enemies. It does mean you don't have to run around looking for med kit if you screwed up and used all of yours and have 15 torso health as happened to many first-time Deus Ex players and it's worth noting that if you use health items in Human Revolution you can bring yourself up to 200 health while you'll only regenerate to 100, meaning regeneration only bring you to half your effective total health.

I don't want to go into detail about stealth or shooting gameplay. They're both good and both provide a decent challenge. A higher difficulty setting might have been nice but for "Give me Deus Ex" gave me a fun challenge for a first playthrough.

Hacking is great fun. Certainly the best hacking mini-game I've played in a game. Blows Fallout 3 and Bioshock out of the water. I hacked most stuff I came across (except the alarm panels, too many of those to bother with) and the emails on the PCs are sometimes pretty interesting and sometime quiet funny.

Exploration is cool and rewarding and the city areas are pretty lively and well-populated. Unfortunately very few characters have unique interactions though. You can overhear a lot of conversations but you can't go up to the people in question and talk to them about whatever they were discussing. There are no small one-objective sidequests for random people. You can't question the civilian population for info on places you're going into. The lack of significant interaction with small NPCs is unfortunate but it is made up for by the great interaction you have with the important ones. The dialogue system is very good. The tone and flow of the conversation also changes in different playthroughs so choosing the same options as you did before in the same order may not work so you actually have to pay attention to what the person is saying and respond accordingly. Dialogue choices and non-trivial and failing to persuade people will result in you having to take a more difficult route or may even prevent you from doing certain sidequests.

The augmentations are implemented well. You really feel upgraded at the end of the game compared to how you started and the option to pick any augmentation at any time is actually pretty cool. Simplicity is often better and I like that nothing is withheld until the end game. They're also pretty well balanced. They all give significant advantages and none of the upgrades are useless. In fact, pretty much nothing in this game is useless. All of the weapons are very powerful when used and upgraded properly. The pistol and be upgraded to ignore all armour (while being silenced) and the revolver can be upgraded with exploding rounds. Nothing in the game becomes obsolete, you just have to choose what to focus on. Weapons take up a significant portion of your inventory and ammo takes up space too so choosing to carry and use any weapon is a significant choice so you're best off choosing your favourites and upgrading the hell out of them.

I do think though that
A) Radar should have been an upgrade, rather than given at the start
B) You should have started with an upgrade point or two with Sarif or someone else advising you on what you should buy depending on your playstyle, i.e., armour if you say you want to go in guns blazing or radar if you want to sneak.


So now here are the problems I have with the game:

One problem I do have is the lack of variety in enemies. Standard enemies do come in the augmented variety but the only augs they actually have is damage resistance, stealth and the Icarus landing system in one cutscene. No one has a sprint upgrade, no one uses melee takedown moves on you, no one has the tracking target aug (which would stop you being able to hide in the middle of firefights), no one has the x-ray vision aug (which would certainly put an interesting twist on stealth gameplay), no one has gas immunity (not even bosses) and no one will attempt to un-hack bots and turrets after you reprogrammed them (no one seems to have EMP grenades either) and there are some of the heavy weapons go unused by any enemies for some reason.

Enemies also have that annoying ability to be able to tell the difference between their friends footsteps and my footsteps for no good reason. Even if I'm walking in an area where they should expect to hear footsteps they'll be alerted by mine in particular. But of course moving boxes around they barely notice. It's an annoying AI quirk and I wish someone would make AI that can't distinguish between player noise and other noise to make it make more sense.

I also think the game could have used more sidequests and particularly some sidequests that are impossible to complete with certain playstyles. The main story can be finished using any combination of lethal and non-lethal force (or no force), whether you bought hacking or not etc. but as far as I know there is only one sidequest that requires you to have an aug (level 2 hacking) and none that require you to kill anyone (though there are some that request non-lethal force, which you can ignore and get shouted at, but you still complete the sidequest). I honestly thing there should have been a sidequest that is a straight-up assassination. You have to kill someone and if you don't like it your only other option is to talk to your target and convince them to flee the city, making you fail the mission. I think there should have been one that requires level 4 or 5 hacking and one that required you to be completely stealthy; not being seen, not tripping an alarm and not knocking out or killing a single person or you fail the mission instantly.

Bosses are also a problem and seem to be the most frequent complaint. Yes the original had boss battles and killing a few select people was mandatory but even then it was possible to kill Anna simply by hacking to find her kill phrase and saying it to her, avoiding the fight completely. Human Revolution offers no such options. Even if they just fleshed out the boss arenas a bit it would have been something like having a hackable security system you could turn on one of them or some way to flood part of the arena with gas (which you can buy immunity to), denying the boss access to it. There is one element like this in one of the boss battles but that's it. There's also a glitch that lets you do an instant takedown on one of the bosses but that's unintentional and completely broken. The bosses are also all pretty dumb. They'll repeatedly run into mines thrown in plain sight and will not adapt to the strategies you are using. They could really have used a lot of work to make them more open in how you're able to defeat them and make them less susceptible to repeating cheap tactics to beat them.

Some stuff towards the end of the game seems a bit unfinished too. There are a few jarring moments and stuff that seems to have been stitched together quickly to finish the game off. I wish they had been able to spend a bit more time polishing this stuff out. If only Valve made these sorts of games!


As a comparison to the original game. The gameplay and general mechanics are much better. Pretty much everything is. The enemy AI, the combat, the stealth mechanics, the conversation system, the inventory system and the weapon upgrade system are better I think. There is some degree of freedom lost and interaction with non-story relent NPCs is less but I think the improvements cover the losses handsomely. The loss of the skill system doesn't really bother me. In the original your effectiveness in combat depended on your skill, your augs and the upgrades on that individual gun, but mostly on your skill level, and while not being able to effectively use a gun without that skill makes sense but the way accuracy and the targeting reticule worked in Deus Ex was one of the reasons gunplay was so godawful in the first place. I think makings you effective with all weapons from the start and putting the combat effectiveness upgrades into the augs (recoil reduction and aim stabilization) and weapon upgrades more was not a bad decision. As for the non-combat skills hacking was transferred nicely to the aug system (if it was a bit over-represented) and most of the other skills from Deus Ex were either useless or lockpicking, which Human Revolution drops entirely.

I was a bit sad over the loss of lockpicking at first but then I realised it would just be another skill for the stealth portion of the game and it would be pretty much impossible to make it logical (Deus Ex's lockpicking system made no sense) and as fun as the hacking mini-game. To be honest, it would have been superfluous and if there is anything Human Revolution did right compared to Deus Ex was dropping superfluous elements and trimming the fat. So I'm not actually sad to see lock-picking, or indeed, the entire skill system gone. In the original skills acted like your stats and augs acted like magic spells, which I think wasn't the best way to go about it. Is there any particular reason you should have to activate increased strength after buying it to lift heavy crates? I don't think so and I'm glad Human Revolution made it and most of the augs passive. Augs in Deus Ex are, as I said, magic spells. In Human Revolution they're upgrades. They make you a more powerful person, not a wizard, and that is like it should be I think.


So yeah in conclusion it's a great bloody game.

 

[Sedako]

Finally beat it after playing a few hours a night. I didn't get the pacifism achievement, and I'm not sure why. I only used lethal weapons on the bosses.

 

[MFL]

MURDERER!

 

[Acepilotf14]

Finally beat it after playing a few hours a night. I didn't get the pacifism achievement, and I'm not sure why. I only used lethal weapons on the bosses.

The environment can kill them, and it counts as a death. Overdosing on a tranq can also kill them.

 

[Sedako]

The environment can kill them, and it counts as a death. Overdosing on a tranq can also kill them.

I barely used the tranq gun, so it must have been an environment death. That's kind of silly, because you're not directly responsible for their death.

 

[Unfocused]

The environment can kill them, and it counts as a death. Overdosing on a tranq can also kill them.

Do you have any specific situation in mind when the environment can kill? If it's not deliberate I can only think of the possibility that Sedako could've thrown an object and it bounced and hit an NPC at 5 km/h and killed him.

Speaking of which, how hard can it be to make the game check the force with which an object hits an NPC and based on that: have no effect, render the NPC unconscious, kill the NPC.

I think enemies/potential enemies aren't as fragile, but what happens with other NPCs is ridiculous. The other day for shits&giggles I did the O'Malley quest, killed him, dragged the body to the undercover cop and tossed it at her. It brushed against her legs and she died. :|

 

[Remus]

The other day for shits&giggles I did the O'Malley quest, killed him, dragged the body to the undercover cop and tossed it at her. It brushed against her legs and she died. :|

What, you didn't know you could kill people by throwing corpses at them? I've seen a few gameplay videos using this "technique".

 

[Lobster]

Its all hidden conspiracy backstory! Huge outbreaks of influenza, tuberculosis and the growing threat of plague, make a dead body an instant carrier of the deadly 2017 Versalife engineered poodle flu, which causes immediate paralysis and death after the slightest physical contact is made!

 

[Gargantou]

I really wish the game had some form of visible system for statistics that could tell you if you or the environment has managed to kill someone and managed to break the bloody achievement.

 

[ríomhaire]

I really wish the game had some form of visible system for statistics that could tell you if you or the environment has managed to kill someone and managed to break the bloody achievement.

Yeah or just some way to tell if you're still in line for the pacifism and no alarms achievement. A yes/no

Anyway here's a way someone can die: At once part I saw a soldier throw a grenade and hit the pillar straight in front of him. Killed himself. I saw some guys accidently shooting each other too, but not killing each other. I imagine if someone throws a grenade at you and you're standing near someone unconscious you wouldn't notice if it killed them. The detection for the achievement is a bit shit.




I'm currently doing two parallel playthroughs. One trying to get the no alarms and pacifist achievements. The other going in guns blazing (so far I've poured every upgrade into my revolver) and vowing not to buy a single hacking aug. I turned on highlights to see what they were like. My god they're annoying. The doors are highlighted? The doors? Did they seriously think I wouldn't be able to see the ****ing doors without them being pointed out?

 

[ríomhaire]

Ok as an addendum to my review a list of things I would change:

• An EMP damage upgrade for one of the weapons (probably machine pistol, shotgun or maybe crossbow) that makes it effective against against bots.
• More bots in more areas with computers that are better guarded and so harder to hack.
• Enemies responding better to bots. Hacking bots seemed to be a instant win button when I did it. Some enemies thrown EMP grenades at you but I never saw one throwing one at a bot.
• When a bot is hacked the stealth enemies should cloak and run to the computer and unhack it instead of just shooting it like idiots.
• Enemies that thrown gas grenades should have the gas immunity aug or at least gasmasks.
• Enemies with the x-ray vision aug. They should have no helmets and obviously augmented vision (like Gunther in Deus Ex) so you can pick them out and their cone of vision should be a special colour on the radar whenever they turned the aug on. This would have the dual effect of adding another layer of difficulty to stealth and also making the cone of vision aug more useful.
• Make the aug that doubles the radar range also make the map details show up on the radar.
• Make the radar an upgrade rather than given. Have Sarif give you a paraxis in the flight over to the first mission and ask you how you want to handle it. If you say sneak he advises you to buy radar and if you say go in fighting he suggests aim stabilization or something.
• Make the pheromone release a separate aug to the social enhancer.
• Make the punch through walls upgrade also give the option to punch through locked doors. This would make it a bit of an alternative to having to run around for codes (or waste explosives) for non-hacking characters and make up a bit for the lack of lockpicking.
• Enemies with sprint aug.
• Built in alternative ways of beating the bosses. Something as drastic as the kill phrases from Deus Ex isn't necessary but things like having a hackable security system in a boss arena or some system to be able to flood part of the arena with gas.
• More sidequests including some that are simply impossible to complete without certain playstyles. A sidequest where you have to kill somone. A sidequest where if you're seen it's an instant failure. A sidequest that requires level 4 or 5 hacking etc.
• Heavy-grade enemies using a rocket launcher occasionally in the more open areas (especially in accompanied by large bots)

 

[Unfocused]

What, you didn't know you could kill people by throwing corpses at them? I've seen a few gameplay videos using this "technique".

During my first playthrought I didn't even figure you can throw people, I thought you can only drag them.

I saw some guys accidently shooting each other too, but not killing each other.

On my second playthrough I went guns blazing into the gang territory you're supposed to go into and after I hid somewhere for a while I'm pretty sure I heard the gang exchange fire with someone else, maybe the rival gang (or the police).

There's also an occassion when NPCs die - during the SWAT vs Purity First shootout in the first mission - but that wouldn't make any sense if those deaths counted.

Ok as an addendum to my review a list of things I would change:

• An EMP damage upgrade for one of the weapons (probably machine pistol, shotgun or maybe crossbow) that makes it effective against against bots.

I think the EMP is overpowered against bots as it is, we don't need additional means to use it. IHMO the EMP grenade should temporarily disable the bot, not destroy it completely - as it is now, instead of going "holy shit" when there's a bot in the area, you just toss an EMP at it and that's that, no challenge.

 

[ríomhaire]

I think the EMP is overpowered against bots as it is, we don't need additional means to use it. IHMO the EMP grenade should temporarily disable the bot, not destroy it completely - as it is now, instead of going "holy shit" when there's a bot in the area, you just toss an EMP at it and that's that, no challenge.

In what I said EMP damage just means more damage versus bots. Not disable or instantly destroy them. Just an alternate means of damaging them. EMP is overpowered versus bots, that's one of the reasons I suggested more bots. More bots = you're going to want to conserve EMPs a bit more because you might actually run out.

 

[Lobster]

The cover system took a lot of the threat out of the bots, there was usually a pretty clear path of convenient boxes or masked-railings to hop between. I don't think I ever saw the Box-Guard open fire on my first run.

 

[knut]

i just realized the other day i found a copy of the original deus ex for free in a box outside a junk/odds store in my uni town months ago. going to get stuck into that this weekend, then when i go back to uni next week i'm gonna go out and buy the new one.

i've never played the original before, either. quite excited! hope the disc works.

 

[StarBob]

In what I said EMP damage just means more damage versus bots. Not disable or instantly destroy them. Just an alternate means of damaging them. EMP is overpowered versus bots, that's one of the reasons I suggested more bots. More bots = you're going to want to conserve EMPs a bit more because you might actually run out.

More bots would be interesting. They are ridiculously powerful head to head though.

 

[Remus]

The large bots are way too easy, if you have EMP grenades or a rocket launcher.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

or upgraded typhoon (1 shot, regardless of size or number of bots)

 

[StarBob]

or upgraded typhoon (1 shot, regardless of size or number of bots)

How many scenarios are there where you have more than one bot within 8 yards?

 

[MJ12]

^Pretty much.

 

[morgs]

Not playing a pacifist playthrough, but I noticed today that after using the stun gun on a guy and dragging him behind cover he somehow ended up dead. Not quite sure how.