Deus Ex: Human Revolution

[MikeJones]

Speaking of the first two Thief games, I've been thinking of picking them up for a rainy day when payday comes around, but there's no sign of them on Steam or GOG. Any idea where to get a digital copy or is it a matter of hunting down some physical media? (*bleugh*)

[daveodeth]

That's the 3rd (pants) one.

[Wiper]

It's also the only one I already have as a digital download

[Majora]

The third Thief was pants? Doesn't everyone rave over Shalebridge Castle? (Never played it, again I missed out on so much good stuff when I played almost exclusively on N64/Gamecube)

[Wiper]

Certainly not! There's a reason I described it as second only to the previous Thief games as a pure stealth-em-up in my post a little way up! It just didn't quite live up to its incredible predecessors.

[daveodeth]

It's the shalebridge cradle and yes it's dripping with atmosphere and tension..... which is completely ruined by the fact I was armed to the teeth with arrows, flashbombs and all manner of paraphernalia to kill dudes that sneaking felt pointless. One level didn't fix a fundamentally broken game.

[MardiganX]

My first playthough will be one of discovery (including me being discovered by guards a lot), taking note of different routes, getting to know how different augs are best used in different situations, trying out all the weapons available to me, opening every single box, and exploring every nook and cranny of a room. Although I'll be trying to be stealthy I know I'm gonna mess that up 50% of the time due to unfamiliarity with the game mechanics and room layouts.

My second playthough will be Mr Stealthy Sam Snake trying everything possible to not be seen or heard. I'll be taking everything slow; watching, planning, avoiding danger but executing with precision and speed when its unavoidable. I'll be a ghost that Guard Teachers tell Guard children about at Guard School. Undetectable. Silent. Lethal.

My third playthough will be like The Terminator at the Police station; nothing that stands in my way will live, everything that can be destroyed will be destroyed, every alarm will be tripped, every guard will hear me coming for miles, and every person I need to have a conversation with will be shouting because they're half-deaf from all the noise I made. Stealth will NOT be an option. I'll be the loudest, brashest, ballsiest, aug'ed-to-the-tits badass to whom 'espionage' is just a long word, 'wall' is another name for 'door', and 'subtlety' is only employed when stroking my augmented 12" boner at the end of a hard day's maiming.

God, I'm looking forward to this game!

Fantastic work!! Didnt think I could be more excited about this game but the joy this post has brought me as made it so!!

[Bleeders]

Hurry up and come out, please.

[Wiper]

Alec Meer tweeting about the fact he now has the game for review isn't helping. The tosser.

[daveodeth]

Is he local, I mean he can't be all that hard being a writer. We could gang up on him easily.

[Wiper]

Well, he often turns up to Rock Paper Shotgun social meety things, and I believe there's one this Saturday. Unusually focussed riot in Soho Square, anyone?

And no, having seen him, he doesn't look too hard. We could totally take him en masse.

[Mallet]

Speaking of the first two Thief games, I've been thinking of picking them up for a rainy day when payday comes around, but there's no sign of them on Steam or GOG. Any idea where to get a digital copy or is it a matter of hunting down some physical media? (*bleugh*)

You can get all three games in a collection on Amazon for £3.99, getting them to run on a modern OS might be another thing though. Hopefully gog.com will get them at some point

[Wiper]

Alternatively, we need someone to crawl along the opposite side of the road to Alec on his way home, lockpick their way into his house, then hack into his PC and copy his copy of the game. It'll be fine, he'll keep some sort of tablet computer next to it with the password on.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Heh, the only game of that list I've never played is Chaos Theory, as I gave up on the Splinter Cell games after the first, which was just contrived and strict. I take it Chaos Theory was a deviation from that?

As for Hitman and Shinobido - I already love them (well, Blood Money and Shinobido, at least), but I wouldn't put either in the same category as the Thief games. Though very open plan, their approaches are very different. Freeform puzzle-solving and disguises for the former, acrobatic avoidance and planning from vantage points for the latter (helped by particularly short-sighted enemies and the easy to understand block-based level design). The thing that the Thief games get so right is the claustrophobia, the limited perspectives - the fact you work out what to do as you go, inching forward bit by bit, mapping areas out in your head and darting between guards, section by section. If Chaos Theory matches that at all, though, I'll have to give it a go.

I didn't like the first two Splinter Cell games because of the exact same reasons. If it's too prescribed or too linear or too obvious a stealth game quickly becomes too boring for me. See also Manhunt - a lot of people don't understand why I don't like Manhunt despite being a massive fanatic of stealth games. Anyway, even though I didn't like SC1 and 2, I fucking love Chaos Theory because that was the game in which they opened up the stealth gameplay. Unlike the mind-numbing linearity and restrictive set-ups of the first two, Chaos Theory actually featured multiple paths not only between larger potions of its levels but also within each area itself, leaving it up to the player to devise his own route, approach and tactics. It sounds like an obvious way of designing any stealth game but as you say the first two Thief games are really the only ones that got it perfectly right. Chaos Theory has of course aged a bit by now, but its gameplay still stands up today imo. Oh and it features a sublime co-op campaign which proves that co-op stealth not only works, but is damned good fun if you play it with a friend who is as much into stealth games as you are! When I played through it with a fellow Thief fan each level took a whole evening, often well into the night, because we were being oh so fucking sneaky

After Chaos Theory the SC series sadly got worse again, which is damn shame because at the time I assumed the SC games would only get better after having perfected the formula in Chaos Theory. Not only was the following game, Double Agent (made by another dev team, the same that did SC2) a shoddy and badly designed disappointment, the most recent SC game, Conviction, became a horrible awful mish-mash of a Gears third-person cover shooter and a shockingly simplified and linear stealth game. What made it worse was that Conviction was made by the same guys responsible for the brilliant Chaos Theory. Conviction has its fans, and maybe some of them will reply to this post but seeing as I'm not here to discuss my personal opinion of that game I will not go into it, but as a fan of the better and deeper games in the stealth genre I didn't like it all. It's kinda alright if you play it as a cover shooter with a few token stealth elements and imagine it to be Jack Bauer: The Game though, as I've recently found out thanks to an unmissably cheap Steam sale. But as a pure stealth game it's shite.

[Sie]

Maybe you should check out E.Y.E - Divine Cybermancy while you wait for DE3. I'm watching the quicklook right now and it looks... well, see for yourself. I have no idea what to make of it.

I so tempted by this game. It sounds great, looks potentially loads of fun but seems completely impenetrable and confusing. Having watched the quick look, I'm still baffled. I imagine it to be completely insane in co-op.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Same here, it sounds great and terrible at the same time. I don't know what to do! Of course the best thing to do is to wait for it to turn up in a Steam sale for two or three quid or something and not buy it full price right before DE3 comes out.

[Majora]

I watched that E.Y.E Quick Look and was completely baffled by the whole thing. I'm still not sure what was going on but it looked really fucking annoying constantly being shot at from miles away.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Isn't it a low-budget indie game though? I suspect the game to filled to the brim with issues like that, it's a stupendously over-ambitious type of game for any developer, let alone an inexperienced indie one. Nevertheles I'm very intrigued by it and it has been on my wishlist since its release. And watching the quicklook has made me none the wiser, I think I want it even more now but I'm not sure about even that.

[Sie]

Isn't it a low-budget indie game though? I suspect the game to filled to the brim with issues like, it's a stupendously over-ambitious type of game for any developer, let alone an inexperienced indie one. Nevertheles I'm very intrigued by it and it has been on my wishlist since its release. And watching the quicklook has made me none the wiser, I think I want it even more now but I'm not sure about even that.

Yeah. Some indie dev house in France (hence the pretty funny translation work). It's based on a board game one of the co-founders invented or something. There's apparently a big patch landing soon and I've heard that one of the issues addressed is the insane line of sight the AI has.

[diggler]

I watched that E.Y.E Quick Look and was completely baffled by the whole thing. I'm still not sure what was going on but it looked really fucking annoying constantly being shot at from miles away.

I've put a bunch of time into EYE so far, so I'll throw in some opinions. In terms of atmosphere, geeky stat tweaking, and cyberpunk vibe, it's lovely. It definitely taps into a lot of that Deus Ex, System Shock, Shadowrun old skool stuff that just doesn't exist anymore. Those are some of my fave games ever, so was very much able to put up with any jank and weirdness that went with it here. And weird it is; the story is borderline indecipherable at first, but half of that is due to translation weirdness. It does actually reward perserverance in that regard though, especially reading all the terminals in the library and brushing up on the history. I have a reasonable idea what's going on now, and am interested in seeing where the story goes if nothing else.

You did hit the nail on the head in regards to being shot from miles away. It's quite annoying early on. Luckily the combat is actually really good; I recomend getting an assault rifle or a sniper rifle immediately, with some medium armor, and those long-range fights are actually a bit of a blast. RPG crossover games like this can easily fall apart in their combat, but thanks to Source engine it most definitely ain't the case here.

The other good news is you can buy an optic camo suit thing for only 7000 "brosephs" quite early on, and it lets you stealth at will. I'd call this pretty much essential.

Liking the game a whole bunch anyway. It definitely grows on you and turns into something quite special and unique the more you play and fine-tune your dude.

[diggler]

BTW guys, if you watched that EYE quick look on GiantBomb; Dave has since been playing it and called it "fascinating".

[Sie]

I've put a bunch of time into EYE so far, so I'll throw in some opinions. In terms of atmosphere, geeky stat tweaking, and cyberpunk vibe, it's lovely. It definitely taps into a lot of that Deus Ex, System Shock, Shadowrun old skool stuff that just doesn't exist anymore. Those are some of my fave games ever, so was very much able to put up with any jank and weirdness that went with it here. And weird it is; the story is borderline indecipherable at first, but half of that is due to translation weirdness. It does actually reward perserverance in that regard though, especially reading all the terminals in the library and brushing up on the history. I have a reasonable idea what's going on now, and am interested in seeing where the story goes if nothing else.

You did hit the nail on the head in regards to being shot from miles away. It's quite annoying early on. Luckily the combat is actually really good; I recomend getting an assault rifle or a sniper rifle immediately, with some medium armor, and those long-range fights are actually a bit of a blast. RPG crossover games like this can easily fall apart in their combat, but thanks to Source engine it most definitely ain't the case here.

The other good news is you can buy an optic camo suit thing for only 7000 "brosephs" quite early on, and it lets you stealth at will. I'd call this pretty much essential.

Liking the game a whole bunch anyway. It definitely grows on you and turns into something quite special and unique the more you play and fine-tune your dude.

Damn it. I'm going to have to buy this now aren't I?

[mr_woo]

Damn it. I'm going to have to buy this now aren't I?

I'm definitely buying it eventually but waiting for it to be patched up a bit. It's a pity though that it seems to be a bit of a pain to setup coop games.

[Gabe]

Haven't seen it mentioned in here, but this got 8/10 in OPM. Main downers being that ammo is scare, power for the augs needs refilling (and the bars you eat to do so aren't abundant) and you see a lot of the hub area.

Plusses everybody knows about - different ways to go about things, the world etc.

The review does state that the game rewards you more for stealth than killing, which I know a lot of people will enjoy, but I'm not personally excited by skulking around in the shadows. Need to try a demo I guess.

[Wiper]

Ah, it sounds like the opposite of E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy then.

I'm a couple of levels into E.Y.E, having restarted once already after getting a few hours into it and finding myself completely screwed over.

It's... very broken. The stealth, as already mentioned, doesn't work. Until you have the invisibility suit it's nigh on impossible to sneak around due to the obscene view distance of the enemies, and lack of any 'curious but unaware' routines - either they don't see you, or they immediately know you're there and open fire. Hacking seems like a useful skill, until you discover that failing causes an immediate death and restart of the whole mission, whereas normal deaths result in instant resurrection on the spot as long as you have 'resurrators' on your person. Bizarre. Also, you can't save the game, so if you have to quit mid-mission, you'll have to do the whole thing again. Dying can sometimes leave you with permanent stat decreases, which stack up. The chances of this happening are related to how low your karma is - the lower the more likely. Ostensibly, karma goes up from doing good and hunting monsters, and goes down for, well, attacking allies and innocents or hacking ATMs. In practice, it drops randomly, and for often illogical reasons. One mission allows you to choose whether to hack into a device, pay-off an official or assassinate a general as a means to an end. I opted for the pay-off - which, it turns out, results in a drop of 5 karma. Even better, go and do another mission in the area, and the same official is there - talk to him, and it locks you into the conversation from the previous mission, causing another drop in karma. Which, as the game doesn't allow you to save and load at will, is irreversible, and is the reason I had to restart - once at Karma 0, every death results in permanent stat-damage. Nasty.

Other fun things - there is no way to holster your weapon; the closest thing is to equip a medical syringe. This can be problematic in friendly areas, where it's quite possible to accidentally click one too many times while in a conversation, and end up shooting an ally in the face. You always have a default, near-useless sword equipped, even if you're actually carrying a high quality melee weapon. Accidentally switching to the wrong melee weapon without noticing (swords look fairly similar in the heat of the moment) can cost you your life. The interface is very clunky. The AI is idiotic, friendly fire all-too-common, and certain levels feature constantly spawning monsters, making stealth pointless.

Oh, and the main way to earn experience points and money is to kill people, again making stealth a path to disaster, as you simply won't get enough to upgrade yourself or your weapons.

However.

The combat is satisfying, and fast. Most levels are large, with multiple approaches, and you can configure your character to fight exactly as you want - you can march around in heavy armour with a minigun, blowing the enemy away in their droves, roam around with a sniper rifle picking them off from a distance, equip light armour and a sword and rush your enemies, deflecting bullets as you approach, use psychic powers to tear apart your opponents and spawn support creatures, hack into devices and people and make them do your bidding, or use active camoflage to flank your opponents and take them down with silenced weapons and backstabs. The fact that persistently getting damaged will affect your mental state, as well as inflicting temporary injuries, makes prolonged firefights particularly dangerous, as you'll need to find cover in order to maintain and repair your systems. Getting paralysed in combat because your character is terrified isn't good for your odds of survival. The storyline, while near indecipherable (think old Hong-Kong pirate copies of anime level of subtitling), is actually quite interesting, and the music and urban environments are very evocative - it works the cyberpunk angle nicely.

It's an interesting, frustrating, broken game. I don't know if I can really recommend it, not with its opaque karma system, awful translation and broken stealth, but it is quite the experience. I don't personally regret buying it, but you have to be something of a masochist to enjoy the game and everything it throws at you.

[Vulgar Monkey]

See, while the breakdown of EYE above makes the cons sound quite simply very frustrating, the cons of deus ex above that actually sound quite good to me.

Having to carefully husband your supplies is half of what I enjoyed in the original.

[daveodeth]

I was armed to the teeth in the beta, had to sell things constantly.

[Teeohbee]

I just pre-ordered this from Asda Direct.

The description and everything indicate it's the standard edition. Yet the display picture shows the augmented edition.

Not a chance is there?

Thought it was worth a shot for £34.99 seeing as that's pretty much the cheapest I can find it anyway.

Edit - Yeah the 360 version.

[Swallow]

I'm pleased I managed to put in my PC pre-order for less than £20. Console games are expensive these days.

[daveodeth]

If I'm looking I always go here to have a shufty first.

http://www.find-game.co.uk/28216-Deus-Ex-Human-Revolution.htm

That's PC but you can search for 360.