Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 9/10/2007 at 10:10

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That was kinda the point, I think: "choose the dystopian ending you hate the least."

Everyone has their own demented vision of the future, and you're stuck in the middle with the deciding vote.

Matthew on 9/10/2007 at 14:55

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I wouldn't really say he's passed any sort of judgement on the game, it sounds more like a fear that it won't live up to the first game.

ZymeAddict on 10/10/2007 at 01:12

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Yeah, but that differs from Deus Ex, because in that game the three endings were much more sensible and palatable to me. They each had upsides and downsides and really made you think about the choice.

With IW it was like having to choose between electing Hitler or Stalin for president. There wasn't really any clear upside to any of them and they all left you feeling rather let down.

hayaku on 10/10/2007 at 01:58

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Unless of course, the sheer impact the game had on me was so damn overwhelming that I made, in my own words, an "educated guess" of what the rest of the game held in store.

I remember, back in early high school when the original Half Life was all the rage, I refused to touch it, and gave all my friends who liked the game no measurable amount of shit for playing the game. I think the words I used were "half life = no life". This I admit was reactionary, and to be fair not entirely serious... i as simply reacting to what was at the time, an unprecedented level of hype and fanboyism that suddenly intruded into my life. However I did finally decide to install it, and it took possibly a grad total of 15 seconds of play time before my opinion was well and truly reversed and i have simply loved the game to bits every living and breathing second of my life since. Thus is the effect that pure and simple brilliance can have on an open mind.

On the counter, however, I installed IW after having just played and finished DX for the first time, having had it elevated to similar levels of reverence in my mind that HL had previously held, and the situation was something of the reverse. I fired it up with all the expectations in the world and ended up discarding it in disgust, quite simply the first 15 seconds of game play to me illustrated just what the game wasn't. Not to say the game doesn't have its good points, but quite simply instead of the overarching and all consuming aura of polish and quality that shone out of HL1 like a blazing beckon, IW did the opposite, it quite simply looked and felt like a substandard console FPS.

Put simply, to me games like HL, DX, and FFVII and others look, feel and play not like games but films, and good ones at that, and are infinitely wealthier as result. If IW was to be judged on the same lines, where HL might be 'Pulp Fiction', DX 'The Godfather' and FFIV 'Star Wars IV', IW felt like the rough amalgamation of a cheap 70's porno, 'porkies revenge' and 'shaft goes to afrika'. You can sometimes get the feeling that a film is either masterfully brilliant or bitterly horrific from just a hand full of minutes of viewing, and again, this is what I got with IW.

hayaku on 10/10/2007 at 08:43

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I disagree. It shows you,

1) the game engine, thats not likley to change the more you play and is quite easy to sum up in a few seconds. Game engines can be well implemented or poorly implemented, just a few seconds of playing IW showed me that "this will be a clunky feeling game"

2) the quality of script/voice acting, again this reflects budget, targeted dynamic, its maturity and seriousness. Just a few minutes into IW I couldn't help get the feeling that the whole thing just felt cheesy, especially in regard to the whole "lets get the terrorists" theme that to be honest felt like a real capitalization on the current political climate in America and the rest of the world at the time. Yes sure DX had terrorists too, but was made and designed totally independent of certain events, and they ended up being who you work for anyway. Just look at the IW cover, "Deus Ex: Invisible War, the future war on terror". War on Terror? This term was practically coined in modern vocab by the Bush Admin i 01'. Video games in my opinion should NOT look at flash issues for inspiration or marketing push like this, it says very little about the quality and fiber of the game itself, especially when said game has such prestigious "high brow" roots as IW clearly did.

3) Streamlining. Everything about DX that was streamlined for IW allows you to virtually count the number of notches a game has fallen to make it marketable to the xbox crowd. There was nothing inherently wrong with the DX interface, menu system, advancement curb or weapon selection. It was everything and more, at the most it needed a little tweaking, not total overhaul. The only drawback to the DX menu and interface was that it was cumbersome for console gamers, hint hint. If a game as deep and comprehensive as DX is to be simplified that much it clearly shows the new paradime of the day is aiming towards sales, not quality. In playing the game far enough to be able to see what they actually gave us, I felt like the irrelevant and obscure backwash of the SS2 crowd, not important enough to even have a nice FPS-RPG in a series that was designed for my dynamic in the first place. Just seeing how much the game was streamlined allowed me to get a good insight into just how little anyone even cared about this game doing justice to the first.

And thats all I have to say for now. All three points are completely valid in my mind and totally able to be ascertained in a few minutes of gameplay.

For the record I have played the game for about 5-7 minutes close to 8 times now.