ICEBreaker on 30/5/2002 at 17:33
Deus Ex is the intelligent man's shooter. It just seems as though The inscrutable po doesn't really appreciate the intellectual aspects of the game. Well at least he enjoys the NPC interaction.
Illuminatus on 30/5/2002 at 18:04
Ya know, there's a lot more to DX than reading data cubes and opening doors. All you have to do is let yourself enter JC's world. The rest is history...
And if that seems like too hard a thing to do, maybe you should just go back and play a bit more Tomb Raider, where all you need to do is navigate incredibly linear levels and waste your time.
Some games do not require intelligence. Deus Ex is not one of them.
Dragonclaw on 30/5/2002 at 19:42
Quote:
Originally posted by The inscrutable po My review is balancedDepends on what you call balanced. Balanced from a point of being experienced in this and similar game styles, maybe. Balanced as in objective, no. Lemme come to that together with the next one:
Quote:
Originally posted by The inscrutable po When you're new, something like Tomb Raider or Quake is much easier to get into.
Things are complicated enough and these games don't expect you to also be doing a lot of reading. You just shoot your way through and find keys.
No, certainly not. They are easier if you come from the action things, from the easy games, and rather, excuse me, plain things that don't mean much thinking.
If you don't come out of that group, then things look different.
Let's take me, for example. Among my first games were Larry, Police Quest, Kings Quest, and so on. Then Eye of the beholder, some Flight Sims (Never really liked them too much, but my brother was a FS addict ;) ), and some more RPGs.
I was a RPer in RL, so naturally the thing that brought me to the PC the most were Adventures and RPGs. If my first games had been TR and Quake, there's good chance I never sticked with the PC gaming. I mean, TR: I got the game, it came with a mag, and I thought: Well, let's find out how it plays, if everyone likes it that much.
I took the game, and played about 5 hours the first two days. Then I put it in a case, and never touched it again yet. It just had no aspect of the game, that interested me. And the idea of a female Indiana Jones, who is obviously designed to attract by her looks rather than by what she does, didn't help it much, either.
So, what am I talking about? Bah, as if I knew it!!! ;)
Nah, seriously: If you come from the action/light living scene, you will best start with something like TR, or Quake, or some similar games. If you come from the true RPG scene, you will have a good time with good, old (! Not the newer ones, that don't give a thing about RP, as long as you have the best light effects) RPGS. If you're into action/RPG, you can try various things similar to Diablo or Baldur's Gate.
RPG/Shooter? Try SS, or DX. There's a different start for every kind of Character.
Same for this:
Quote:
Originally posted by The inscrutable po Deus Ex is all about opening doors too, but they complicate things by putting in a lot of data cubes to read and offering you different ways of getting through those doors. It may not be what everyone wants. You are certainly right, it's not what EVERYONE wants. But if you want atmosphere, some RPG elements, and 3D-adventures, then you'll be feeling home with DX.
Or, in short (I know you all will just be reading this ;) ):
If you go towards games looking for action, go TR-like, or Shooters.
If you go looking for a world to dive in, try SS and DX.
PS: Of course I'm not calling DX a perfect game. there are many parts of it, that annoyed me, mostly some conversation/plot things (I want JC to react different!!!), but among others some weaknesses in the AI and such.
But I think you are not finding that grweat game in it, because you're not in the "target group" they aimed at.
nimbus on 30/5/2002 at 19:57
Funny how attached folks can get to their beloved games. The review was fine; he was honest about what he felt, it's not meant to berate the game, yes it does lack some graphical polish--Warren Spector himself said that he wasn't really caring about that at the time and wanted to focus on gameplay.
Differing levels of your abilty to suspend disbelief do not determine your self-worth, nor your maturity, nor your intelligence. Maybe you're more able to appreciate "thinking man's shooters" over more straighforward games; that's great but if it closes you off to enjoying other types that's only your loss. The same goes for anyone else. We all have natural styles of play, appreciating other forms, which the original poster seemed to attempt, only helps us have more fun.
And BTW, playing in 640x480 helps the screen text sizing a little. Even if the graphics were great at conception or not, in 2002 I definitely don't play it to look at the pretty pictures.
Agent Monkeysee on 30/5/2002 at 21:22
So many defenders :p. I must say that I largely agree with po's points. I liked DX more for the world they created and the storyline than for the gameplay and graphics. It's not the prettiest of games, but I think the most interesting point that po made that many people seem to liken to heresy around here is the depth of puzzle-solving in DX.
Most of the puzzles, let's be honest, are trivial. po's example of walking up to a locked door, turning right, reading the datacube, then punching in the code to unlock the door is pretty much spot on. The level design was so committed to the "multiple solutions" paradigm that they failed to make any of the obstacles in the game compelling or complicated. All the solutions are layed out for you and it's almost a matter of choosing from a pull-down menu; "which way do I want to open the door today?". I liked DX and I thought there was a lot to do in the levels. But a lot of tasks doesn't translate into a lot of difficult and thought-provoking tasks. Most of the obstacles Denton must overcome struck me as fairly simple and took very little thought to overcome. Most of the solutions practically smack you in the face. The game world was compelling, but it certainly wasn't complicated. My "thinking" came in in how to sneak around and avoid detection, which isn't a crucial part of the gameplay but is in fact a choice I made on how to play the game. Thinking man's shooter indeed. Sound's like a marketroid label to me.
The inscrutable po on 30/5/2002 at 22:41
In the last six months I began to experiment with all kinds of games. I got Grandia 2 for Dreamcast, said to be one of the best RPGs made for the dreamcast. The only other RPGs I've played are King's Field one and two. Grandia was pretty and not too bad to listen to. I thought it would never end it was so long and belabored, but I got a kick out of it. The thing about RPG's is that they have this character development thing. All they're really doing is giving you skills really slowly. They start you off pretty powerless and you have to find things and beat opponents to get skills that other games just give you. When it's artfully done, you hardly notice or mind that you start as a talentless twit.
In first person shooters you also start off pretty talentless. You find weapons that give you more killing power and the levels get more difficult as far as opponents and jumping are concerned.
RPGs also have the story thing going. All those conversations, all that reading to get you to feel like you're in the story or give you the feeling you're doing things for a purpose. It's almost like reading a book, but in addition to reading, you have to figure out how to get to the next page. I think this is a great way to tell a story and someday, somebody will probably tell stories as good as any told in any book through RPG. I don't think it's been done yet. There's still too much work going on with graphics and just getting things working right, but Deus Ex is definitely the right way to go. I also had something called Shenmue for Dreamcast. It too is supposed to be a great story, but I didn't get into it even though the settings were really pretty. I just got bored with the slow pace or something. I'll probably have to go back to it when I'm done Thiefing and playing Deus Ex.
I've also got to get to Shogun - Total War. Since i got my first PC around 98, I've played a lot of strategy games. I stopped playing Tomb Raider and got Battlezone and Age of Empires, Railroad Tycoon 2, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Black and White and several others. Of course I played Half Life and Unreal, but I was only into them briefly. They're fast pace is satisfying, but they tend to be over quick and then I'm done with them. Never have gotten into the online thing. I was real big on the Rogue Spear/Ghost Recon thing. Once again strategy mixed with first person.
Another genre I tried out this year for the first time really was flight sims. I got Il Sturmovik and I enjoyed that, but I got sick of that quick. Some people spend years mastering each plane. They dogfight every night on the internet. I'm not good at it and I don't really care. I don't like how it takes forever to turn the plane around. I did get Microsoft Flight Sim 2002 because of Il Sturmovik, but the lessons weren't really that good and once again, they took forever. I learned how to fly by GPS and then there was no more reason to learn VOR navigation. Some people play that all the time. They've created make believe airlines where you are pilot taking people from NY to Chicago and then on to San Francisco and so forth. I think TV would be more entertaining than that, so now I've moved on to Deus Ex. It's better than Grandia or King's Field. It has different endings and like real life, you can skip some things and go on in the game. That's what really makes it stand out as far as I can see. The atmosphere is nice, but not as good as Thief's.
nimbus on 31/5/2002 at 00:37
That's exactly what I mean! There's so many styles of games, sometimes people will find one that hits all the right chords in them, but that only serves to make other games that much more enjoyable when you find what it is about them that makes the experience unique. I never liked games that were uptight about ammo/equipment availability--I hate running out of ammo. After playing Deus Ex, I played System Shock 2, which I never would have liked because you're scrounging for ammo and upgrades all the time. But I liked the atmosphere so much that I eventually came to see how much the ammo scarcity added to the sense of danger.
