So... Deus Ex: Human Revolution got leaked to P2P networks

Dresden on 4/6/2011 at 06:23

It's not as bad as it looks. Neither is highlighting. You can get sucked into the world and not notice it a whole lot because this room is awesome and shit is that guy coming over here and holy shit there's a digital newspaper over here making references to DE1.

Muzman on 4/6/2011 at 07:34

It does look really good for the most part. The first mission's level is pretty complex and nicely designed (yeah ok it's not Liberty Island or anything); the AI seems fairly smart and detailed; the voice acting a is pretty good; interesting conversations to overhear; lots of quite long world building readables you can amuse yourself with etc.
But man that cover thing is so jarring. It isn't that it's immersion breaking as such (although there are places where you can see the guy's head would be clearly visible and the guards walk on by. I bet you just to rub salt you'd be seen if you were just crouching there). It's really the stupid implementation that's the problem.
The takedowns are often worse. There's sleeper hold ones or straight punches that make sense. But some of the non lethals still involve breaking a guy's arm, hitting him three times and flipping him to the ground and there's two guys fifteen feet away in an open plan space who don't notice this happening?

Oh well. It isn't like I was in the full-price audience anyway, so...

Koki on 4/6/2011 at 07:35

Quote Posted by Renzatic

You're gonna hate it, Koki. Save yourself $50.

Surely you jest. More like "save yourself the bandwidth".

Oh wait, I have unlimited bandwidth. w00t

242 on 4/6/2011 at 09:21

I played like half an hour and removed it. Not because I didn't like it, but because I didn't want to spoil my future experience.

Liked:

-interface
-movies
-graphics
-probably appropriate level of health on hard difficulty (though I would much prefer if there was a harder difficulty level where protagonist could die just from one or two bullets)

Meh:

-animation (they don't use mocap AGAIN?)

Didn't like:

- an issue very similar to Stalker which causes often micro stutters. The build didn't run smooth, at least not by console standards. It's smooth when it doesn't stutter though, just like Stalker.

-no transitional animation between cover/uncover, it actually looks horrible: you suddenly become pressed against a wall and then suddenly appear at some distance from it. I very hope they'll fix it.

Koki on 4/6/2011 at 12:23

Quote Posted by 242

I didn't want to spoil my future experience

Okay, this stops now. You're playing the very same game. There will be next to no differences between this and the final build, and there certainly won't be any differences in the plot.

So explain to me how playing the beta spoils you anything? That's like saying "I want to play x but I wouldn't want to spoil it for myself when I play it at some other time".

242 on 4/6/2011 at 14:24

Quote Posted by Koki

Well, I pretty much know there won't be many differences, but I hope they at least will fix the cover/uncover transition. And you know betas usually differ from finished game in some small details, as well as finished games usually don't have time limit and only few missions.

d'Spair on 4/6/2011 at 18:15

You know what? Graphics are fine, environmental design and art direction are gorgeous, characters are very interesting and atmosphere is stellar. Cover system works fine. And I finally got used to fighting without being killed after the very first shot.

But one thing bugs me to the point that I really feel a headache and want to run away crying.

The game is linear.

I mean yeah that sounds weird, but it's called a Deus Ex game and it is linear.

At least the first mission at the Detroit factory. It's beautifully atmospheric, but it's a walk from Point A to Point B. You've got a big room within which you can choose different pathways (sneak through it behind covers, or take a way through the air vent and then up on a beam), but this room has only one exit point that would lead you to the next big room, and then another room, and then another. Within these rooms, yes, you can either hack or sneak or fight, but no matter what tactics you choose, you just move from one room to another and there are no alternative ways to get to the objective. That sucks. I really hope this is just the case with the first mission. But what the hell? Deus Ex 1's first mission was the Statue, and it was one of the grandest and openest levels in the gaming history, that was the way to go! In comparision to it, DXHR's first mission is just laughable in that sense.

Again, I really hope it changes in the next missions, because if it doesn't, DXHR would just be a game that could've become awesome, but failed miserably.

Koki on 4/6/2011 at 19:23

Quote Posted by d'Spair

People say the game gets much more open after that, and it is technically still part of the tutorial, so... keep playing?

If you want comparision with original, the training was also very linear. Except it was completely skippable.

Renzatic on 5/6/2011 at 04:20

I kowtowed to temptation. Sue me (well, Eidos might if they tracked my IP while I was torrenting it).

So now that I've played it for about an hour or so, I guess you all want to know what do I think. I'll start with the bad...

Climbing ladders. I've complained about it before, and now that I've played, I'm finding it just as stupid as I thought I would. It's not game breaking or anything, but it's completely and totally pointless.

Secondly...Now I'm not one of the purists that absolutely hates the cover system. Going from first to third person doesn't bother me in the least. But I do know that there are people here who will hate it. The good news is the game isn't totally built around the cover system. I barely even used it, and mostly stuck to ducking, and moving around objects like you would in any first person exclusive shooter. The bad news is that there still are occasions where you will need to use cover to peak around corners because there's NO LEANING! Bleh. Well, kinda.

Now the good.

It feels like Deus Ex. A faster paced, more French Eurocentric Deus Ex, but Deus Ex nonetheless. Walking around Sarif Industries after the intro scene, poking about into random offices, checking out emails on random computers, and flushing random toliets, was a blast from the late 90's past. The first mission in Milwaukee, while not nearly as wide open as Liberty Island, isn't nearly as constrained as I was expecting. It's still linearish, but not Splinter Cell hold your hand down a corridor linear. I can't comment on it living up to DX1 standards yet, but there is promise.

And the difficulty? Well, the auto regen thing sorta sucks, since you don't have to worry about squirrling away your medkits, and managing your health anymore. But that doesn't make the game super easy. It takes a bit to regen when you get hurt, and enemies can drop you within a flat second if you happen to stay within their line of sight for that long. You have to be careful if you want to get anywhere. On Deus Ex difficulty, you don't even have the orange bounding box around manipulable objects. You have to explore and check everything out, DX1 style.

While it hasn't opened up as wide as I'd like it to just yet, I do have to say it's more of a DX game than DX2 was.

Oh, and when you tranq enemies, they sometimes make that same "blulululululu" noise they did in the original. Nice little corny touch.

Fafhrd on 5/6/2011 at 05:28

Quote Posted by Koki

So explain to me how playing the beta spoils you anything?

Because you can't load up the save from the press demo and continue from where it ended and are going to be forced to play through that first section of the game a second time, already knowing everything there is to know about it.