Fish Le Brown on 9/9/2011 at 18:10

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didn't happen a single time to me - i think they only react to picking them up.

Melan on 11/9/2011 at 17:37

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Here are my impressions before I read any other reviews or spoilery material - maybe not terribly original, but guaranteed to be mine. :D

To jump right to conclusions, I like this game. It does not live up to the full experience of DX1, but it succeeds both in its own right and as a well-designed prequel. It takes the ideas from immersive sims and implements them in a way no game in the last few years has done -- it is not a halfway-there thing like Bioshock, but the real deal.

It stands out that the environments you experience are beautifully crafted. I was doubtful of the "cyber-renaissance" idea they were touting, but it is kept to a tasteful level, while the future has its other design fads and visual styles (like those satiny pants everyone is wearing, or the desks, or light fixtures - small details like that). They are living places with good tertiary characters (like punks and bums in the back street). Although I had to crank the graphical settings way, way down, the game still looked good, ran fast, and loaded fast - while being super-detailed (seriously, those street scenes? Wow!). It has a style of its own, like DX1, not a completely realistic one but one whose stylisation works. The music is understated and blends in, so it is a different effect from Alexander Brandon's demoscene-inspired electronica, but it is a well-done score.

The story and the conversations were intelligently written, and the story, as it develops, is an interesting one. It is not the story of DX1, and that's okay. DX1 was an epic story about conspiracies set in a cyberpunk environment; DX:HR is a more personal one where conspiracies stay more in the back, and the focus is on the cyberpunk thing, corporate warfare and bioethics. As predicted, there are some Ghost in the Shell-influences, but I don't mind it (actually, a trailer showed a fight with a huge bot dropped on you from a helicopter in crate form - that was very GitS, but seems to be missing from the final game). There are likeable and interesting characters throughout, from Sarif (whom I suspected of being a shady double-dealing SOB) to Malik (a great, understated secondary character) to William Taggart (whom I grew to like - so you can guess which ending I consider most appropriate ;)). I developed and interest in them and cared where they were going, and that is a good thing as well. The character who didn't work for me was Tracer Tong, who seemed to be a totally different person than the one you met in Hong Kong (also, his side-quest didn't do anything for me - a case of substandard DLC that would have been better off cut).

I feel that the readables and some of the random conversations were stretched a bit too thin. There are so many e-mails dealing with access codes and fairly uninteresting office issues that I missed things like DX1's broader cultural background and references to things like The Man Who Was Thursday or Thomas Paine - likewise, eBooks dealt too much with Hugh Darrow's lectures and technobabble that after a while, they grew a bit uninteresting. The thing I missed from DX1 was its pathos - bums quoting US Founding Fathers at you, discussions of philosophy, a slightly pretentious vibe that infused it with character. DX: HR is more realistic, but a bit more bland. However, Picus News and the Limbaugh-inspired talk radio guy were unambiguously great, so there is great writing in there, there should just have been more of it. But to be fair, DX: HR has more visual storytelling, more environmental detail that makes you pause and snap a screenshot.

The unavoidable boss fights look like a concession to action gamers. If that's the sacrifice the game had to make to get funded, I am okay with it, but it still looks out of place. The first one, which blindsided me because I didn't stock up on deadly weapons, was a freaking nightmare. Incidentally, have other people noticed that the boss characters look out of place in the game story? Sure, they were in that raid on Sarif, but otherwise, you don't see references to them, and they don't really have a role in the plot other than to pop up unexpectedly, attack you and get killed. We don't know as much about them as we knew of Anna, Gunther and Walton Simons, and it shows.

Mechanically, the game is good. Third person didn't feel out of place like I thought it would, which shows how much the right implementation matters. The augs are fun; you lose some of the hard choices in DX1's aug tree (and the skill system), but they work. All in all, the whole game is well designed and felt smooth, without any bugs to mention. That's good. I was a bit afraid of the hacking minigame, but it felt nicely like hacking and only got old near the end. Unlike Invisible War, this game didn't feel dumbed down, and the AI is a great improvement over DX1, less like headless chicken and more like professional gunmen who will shoot you like a dog if you aren't careful. Which reminds me, the visual glitches when you go down are a superb little touch. Oh, and it is a hard game if you try to sneak through it. One thing I always forgot to mention was the lack of swimmable water. There isn't any... but weirdly enough, I didn't notice. Huh.

Lengthwise, I guess it could have developed a bit more - a third city hub near the end, and more straightforward "here you are in a small locale, get things done and get out" missions at the beginning - but with the steep game development costs nowadays, I cannot complain. My 33 hours were well spent, and that's three times as long as most "AAA" games in our time. It links well to DX1... it would have been easy to get it all wrong, like screwing up future plotlines or being too heavy on the references, but it turned out right - folks like Manderley, Everett or Beth DuClare obviously exist in this reality, you just don't come face to face with them. (Although if I ever play Deus Ex now, I will wonder what happened to Jensen... :p)

So, once again, I liked what I was seeing. I hope other companies will take the lessons here and improve on them. I felt we ended up missing an entire decade on immersive sim development after the successes of Thief, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, taking steps back and trying to marry the idea into more shooty games in ways that didn't work out. This game has returned to the right track. Hopefully, its successes will be widely imitated and improved upon, and upcoming games like the next Thief or Dishonored will follow in its steps.

10/10 (Meaning, a game deserving to be discussed alongside Thief, DX1 and SS2)

gunsmoke on 12/9/2011 at 20:51

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So, I just finished it today. I played no other games alongside it since I bought it.

I had a lot of fun in the first maybe 85-90% of the game. The end suffers from Area 51 syndrome, and in the end, learned nothing from its predecessors (I.W. had the best end level of the 3, IMO).

I grew extremely tired of hacking. It was WAY too flooded with hackable shit, to the point where it seems laughable. Sure there are datacubes, but those were equally laughable, what with them being placed inches from the hackable item with the fucking code handily scrawled within. Oh, and JESUS. How many "HURR I FORGOT MY CODE/LOGIN. OK HERE IT IS< DUMMY DON'T LOSE IT THIS TIME" emails can there possibly be in one game?!?!? Christ... I digress, the mini-game itself was probably the best one I have used in a game, but man do they overdose you on them.

The gunplay was decent, I would be bitching my ass off if this was a straight off FPS though. It actually reminded me quite a bit of R6: Vegas, with the mannerisms of the weapons (not to mention the cover system). I would like to replay it and try a few of the weapons that I skipped this time. I missed the laser/plasma/heavy weapons this time. THe pistol is a MUST early on, but loses any and all use towards the last 1/3 of the game. The shotty and revolver are what I relied heavily upon (gogo explosive rounds). Hated the combat rifle and sub-machine gun,and my that PEP gun is worthless...

Sneakery is a gameplay element that has been tough for games to nail over the past 10 years. Beyond Good and Evil, Death to Spies, Cold War being some notable exceptions. This game was one that I felt did stealth just right. The enemies can see through glass, have great hearing, and aren't fooled into doing dumb shit as easily as some games. Sure, it isn't perfect, but it was challenging as hell to ghost most of the levels and even if you weren't going for ghost, it was a hell of a way to get the drop on some poor fool.

I hate the music. There I said it. Nothing more than my preference being stated. Simply, it wasn't up my alley. I was a big fag for DX1's tunes, though and loved hearing them in the game.

I have already spoken about graphics and whatnot.

Sorry, but fuck Malik. God, that bitch was annoying. Ugly as sin, too. Does her death have to happen or is it my fault? I thought I was picking the enemies off rather efficiently up until her chopper poofed.

All in all, I am anxious to replay it several times and lovingly give it a 9.5/10.

Pyrian on 12/9/2011 at 22:49

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According to Steam, it took me 48 hours. Definitely ate my life for a while. Basically tearing myself away from the game when I just got too tired to go on, caught a few hours of sleep, went to work, came home - and back at it!

Played mostly non-lethal, and indeed mostly by takedown. Carried all the grenades I could find so that the bosses were easier. "Zap, boom, boom, boom", done. Still... Glad I was forewarned. :p

Very much a DX game, both in its strengths and indeed in some of its weaknesses. For example, the AI is kind of meh, but it's still a substantial improvement.

Okay, strengths. ***SPOILERS***

1. I thought the story was great, the characters were great. Almost absurdly compelling, I could not put the game down in large part because I wanted to know what was going to happen next, what the next puzzle piece was going to be. (Actually I still want to know a couple of things. First... Did Sarif tell Megan to use your DNA based on his background check? Did he have a reason to go to so much trouble to do such a thorough background check in the first place? If so, what? If not, why? That whole line of consequences was never clear to me. Second... Whatever was scrambling all augmented people before the biochip "upgrades"? It was clearly simultaneous, so either an embedded timer or a broadcast signal, and somehow it affected both TYM augmentations and your own Sarif augmentations - even with EMP shielding. I know why it was happening, but I don't know how it was happening, and frankly, if they could already do that, why'd the Illuminati - not Darrow - even need the new Biochip anyway? Oh, and third... What is Megan's attraction to Illuminati members who're about to go rogue!? Lol. Fourth of two, WTF was Panchaea really for? It certainly didn't seem necessary for the biochip nor the broadcast, yet any other purpose - such as its stated one - is undermined by that procedure.) I loved the fact that you could figure out the Biochip was a trojan and choose to not install it, and I loved the fact that that choice had a positive consequence.

2. The persuasion mechanics - both with but mostly without the augmentation - were extremely cool, the best I've ever played in any game. You know what really got to me, though? The conversation with that poor shmuck who did your background check. Overall, I think many of the conversations in DX:HR are better than anything in DX. Which isn't to say DX didn't have some great stuff, it certainly did. But... Nothing like that. Nothing like some of your arguments with Sarif or even Taggart, either.

3. City Hubs. Fan-frikken-tastic large areas you can really get lost in, with fun stuff thrown in here and there.

4. Hacking. Interesting, never really got tired of it. Of course, I also take the principle that I refuse to allow in-game rewards to make a game less enjoyable so I don't hack things I found codes for (nor run back and forth endlessly carting weapons to sell for money I'll never be able to use). Also, you aren't allowed to just hack right underneath people's noses; enemies can see and shoot you, and "friendlies" might very well go hostile, usually shouting a warning first.

5. I liked the way they did lifting strength in this one - it drains energy, but you don't have to manually activate it. Good call.

Weaknesses

1. I got used to the cover system pretty quickly. Nonetheless, I'd've definitely preferred something FP. Ironically, where I really missed normal leaning is in firefights; the cover mechanic leaves you startlingly open when you shoot around a corner. Typically you're better off not using it while actually firing! Similarly, if Mirror's Edge can do takedowns in first person while looking fantastic, why can't other games?

2. The bioenergy thing worked very strangely. I really don't understand why they designed it that way. It would be fine if it weren't for the takedown mechanic itself. In fact, the only thing I think would be required to make the whole system work well is to either have the whole bar replenish or to have takedowns only remove 99% of a bar (so you can regenerate cells other than the last). Either of these would require less candy, but whatever. The amount of candy was just kind of wrong, anyway; not enough to rely on for takedowns, too much for any other purpose. Also, WTF was up with candy inventory space? The small bars give you 5 cells per slot, the boxes give you 3 (stacks of 3 in two slots, each one giving you two cells), and the jars giving you less than one (restores 3 cells, takes four slots, can't stack!). It's like, the better it was supposed to be, the worse it actually was!

3. Let's call a rose a rose: DX:HR doesn't have an augmentation system, it has a skill/experience system (and you're playing a wizard). There are no mutually exclusive paths to go down at all. I mean, people complained because in IW you could replace augs (and got enough to do it), but in DX:HR for the first time you can have run fast and silent simultaneously. Technology has not advanced in the later games, eh!

4. Boss fights. I don't think the idea was bad (hell DX had them), but the implementation needed a lot more bells and whistles. For example, it would've been great to be able to simply learn more about their strengths and vulnerabiliities before you have to face each one.

...Okay, that's enough for now.

Painman on 13/9/2011 at 05:03

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Now that you've finished, have another look at the opening cinematic with Bob Page - basically, they were using Picus' satellites to broadcast the glitch signal. Like you said, the point was to drive folks to the Limb clinics so they could be implanted with TYM's trojan biochips.

The Illuminati wanted to be able to shut people's augs off, exert mind control... who knows what all the chip could do (we only knew about the killswitch before Darrow's big surprise), but it was about keeping augmented people in check. I believe that's what Darrow really flipped out over - he discovered what Page, et al. were up to, so he used Hyron to fuck them all over.

As for being able to affect Sarif tech, maybe there was some sort of industry standard architecture in place for augs.

In my first run thru, I *did* take the trojan TYM chip, even though I was sure something bad would happen... I wanted to see what it would be... [spoiler]Zhao activated my killswitch right before Namir attacked me. My augs shut down and my HUD went haywire. I still killed Namir (gogo OP'd preorder grenade launcher), but Megan had to reboot me afterwards.[/spoiler]