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[Exclamation-One]

Don't upgrade your radar then. And if your beef is with the radar being there in any fashion whatsoever, well, I wouldn't ever advocate removing it entirely from the game, though I'd be fine adding an option to turn it off like you can already do with the waypoints/locators. You can have options for both and make everyone happy. There's no need to "improve" the experience for some people by making it a chore for others. This game, like every game, should have hand-holding but also have options to turn the hand-holding off. To a degree, DEHR does that, and it's great.

If you want a challenge, spend your Praxis points upgrading your radar range and enemy sight cones. It makes the radar completely useless!

 

[Confidence Man]

Don't upgrade your radar then. And if your beef is with the radar being there in any fashion whatsoever, well, I wouldn't ever advocate removing it entirely from the game, though I'd be fine adding an option to turn it off like you can already do with the waypoints/locators. You can have options for both and make everyone happy. There's no need to "improve" the experience for some people by making it a chore for others. This game, like every game, should have hand-holding but also have options to turn the hand-holding off. To a degree, DEHR does that, and it's great.

To a small degree. The game still holds your hand like a new mother in a neighborhood full of windowless vans.

 

[EatChildren]

Don't upgrade your radar then. And if your beef is with the radar being there in any fashion whatsoever, well, I wouldn't ever advocate removing it entirely from the game, though I'd be fine adding an option to turn it off like you can already do with the waypoints/locators. You can have options for both and make everyone happy. There's no need to "improve" the experience for some people by making it a chore for others. This game, like every game, should have hand-holding but also have options to turn the hand-holding off. To a degree, DEHR does that, and it's great.

Human Revolution is your first Deus Ex game, correct?

 

[Neiteio]

To a small degree. The game still holds your hand like a new mother in a neighborhood full of windowless vans.

That's a nice analogy (sincerely, it made me chuckle), but for people who like to make their games a chore there's plenty of ways to do it. You can even turn off the highlights on interactive objects, allowing you to delight in wasting hours fruitlessly tapping the Use button trying to open drawers and doors you would plainly see you can't if you had the highlights on. That's pretty thoughtful of the game designers to include options to make the game less fun and playable for you hardcore types out there!

 

[Neiteio]

Human Revolution is your first Deus Ex game, correct?

Aye, cap'n.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

I'm really getting tired of "hand-holding"... it's the new "generic" and "bad art".

 

[blahblah...blah]

Does the debug mode allow turning the HUD off completely? That would be a fucking awesome challenge.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Example, or you're just up in my ho-ass modal verbs.

giving yourself invincibility, infinite ammo, infinite stamina, infinite energy and a fully upgraded heavy rifle

then walking down the streets of detroit, blowing up cars and mowing down every living thing

Does the debug mode allow turning the HUD off completely? That would be a fucking awesome challenge.

There's a disable HUD option, but I haven't checked it out.

 

[Neiteio]

giving yourself invincibility, infinite ammo, infinite stamina, infinite energy and a fully upgraded heavy rifle

then walking down the streets of detroit, blowing up cars and mowing down every living thing

You can blow up cars? O_O

 

[EatChildren]

Aye, cap'n.

Well then here is the problem. You're coming from the stance of someone who has no prior experience with the franchise or this particular game design, and thus have no expectations. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is what it is, for better or worse.

You're not coming from the same position as people who grew up with Deus Ex. They, like myself, are critiquing the abundance of Praxis points and the amount of augs you have unlocked by they end game. It makes for a slightly different experience to how Deus Ex was designed and, in my opinion, a lazy alternative to offering genuine path variety that truly takes into account all styles of play.

Different strokes for different folks, but "just dont use them" isn't an acceptable argument against what we want, and misses the point we're making.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

It's also fun, because when you have that, the rocket launcher, and an exploding ammo revolver, you never have to open 90% of the doors you find. You just blow them open.

 

[Zeliard]

That's a nice analogy (sincerely, it made me chuckle), but for people who like to make their games a chore there's plenty of ways to do it. You can even turn off the highlights on interactive objects, allowing you to delight in wasting hours fruitlessly tapping the Use button trying to open drawers and doors you would plainly see you can't if you had the highlights on. That's pretty thoughtful of the game designers to include options to make the game less fun and playable for you hardcore types out there!

Strange, I've been playing without highlighting on and have, if anything, picked up an excess of various items. Little energy bars, boxes of ammo, e-books, credits, etc.

I think I've ran into less ammo issues than people who probably highlight. At one point I had 500 heavy rifle ammo, 200 10mm and over 100 explosive rounds for my revolver.

A Deus Ex 1-style middle ground would be much preferable than what's in the game now, which is a form of highlighting that may as well be pointing Bioshock's big golden arrow down onto various objects.

 

[Proposed Law]

I can't emphasize enough how great the Typhoon Augmentation is against the bosses. By taking the typhoon aug it gives you a heavy weapon that will kill the bosses with 2 to 4 explosions. The only room that is taken up in your inventory is ammunition which was nice, because I didn't have to worry about expanding my inventory too much.

 

[The Broken Ska Record]

I beat

Spoiler

arm-cannon

dude kinda easily by exploiting the AI. My Comp Sci Major lives another day!

 

[Aquavelvaman]

It's also fun, because when you have that, the rocket launcher, and an exploding ammo revolver, you never have to open 90% of the doors you find. You just blow them open.

They should have made the punch-through-walls aug let you punch open doors too.

 

[epmode]

You can even turn off the highlights on interactive objects, allowing you to delight in wasting hours fruitlessly tapping the Use button trying to open drawers and doors you would plainly see you can't if you had the highlights on.

The highlighting's a good idea, just not the range that the game uses. You can see that shit from REALLY far away. Too far, I'd say.

But when you totally disable it, you're forced to run right up to every stupid object rather hang back at a reasonable distance. And object interactivity isn't exactly consistent so I just turned the highlighting back on.

Again, the first game gets it right. Exploration without the frustration.

 

[Riposte]

So I think the most major mechanical failing in this game is that it heavily encourages hacking(which is free) to farm exp. You are basically tossing away thousands of exp if you don't carefully backtrack(don't blindly open doors) to nail every terminal. Simply not good design for a game like this. I kind of wish they were stricter about going multiple routes, but they seem to want to encourage it.

Also I'd really like it if there was an after-mission award for not interacting with enemies at all. A true ghost.

EDIT: I think I've said this, but hacking doesn't handle very well either. Too easy to make mistakes(the game seems to really want to you use the stop virus when you are rushing to capture stuff). Another thing I noticed was that the UI seems shrunk, to better fit a smaller resolution. Sometimes gets in the way.

 

[Rufus]

This is just naive. We're inundated in games with various markers telling players exactly where to go and what to do, with developers looking at idiot testers who can't find their way out of a square room.

I was merely objecting to Thief being a difficult game to understand for modern players. Of course, today's generation of gamers are used to all kinds of conveniences developers feel obliged to offer or lean on themselves. That doesn't change the fact that there isn't really much more to 'get' in Thief than there is in modern games. Add the modern amenities to Thief, smooth some corners and you have a 'modern' game, you can leave the core design untouched. Which is what I expect Thief 4 to be. Pre-Conviction Splinter Cell is pretty much that in a different setting.

 

[epmode]

I also REALLY miss disposable lockpicks and multitools. The first game was great about balancing shortcut utility with the resources required to use them. Human Revolution is a free-for-all and it kind of cheapens things.

 

[Neiteio]

Well then here is the problem. You're coming from the stance of someone who has no prior experience with the franchise or this particular game design, and thus have no expectations. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is what it is, for better or worse.

You're not coming from the same position as people who grew up with Deus Ex. They, like myself, are critiquing the abundance of Praxis points and the amount of augs you have unlocked by they end game. It makes for a slightly different experience to how Deus Ex was designed and, in my opinion, a lazy alternative to offering genuine path variety that truly takes into account all styles of play.

Different strokes for different folks, but "just dont use them" isn't an acceptable argument against what we want, and misses the point we're making.

I guess I can't really debate how it stacks up against expectations for the series because I had no previous experience with the series. And for the same reason I don't care if it meets those expectations, because mine start with this game. All I know is DEHR is a ton of fun (about two-thirds of the way through now, I think, on my second trip to China), and it seems a lot of things people are complaining about can be either toggled off (waypoints, locators, highlights) or simply avoided by choice. Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way?

 

[Wallach]

EDIT: I think I've said this, but hacking doesn't handle very well either. Too easy to make mistakes(the game seems to really want to you use the stop virus when you are rushing to capture stuff). Another thing I noticed was that the UI seems shrunk, to better fit a smaller resolution. Sometimes gets in the way.

I really hate how the hacking UI works on the PC. I would have done it like:

Left-click: hack node
Right-click: nuke node
Left-click hacked node: fortify node
Space bar: stop virus

 

[A Human Becoming]

Fuck the first boss.

It's not even the worse of them.

Spoiler

There is a box on the central floor that you can stand on that doesn't get electrified. Here's how I did that fight:

Kill the first two computer girls, totally ignoring the turrets above (if you stand close enough they can't shoot you). At this point the zombie guards come out, I just put a gas grenade at both of the doors they come out of, they all fell asleep. Then I killed the last girl, stood up on the box, and shot the lady behind the glass until it was over. I used two emp grenades to kill the floor robots as they came out of their holes. I took 0 damage that fight.

Spoiler

Thanks for the box tip. I was in such disarray I didn't realize that those boxes were safe spots to stand. So I reverted to an older save and instead of taking out the turrets with EMPs I hacked the life support system to disengage them. I didn't think that they would also be disengaged when the life support system was. I used my spare EMPs on the two bots and defeated her without ever seeing a zombie soldier.

Pretty good game over all but with clear faults. Boss battles are by far the weakest part of the game. Using Gamefly's scale I'd give it a 7/10 aka good.

 

[angular graphics]

PC players if you are experiencing stuttering it's important to report it in this thread along with your computer's specs: http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=121283

The devs are monitoring it.

 

[Confidence Man]

I guess I can't really debate how it stacks up against expectations for the series because I had no previous experience with the series. And for the same reason I don't care if it meets those expectations, because mine start with this game. All I know is DEHR is a ton of fun (about two-thirds of the way through now, I think, on my second trip to China), and it seems a lot of things people are complaining about can be either toggled off (waypoints, locators, highlights) or simply avoided by choice. Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way?

You're not looking at it from the correct perspective, that is to say through the slitted yellow eyes of an angry, bitter, venomous vacuum of light, love, and hope.

 

[EatChildren]

I guess I can't really debate how it stacks up against expectations for the series because I had no previous experience with the series. And for the same reason I don't care if it meets those expectations, because mine start with this game. All I know is DEHR is a ton of fun (about two-thirds of the way through now, I think, on my second trip to China), and it seems a lot of things people are complaining about can be either toggled off (waypoints, locators, highlights) or simply avoided by choice. Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way?

Its not so much you looking at it the wrong way, as it being a moot argument for both parties, because both are coming from different positions. There's no reason you shouldn't be happy with what Deus Ex offered, but you probably wont be able to fully understand what others are requesting, or more specifically why, because they're coming from a different outlook.

Ultimately it boils down to the role playing experience Deus Ex tried to accomplish, and that is giving the player a set of tools and customisable abilities, but never allowing them to max out everything. You, the player, would 'build' a style of character that suited how you wanted to play, and levels would be designed in a way that allowed you to integrate your playstyle in a successful way. You could never hack a single terminal and still get through the game quite fine. It wasn't so much about advantages or disadvantages, as difference.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is excellent, but its praxis, XP and aug distribution counters this old design by having the player max out many important augs early on, while the level design puts a pretty strong emphasis on hacking. There's not enough balance between the offered playstyles, with too greater reward for playing a very, very specific build against playing another.

What most are asking is for a bit more balance to the builds. Whether they should accomplish that through XP and Praxis distribution, the augs themselves, or the level design is another matter entirely.

You're not looking at it from the correct perspective, that is to say through the slitted yellow eyes of an angry, bitter, venomous vacuum of light, love, and hope.

This too .

 

[The Antitype]

*poke poke*

Harrow?

If I sell an upgraded assault rifle for cash, do future assault rifles automatically carry the upgrades I applied or no?

Just wondering how the game handles that.

 

[Wallach]

*poke poke*

Harrow?

If I sell an upgraded assault rifle for cash, do future assault rifles automatically carry the upgrades I applied or no?

Just wondering how the game handles that.

Nope, you're expected to hold onto the specific weapon you modified.

 

[Riposte]

I really hate how the hacking UI works on the PC. I would have done it like:

Left-click: hack node
Right-click: nuke node
Left-click hacked node: fortify node
Space bar: stop virus

That would be a huge improvement.

 

[epmode]

Modded weapons are one of a kind. If you want to use it, don't sell.

 

[Zeliard]

I think people underestimate the use of cloak. Get it upgraded to the max and just as long as you're mindful not to deplete an entire battery, and preferably snag energy regen augs, you can get some really great, continuous use out of it.

I was merely objecting to Thief being a difficult game to understand for modern players. Of course, today's generation of gamers are used to all kinds of conveniences developers feel obliged to offer or lean on themselves. That doesn't change the fact that there isn't really much more to 'get' in Thief than there is in modern games. Add the modern amenities to Thief, smooth some corners and you have a 'modern' game, you can leave the core design untouched. Which is what I expect Thief 4 to be. Pre-Conviction Splinter Cell is pretty much that in a different setting.

Well I didn't mean that Thief's complexity came from some deep RPG system or something, but there are different forms of complexity. Carefully navigating enormous, dark, dangerous environments, with emphasis on sound infinitely more than visuals, and without the tropes that many gamers take for granted these days would be asking quite a lot, I imagine.

Something like Demon's Souls comes out and challenges the current status quo and is hailed partly because of its classic, "the player gots this shit" mindset. Chaos Theory is one of my favorite games ever and Splinter Cell is actually a good example of this phenomenon, looking at where that series has ultimately headed this gen in its bid for more mainstream appeal. Thief 4 will certainly answer some questions.

 

[Neiteio]

Its not so much you looking at it the wrong way, as it being a moot argument for both parties, because both are coming from different positions. There's no reason you shouldn't be happy with what Deus Ex offered, but you probably wont be able to fully understand what others are requesting, or more specifically why, because they're coming from a different outlook.

Ultimately it boils down to the role playing experience Deus Ex tried to accomplish, and that is giving the player a set of tools and customisable abilities, but never allowing them to max out everything. You, the player, would 'build' a style of character that suited how you wanted to play, and levels would be designed in a way that allowed you to integrate your playstyle in a successful way. You could never hack a single terminal and still get through the game quite fine. It wasn't so much about advantages or disadvantages, as difference.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is excellent, but its praxis, XP and aug distribution counters this old design by having the player max out many important augs early on, while the level design puts a pretty strong emphasis on hacking. There's not enough balance between the offered playstyles, with too greater reward for playing a very, very specific build against playing another.

What most are asking is for a bit more balance to the builds. Whether they should accomplish that through XP and Praxis distribution, the augs themselves, or the level design is another matter entirely.

Hmm... I think I understand the general idea here. It's true there are some spots (sidequests in particular) where you need to be augmented in a certain fashion (particularly hacking) in order to progress. And the fact so many places can only be reached by hacking means their bounty of secrets, credits and equipment can only be reached by those who choose to build a hacker. Which is maybe why they're liberal with the praxis points, because they know people will ultimately need to invest in some builds they hadn't intended, but they still want people to give characters their own slant (tank, stealth, etc). Hmm...

This too .

LOL.

 

[A Human Becoming]

why???

Because I put all (most) of my points in hacking, damn it!

 

[Turfster]

Well I didn't mean that Thief's complexity came from some deep RPG system or something, but there are different forms of complexity. Carefully navigating enormous, dark, dangerous environments, with emphasis on sound infinitely more than visuals, and without the tropes that many gamers take for granted these would be asking quite a lot, I imagine.

Thief4 better not have a radar or a minmap that indicates your position (or at least it needs to option to turn that off). A huge part of the charm of the thief games was the handdrawn map and basically "well, you know what you're here for, now go wild in this location whichever way you want"

 

[Rufus]

I think a nice compromise for Thief 4 would be to have the player set the objective markers themselves. That way, if you really want a marker, you'd have to at least spend a minute or so thinking about the environment. The maps would have to be more detailed for it to work properly, but it's better than just handing you everything.

Thief 4 will certainly answer some questions.

I have my sights set on Dishonoured as well.

 

[Sotha Sil]

Fuck the first boss.

EMP grenades. Spam 'em!

 

[Zeliard]

I have my sights set on Dishonoured as well.

Oh man.

I'm with the RPS guys on this - I REALLY hope that game lives up, and the devs are all saying the right things. The most recent interview with Harvey Smith and the other lead on RPS had me salivating at the possibilities. It's here for those who didn't read it:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/22/dishonored-interview/

Let's all pray Harvey Smith can re-discover his mojo.

 

[Londa]

I had seen that poster too I didn't catch the Tron reference though!

Another awesome point for Deus Ex

At lot of the music in this game gave me a Tron vibe.

 

[Nose Master]

I'm assuming yes but, if you upgrade a gun, you have to keep that specific gun, right? You couldn't, say, upgrade a 10mm pistol, sell it, and have the upgrade on every one you find after that.

 

[Aquavelvaman]

I'm assuming yes but, if you upgrade a gun, you have to keep that specific gun, right? You couldn't, say, upgrade a 10mm pistol, sell it, and have the upgrade on every one you find after that.

Right, it's only that individual weapon.

 

[Rufus]

I'm assuming yes but, if you upgrade a gun, you have to keep that specific gun, right?

Yes.

 

[Replicant]

It really liked how getting a bigger radar range and the vision cone upgrades can turn the radar into a complete mess. Fast technology advancement only causes problems!

Ahahaha. I remember upgrading my radar only to find it turning into a mess I can't understand. I ended up restarting the whole game to get pacifist trophy so I never got to use that upgraded radar but is it meant to be that unreadable?

 

[Laurentius]

This game just keeps blowing my mind. Just got to Hengshua. Such a well designed area. It feels so huge, and my OCD "explore every cranny before moving on" is becoming problematic. Every time I want to finish exploring a certain section of the city, I wonder off somewhere else and get lost.

Which is awesome.

It feels so alive, too. Honestly, I think the hubs from Deus Ex 1 feel sterile in comparison.

And they did an amazing job with the side quests in the game, too. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the ones I did in Detroit, and am looking forward to whatever they have in store for the rest of the game.

 

[Betta Lines]

I'm about to start this... what difficulty setting would you recommend? I am a reasonably competent gamer who wants a challenge without things getting too frustrating. I find some games are really well balanced for the normal difficulty, while others just aren't challenging enough. I fear the Hard mode on this will require me to grind for XP at every opportunity?

 

[Pancakes]

The game is pretty easy to begin with and no, there is no grinding. I finished first on normal and then moved on to the hardest difficulty on my 2nd run.

I didn't notice a difference at all. So I would recommend the hardest.

 

[Narag]

I'm about to start this... what difficulty setting would you recommend? I am a reasonably competent gamer who wants a challenge without things getting too frustrating. I find some games are really well balanced for the normal difficulty, while others just aren't challenging enough. I fear the Hard mode on this will require me to grind for XP at every opportunity?

I'd start on normal. Hard mode might be a bit frustrating if you don't quickly catch on to the game's mechanics. I played through on normal and it felt just right.

 

[Exclamation-One]

At lot of the music in this game gave me a Tron vibe.

Speaking of which, I'm making a 'best-of' compilation from the complete ripped soundtrack. I'd like to share it, but is it okay to post that in here?

 

[Turfster]

I did my first run on normal and started my second one on hard (up until the first boss). Of course, since I'm stealthing, the only difference I've noticed is it took more work to take down the first boss, but if you're not stealthing, YMMV.

 

[Laurentius]

The story definitely has me interested, but my one complaint is

Spoiler

I'm kind of sick of listening to every single person in the world, wherever they are, just expressing their opinions on augmentation. It's getting a little old. That being said, it's a minor complaint.

I absolutely loved the "show down" conversations (for lack of a better term), especially with the social aug. The Sanders, Haas, and Sarif encounters have definitely stuck out to me so far.

 

[mAcOdIn]

I really hate how the hacking UI works on the PC. I would have done it like:

Left-click: hack node
Right-click: nuke node
Left-click hacked node: fortify node
Space bar: stop virus

What killed me was the damn PC controls in a shop, ugh, why do the WASD keys not work there?

 

[Wallach]

Spoiler

I absolutely loved the "show down" conversations (for lack of a better term), especially with the social aug. The Sanders, Haas, and Sarif encounters have definitely stuck out to me so far.

This remains consistently awesome throughout the game.