Deus ex: Human revolution first thoughts

[L3W15 M]

I'm loving this game. And so far little to nothing about it has annoyed me. I especially love how the stealth works and the storyline is quite gripping thus far.
how do you guys feel about it?

Also found the easter egg with the forever alone face on it. It made me laugh. anyone else?

 

[stebsy]

I'm absolutely loving it, easily the best game I've played all year. Just got to the second hub world and I love how differnt it is from Detroit. Does any know how many hub worlds there are?

 

[StormShaun]

I am just playied it for the first time and my mind was blown, the graphics were expected, but the whole damn game is good, all the choices, weapons, powers, location, characters and those awesome elbow swords, cant get enough of them, (Even though I prefer a non-lethal way).

Cant wait to play more.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

4 hours in and I'm in love with this game. I usually only make 1 or 2 Day 1 purchases, but oh my fucking God am I happy it lived to the hype.

Only downside is I have NO idea how the Social Enhancer works. The alpha bar flares up so I choose an option that would persuade the Alpha to speak, but they shut me down.

Also I'm having trouble redeeming my code but at this point I'll have to forget about it.

You have to pick the one that they have the most of. Sometimes you'll see multiple bars go up, but they'll only respond to the personality type they exhibit the strongest.

As for my first thoughts:

Choices are great, and the levels still feel very free-flow without feeling sprawling. They struck a good balance

Loving the upgrade system. I'm glad that all augments can be obtained this time, rather than having to pick and choose which ones you wanted while shutting others out. I wish they'd gone a step further and had it change your appearance too, but whatever. Its still cool.

Story was...slow to start. It has since picked up, but up until the police station I was honestly somewhat bored with it. Luckily it opens up a lot after the warehouse.

Graphics are....kinda disappointing. Not to say they are bad, just very average for a game that is overachieving in most other areas. Character models in particular are pretty rough. The environments make up for it though, and its got some pretty inspired design.

Voice acting is pretty bad, but for a Deus Ex game this is par for the course. Jensen, in particular, sounds like he's been eating coral (though he still manages to show more emotion than JC "A BOMB" Denton). Sarif's voice acting, in particular, is annoying for how many lines he has. He constantly has a twinge to his voice that makes him sound like he's about to cry.

Shooting was rough to start, but after I got laser sights (I assume the movement recoil reduction aug would do the same thing) it became much more manageable. Ditto with the sticky cover, I didn't like it at first but after fiddling with the controls its grown on me. At the very least, I don't feel completely helpless in a gun fight like I did in DX 1.

The Takedowns are cool (I like that you can't really do them all the time without a significant resource drain), but I miss dedicated melee weapons.

 

[Corven]

I like it, it's cool that Jensen is such a badass that he can go around with a trench coat that has floral patterns on it.

 

[Stall]

It's good, but the game certainly has problems. None of them detract from the overall enjoyment of the game though.

By far, my favorite part is the conversations. A lot of them are surprisingly gripping and compelling:
There's a moment where encounter a PI who Sarif hired to do some background research on Jensen. Through the wonders of coincidence and timing, you just happen to need to talk to him shortly after some hitmen brutalized and attempted to kill him to silence what he knows about Jensen's past. After you talk to him, he asks you to administer a lethal dose of morphine. It's one of the more powerful scenes from a video game I've seen.

Unfortunately, the story isn't quite as good. It's gripping and interesting enough to drive the narrative and keep you involved with the characters, but it relies far too much on coincidence for it to be "good".

 

[Kopikatsu]

I like it, it's cool that Jensen is such a badass that he can go around with a trench coat that has floral patterns on it.

He's not the only one. You get an optional quest to take out some gangsters later on. All of them have the same trenchcoat that Jensen wears.

I love most things about the game....but here are some issues I have with it-

1. Only the first battery recharges. The only thing this accomplished was preventing me from stringing multiple augmentations together (Which would have been extremely badass). I ended up going through most of the game doing 'Smart Vision > Double non-lethal takedown'. If there were more than two enemies close to each other, I munched on an energy bar and spammed takedowns.

2. Boss fights. Unless you have a dedicated boss weapon that you never use for anything but bosses, you will die. The only exception is the first boss because you can throw explosive barrels at his head.

3. The only enemy type you fight in the final mission is...

Spoiler

Zombies. WHY DOES THIS GAME HAVE ZOMBIES IN IT? (Admittedly, it's pretty fun fighting them, but still.)

4. You can't get every augmentation. The explanation given was that EXP is just a representation of Jensen's body healing enough for his other augmentations to switch on. So by the end of the game, he hasn't fully healed? Lame.

5. The 'hidden' fourth ending.

Spoiler

Why does Hydron have a self-destruct button?

 

[shadow_Fox81]

well i need this answered and i don't want to create a new thread about deus ex.

in all the screens i've seen there's a dominance of gold and heavy grays in the pallette which i struggle to find attractive(i don't like it). is it extremely dominant in the game; so are there few environments not dominated by this stylisation. its the only thing keeping me from the game but i don't want to buy it then never finish because it was hard on my eyes(plus its quite expensive).

 

[Kopikatsu]

well i need this answered and i don't want to create a new thread about deus ex.

in all the screens i've seen there's a dominance of gold and heavy grays in the pallette which i struggle to find attractive(i don't like it). is it extremely dominant in the game; so are there few environments not dominated by this stylisation. its the only thing keeping me from the game but i don't want to buy it then never finish because it was hard on my eyes(plus its quite expensive).

I...I don't see a question in there. You can turn off the golden 'PICK ME UP/SEARCH ME' indicators in the option menu, but the game is heavily dominated by the gold/black colorations, yes.

 

[shadow_Fox81]

I...I don't see a question in there. You can turn off the golden 'PICK ME UP/SEARCH ME' indicators in the option menu, but the game is heavily dominated by the gold/black colorations, yes.

damn, well thanks. (maybe i'll just wear sunglasses)

 

[Corven]

I like it, it's cool that Jensen is such a badass that he can go around with a trench coat that has floral patterns on it.

He's not the only one. You get an optional quest to take out some gangsters later on. All of them have the same trenchcoat that Jensen wears.

i know, as a matter o fact almost everyone has some sort of floral print on their clothing, must be a law or something, but still it's interesting that for the quintessential "badass" main character they would have something silly like floral print on his clothing.

 

[octafish]

Ok, well I just played through the introduction level and it feels pretty solid. Still no idea what the gunplay is like as I stealthed through the attack. I think I am really going to enjoy it. I do have some technical issues with it at them moment.

1/ I'm having some performance issues, I left the graphic options at the auto settings and while my GPU monitor is telling me I'm getting 59-60 FPS I'm getting some stuttering, it might be an issue with the v-sync though I'll try triple buffering which is apparently off as default. I do have some graphics tweaking to do. Might be that Nvidia isn't the preferred GPU but that is a shit excuse.

2/ The mouse feels a bit floaty. In combination with the stuttering that occurs sometimes this isn't ideal in shooter/RPG. I know from experience I'll get used to it, but again not ideal.

3/ If you are playing on PC try walking in a diagonal line. Hot dog that is fast isn't it? Remember speed strafing in Goldeneye or Perfect Dark? Well it is back. I don't know should I consider this a perk or a problem. I'm sure this will be fixed in a patch.

4/ Character animations tend to look sped up and twitchy. I've had this in games before (most notably in R6: Vegas 2 where it was most disturbing). I don't know if it is because my machine is too fast for the game or maybe all the characters are meant to be coke/meth heads. I might be able to change things by bumping up the graphics options, but that could harm my framerate and stuttering issue. Like I said, I have some tweaking to do.

Nitpicky things I'm sure I'll either get used to them or they will be patched eventually. Otherwise I'm really looking forward to delving further into this game. Shame I have a sick child (I'm just getting over a bugger of a cold myself, the poor boy, I know he feels) and a weekend away planned.

Anyone know if you can skip through conversations? I had to restart a minor level after I forgot to pause the game when I went to comfort my son, and rather than get reprimanded for faffing about I played it again and had to do the conversations again.

EDIT: I just had a thought (I know, I'll give you a moment to recover from your shock). Anyway what if the speed strafing thing is a shout out to old-school Deus Ex players? The original did do the same thing so maybe it is a sneaky Easter-Egg?

Just remembered a fifth issue.
5/ Loading times are pretty damn long.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Anyone know if you can skip through conversations? I had to restart a minor level after I forgot to pause the game when I went to comfort my son, and rather than get reprimanded for faffing about I played it again and had to do the conversations again.

Press the action button to skip dialogue (I have no idea what key it is on the PC). If it's a semi-cutscene, then you have to pause and press 'skip'.

 

[octafish]

Anyone know if you can skip through conversations? I had to restart a minor level after I forgot to pause the game when I went to comfort my son, and rather than get reprimanded for faffing about I played it again and had to do the conversations again.

Press the action button to skip dialogue (I have no idea what key it is on the PC). If it's a semi-cutscene, then you have to pause and press 'skip'.

Cheers. If it the one you use to interact with stuff it is E by default.

 

[Wrath 228]

I can't even find the words to describe how much I love this game. It feels exactly how I pictured a Deus Ex game in 2011. I was loving it from the start, but I truly realized I was playing Deus Ex when I circumvented that Level 5 security cage in the drug dealer's apartment in Detroit by piling up some boxes and squeezing between the top of the fence and the ceiling to get in. Since then I've been finding unorthodox solutions to a lot of minor problems. But that moment was what made me stop and realize "This really is Deus Ex."

EDIT: Oh, and the basketball hoop. My friends and I were maybe a little too excited when we got that slam dunk and the achievement popped up.

 

[Kathinka]

just going to quote myself from the other threat:

oh goood, balance is so bad..every aproach other then stealth is just not worth it.
plus the graphic is preposterously outdated (probably so the whole thing can run on consoles too) and still boasts insanely long loading times.

other than that, pretty nifty game though^^ nice true deus ex-feeling that gives a lot of that brilliant deus ex 1 - vibe.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

First time player of any Deus Ex game, and I am loving it. And I'm just thankful it's a prequel of the first Deus Ex so I'm not missing much in terms of story. It's very fun, story is amazing, stealth is amazingly well done. And I came across a glitch once that I'm not sure how I performed. I performed a takedown on an enemy with another one looking right at me, and he allowed me to pull the body back to cover(mind you WHILE he's looking at me) as if he never saw me at all. I only really have one gripe with the graphics in this game. Facial animation.

Spoiler

Josie Thorpe still had a smile on her face while she mourned her now dead husband. Whuuuuut?

The HUD is extremely easy for me to use, but I do wish the map was a bit more detailed in terms of paths I can and cannot take. There have been several times I tried to take a path to get somewhere, only to find my way barred by a fence or anything else that could stop me.

 

[EHKOS]

Oh, nothing much just LONG ASS LOADING SCREENS OF DOOM. Other than that I have only one other complaint and that is how much ammo I am given, I've run out in a lab filled with heavy turrets and about twenty guys, I had to hide in a corner and then beat them down with a melee cutscene.

Oh and then I dreamnt I had augmentations and it was sweet.

 

[Weaver]

Being a completionist, this game is a nightmare!

Maybe I'm crazy OCD, but you can make so much money doing tedious things. For instance, a shotgun sells for (i think) 360 and a pistol for 180. However, if you pick up a gun you already have it just adds ammo. This is inefficient, so I have to pick up one gun, sell it, go back pick up another, sell it, go back; etc.

It's boring, it takes forever, but it makes good cash.

As I said in another thread, the bias towards stealth is frustrating. Ghost, Smooth Operator and Silent Knockouts give more experience than any other method, thus making the whole "choose how you approach it" thing not really a choice at all. Given that, why do we even need weapon upgrades if the game doesn't want us to use them?