Poll: A question only for long-time, hardcore Deus Ex fans...

[Sarge034]

Snip

I played the first Deus Ex and Invisible War. The biggest problem is that they are so hard to compare to Human Revolution. The "old" ones had better "open approach" gameplay as you could actually beat bosses with non-violent skills and fairly good writing but they were clunky, the hit boxes were terrible, the voice acting was atrocious, and I swear the graphics try to rape my eyes every time I try to reply them. The new one has solid controls, pretty graphics, decent-ish writing, tight hit boxes, and convincing voice acting. However, the gameplay does all but force you to go lethal in higher difficulties and the "Deus Ex Machinima Endings" always piss me off.

Soooo... Mixed feelings.

 

[Bertylicious]

The main problem I had with Deus Ex: Human Resources was that your energy evaporated too quickly with no way of replenishing more than one bar of power without consumables. In the originals you could top up your energy for free from med bots and, I think, there were some other methods of gaining energy back other than consumables as well. That meant you couldn't use energy recklessly but at the same time you weren't haunted by the grim knowledge that there was only so much energy available and when you'd burned through all your credits and all the chocolate bars you'd randomly found in lockers then that was it.

It's a similar problem I had with Dishonoured: I HATE consumables. I want to be perfect and self contained forever; if I'm in a situation where I've had to use a consumable then I'll infer that my character build is flawed. Consequently I never felt like the awesome cyborg I was meant to be, like I did in the original. Still a good game though.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I liked it. It's not as good as I wanted it be, but it is a lot better than what I expected.

It's got a nice visual aesthetic and soundtrack going for it. It allows for a fairly wide number of approaches in gameplay for a modern AAA game, even if non-lethal stealth is pretty much the preferred way and offers the greatest rewards. Boss fights kinda sucked, except Namir, because just grabbing the superdeadly black ops veteran cyborg and punching his lights out is hilarious. Oh, and I also really liked the conversation bosses. Other stuff I want to say but feel too lazy to write.

On the whole, some good, some bad, overall decent to good effort.

I found the attempts to pay homage to the original to be cloying and irritating. Hey look, the first keypad code you use is 0451. Did you notice that? 0451. Sound familiar? Eh? Eh? OH-FOUR-FIVE-ONE-************ DO YOU SEE WHAT WE DID THERE?!

Ohmagerd, it's a blatant shout-out to the first keypad code in System Shock!

To be fair, the Fahrenheit 451 reference has been in every game in the System Shock, Deus Ex and BioShock series, as well as Dishonored and Gone Home. Yes, it's fanservice, but I rather like that small nod that sort of connects the people formerly of Looking Glass Studios and any devs that succeeded them. Although I agree on all other accounts of fanservice.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

I loved it. But it's all relative really. The original Deus Ex was from a different time and came out during a very experimental phase in gaming, with many genre defining and genre breaking games coming out over several years. Deus Ex is like playing through a mind map of a developer. It tries so many things and most of it works really well.

There was never a game like Deus Ex before Deus Ex.

Human Revolution is comparatively safer. It took risks that the AAA industry of recent years are reluctant to take, but at the same time everything it did was tried and tested elsewhere. Ultimately HR feels derivative, because it is.

But that isn't a bad thing. It derived a lot of its content from other great games (including the original Deus Ex) and implemented them in a way that retains their quality while still feeling organic within the Lore of Deus Ex. The story was a lot more focused and less slapdash, which was an issue I have with the original Deus Ex. That's a double edged sword though, because the slapdash story gave way to a wacky conspiracy narrative that just fit the world, where as HR takes a far more serious tone and loses some of the franchises charm.

It messed other stuff up too. The bosses for one (which were much better in the enhanced edition... better then the original Deus Ex's bosses to some extent), were horribly done and completely at odds with the games themes. They gimped the augments with the Energy System, probably in the name of balance, but being a top end super cyborg who needs to take a break and eat a kit-kat when on the mission, is thematically and mechanically bad. At the end of the day, Deus Ex is about exploration and discovery, so handicapping your abilities as hard as they did was an awful decision and how they did it is almost comical.

But all things considered, HR was a great game. It was engaging and intriguing. The narrative felt like Dues Ex even if it felt a little less charming then the original. Combat and Stealth both worked really well (though penalties to a pure combat run felt a little harsh). Stealth in particuluar, which at the time of it's release was still a mechanic most developers avoided, worked really well... better then the original. Unlike Dishonored, ghosting the game was extremely satisfying (barring the original boss fights) and just as exciting as going in guns blazing.

Also, the Hacking in his game was done brilliantly. It turned what the original game made as a progress bar into something interactive and challenging. Kudos for making what is often very boring, very fun.

 

[TecnoMonkey]

It's a great game and a great addition to the Deus Ex franchise, there were some missteps (them boss fights) but overall it tried to do everything that the original did and succeded.

Have beat the game like 6 times, every time changing my play style and still having a blast with the game.

 

[Avaholic03]

Well, to echo what several people said, Human Revolution was safer...but more polished. The graphics, sounds, controls, interface...all felt significantly better than the original. But it was a shorter, simpler and safer story which I'm sure some people had a problem with if what they liked about the original was the vast inter-connected story.

Maybe I'm just "shallow", but I found the new one to be the more enjoyable game. It just felt better. I did feel kind of like "awww, that's it?" at the end, but I'd say being sad that a game is over is a sign of a good game (provided it finished the story, which I felt HR did adequately).

 

[Terminal Blue]

Why is FEMA an Illuminati puppet organisation when the original game made it pretty fucking clear that there was no connection whatsoever until Walton Simons took over in the goddamn intro movie?

Well, Walton Simmons wasn't a member of the Illuminati.

I guess maybe he was in the past, since MJ12 seemed to be a splinter group of the Illuminati, but you might notice that during said cutscene he's standing the Versalife facility in Hong Kong underneath a giant statue of a hand.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The game is thematically and mechanically true to the original. There are lots of things about the original that are discarded though - the need to invest in skills to use a weapon for example but, on the balance, this is a good thing. Like most RPGs, Deus Ex asked you to invest in skills long before you knew you'd have any need for them (or not as the case may be) and unlike many RPGs, you could definitely build your character "wrong". The nods to modernity were, in my estimation, for the best.

All told, it is the best version of Deus Ex since, well, Deus Ex. Actually, that's a lie: Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines was the best version of Deus Ex but since it is an entirely different franchise I probably shouldn't count it.

 

[Raikas]

I really liked Human Revolution as a game on its own, and I thought that it was very true to the original in terms of tone (both atmosphere and thematically), I might have some meta-level complaints, but for me that would be petty - I enjoyed playing it and it did recall the same feelings as the first game, and I feel like those two elements are more important than anything else (at least by my standards).

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I found the attempts to pay homage to the original to be cloying and irritating. Hey look, the first keypad code you use is 0451. Did you notice that? 0451. Sound familiar? Eh? Eh? OH-FOUR-FIVE-ONE-************ DO YOU SEE WHAT WE DID THERE?! Hey, hey look, if you walk into the women's toilets a character will reprimand you for a bit later. Huh? Huh? Remember that? Do you? REMEMBER THAT FANS? DO YOU LOVE ME YET?!

To be fair, the passcode references to "Fahrenheit 451" didn't originate with Deus Ex. It had been used in System Shock (1994) and System Shock 2 (1999) beforehand, and I know it's also made its way into the Bioshock series afterward as well. It's sort of a long-running in-joke at this point, and not specifically a Deus Ex one.

 

[ResonanceGames]

I don't really agree with any of those poll options, but I like Human Revolution a lot. In fact, it usually comes up any time I talk to someone about my favorite games last gen.

I thought it was kind of a shame that Eidos Montreal clearly had no interest in the "immersive sim" (or whatever you want to call it) design roots of the series, but they ultimately still delivered an excellent game with enough of what I love from the original to make it totally worth an annual re-play. The game had that rare combination of a first person perspective, a sophisticated narrative (it wasn't perfect, but it touched on some interesting themes), and deep game design with a lot of freedom.

Frankly, it's a miracle that Human Revolution not only got made in this day and age, but was such a success. It makes you wonder what on earth the Thief team over there was smoking.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

At first i did most certainly not like it because of things like click to aim, misaligned revolver sight and the left mouse button context menu
But i staid with it and it payed off bigtime
I love the extensive security snooping and general detectiveness of it all
Good music, though a bit more ambient and unnoticeable than the first game
Good story and acting i guess, though the ending was rather silly and... empty
A-

 

[bigfatcarp93]

So, the general-ish consensus amongst classic fans is that it was very good, and did the series at least some justice? Thank you, all, I think I got what I was looking for.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I liked it. When I was playing it, it felt like i was playing a Deus Ex game. There were mechanical differences, but the feel was the same. I think if they didn't use the name Deus Ex and called it something like "fluffy bunnies are cute" then we would be talking about how "fluffy bunnies are cute" is the new Deus Ex.