I agree with your idea that a boss fight should be like a final exam. Fallout: NV spoiler below That reminds me of the last enemy you fight in the Old World Blues expansion for Fallout: NV where you can fight it directly or use your head and zip up the side and reconfigure the computers to have the autoturrets fight it instead.
Well, that was kinda what I expected. Captures the essence of Deus Ex while still having a modern feel, with all the advantages and disadvantages that comes with it.
That was probably part of my issue with Half Life 2, I found that considering the number of enemies coming at you and potential damage they could do, the aiming seemed very basic, like Fallout 3, where I found unassisted targeting useless except for sniping purposes.
As for RDR and Mass Effect, You're choices in the game could be perfectly consistent with your actions. John Marston is a badass, but also one of the few protagonists I can think of who is noticeably polite and respectful to anyone except his enemies, or some more deliberately repulsive npcs. He would be exactly the kind of character I could imagine helping out an old man by keeping an eye out for flowers on his travels. In Mass Effect, if your playing the paragon option you can simply not loot people's houses. If you do loot them and you want to be consistent, no doubt the renegade path doesn't require you to get angry at other looters.
I'd have said Rico Rodriguez's motivation was "Here's a magic grappling hook and a tropical island to play on. Go nuts."
You make a convincing argument, I'll probably have to wait til summer comes round again, as I have college to deal with myself, but I'll definitely put Deus Ex on my list of games to try out.
That was probably part of my issue with Half Life 2, I found that considering the number of enemies coming at you and potential damage they could do, the aiming seemed very basic, like Fallout 3, where I found unassisted targeting useless except for sniping purposes.
Consoles required more assisted targeting as they're harder to use on dual thumbsticks. Mouse and keyboard - the primary gaming device on PC games in the 90's, with the exception of the now defunct joystick (I miss flight sims) - is far more precise. It evolved as a gaming device despite not being a gaming device at all.
That being said, it's a generational thing. I still prefer M&K with little to no assistance - with some exceptions (Borderlands makes it work for me for some reason).
The Half Life series also perfected the linear FPS, literally railroading you for the most part, and not asking for much exploration (though it still rewarded exploration). Some would say this plagues modern shooters. I'd say the pacing in the Half Life series is much better than modern linear experiences today, not that linearity doesn't have its place.
Strangely, Yahtzee's still a big fan.
Random berk said:
As for RDR and Mass Effect, You're choices in the game could be perfectly consistent with your actions. John Marston is a badass, but also one of the few protagonists I can think of who is noticeably polite and respectful to anyone except his enemies, or some more deliberately repulsive npcs. He would be exactly the kind of character I could imagine helping out an old man by keeping an eye out for flowers on his travels. In Mass Effect, if your playing the paragon option you can simply not loot people's houses. If you do loot them and you want to be consistent, no doubt the renegade path doesn't require you to get angry at other looters.
I could buy both. Renegade Shep also chastizes them for looting, so that doesn't really apply. Looting is just a mainstay in RPG exploration gameplay (since Zelda and DND, after all), but it is horribly inconsistent with a military commander like Shep.
I don't know Marston well enough (not a console player), but this was an issue I had with Rockstar games in general. At least in the earlier GTA's your character tended to be a bit nuts to begin with.
Random berk said:
I'd have said Rico Rodriguez's motivation was "Here's a magic grappling hook and a tropical island to play on. Go nuts."
You make a convincing argument, I'll probably have to wait til summer comes round again, as I have college to deal with myself, but I'll definitely put Deus Ex on my list of games to try out.
How can you be a ZP regular and take Zahtzee's reviews at face value? Everything he says is true (as far as the detals and weaknesses of a game go, objective stuff), that's why I like him (that and he's funny) but it doesn't mean he gives the whole picture (plenty of other journalists are paid to emphasise the good points). On top of that tastes vary. Yahtzee for example might find that vending machines are too much of a racial stereotype but you might find it dehumanises them and makes stealing cola easier. Your milage WILL vary as legitimate "flaws" may not bother you at all even if those features or lacks of features exist. His reviews are a good part of an informed purchasing decision. If you can't read between the lines, as well as apply your own tastes to his reviews, then I wonder if you buy any games at all?
However even if you agree on the subjective parts with him you have to read between the lines. The boss fights are annoying and immersion breaking but also challenging (I just shot the first boss in the head repeatedly, apparently stealth/hackers can find extra rocket ammo in the base which also makes it easier). The stealth game is fun, there's multiple ways to take every obstacle, usually there's a couple regardless of your build, though as you play you'll find that you can access more and more of the routes. The game is enjoyable and well crafted and while shorter than the original is still 3 times longer than most releases.
Yahtzee even said it surpasses the original in several places how can it be mediocre?! The game is one of the best releases this year, everyone I know who played it loved it but it doesn't make it perfect, it's a modernised deus ex for better and for worse. And of couse it was never going to live up the original and surpass it in every way.
I remember one of the first pieces of news I heard about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, was it wasn't going to be dumbed down for consoles...and it appears I was right, instead it was dumbed down in general.
Actually, what I was referring to was Yahtzee's review. See, I haven't actually played the game yet, that's why I said 'appears.' After all, it was a shorter game was it not? There was probably something else, but quite frankly, I really don't care right now, I'm too tired, and have better things to do than re-watch the damn review try to remember what else I was referring to. Sorry.
Is this your opinion or Yahtzee's opinion. If it's his opinion, why not just let him explain it, and if it's your opinion, why did you preface it with that line.
Daemonate said:
But is it as good as the game who shares its name? You know, that game whom many pundits consider to be one of, or in fact THE best game ever made? Well, not quite. But if you expected that, I think gaming in the modern age must be a long tortuous string of bitter disappointments
To expect that games get better overtime. That every game released is better than games that were released a decade ago is expecting disappointment? See, maybe it's just me, but I'd like to expect that people get better at their craft over time...not worse.
Thank you for the spoiler alert Yahtzee, this is the first time I've actually had to skip a part of your video because of it. I'm actually really enjoying DX:HR. Yes I played the original and yes I liked it too, but DX:HR trims off some of the "depth" that was really just fat (a morbidly obese person is very "deep" when you roll them onto their back, however all their important parts are the same size and usually a lot weaker for all the weight they've had to lug around) and replaces it with fun. You may hate cover-based shooters because they're so overused but I don't own a 360 so I've played all of about 3 or 4 in my life. To me, the cover mechanics provoke memories of Metal Gear Solid more than Gears of War, which I welcome with the giddy excitement of a 9 year old boy receiving 50 pounds of legos. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to play through the game quite as quickly as I'd like since I host a Youtube channel and I have to spend a lot of time editing and rendering which takes away from playing. But I'm getting there, slowly but surely, and enjoying every minute
Is this your opinion or Yahtzee's opinion. If it's his opinion, why not just let him explain it, and if it's your opinion, why did you preface it with that line.
Daemonate said:
But is it as good as the game who shares its name? You know, that game whom many pundits consider to be one of, or in fact THE best game ever made? Well, not quite. But if you expected that, I think gaming in the modern age must be a long tortuous string of bitter disappointments
To expect that games get better overtime. That every game released is better than games that were released a decade ago is expecting disappointment? See, maybe it's just me, but I'd like to expect that people get better at their craft over time...not worse.
Wha..?? Yes, nice idea, but as I said; where have you been for the last ten years?
Games like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Thief Metal Age, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, Quakeworld, Tribes 2, etc, etc have not been bettered in their respective niches. They have scarcely been APPROACHED, let alone surpassed - and as Yahtzee points out, due to the strain of current-gen tech on development teams, they're simply never going to.
So, even when developers aren't getting worse - which due to larger team sizes, multi millio dollar budgets and and corporatisation of development houses, is par for the course - they can't do what they once did in terms of depth of gameplay and focus on particular elements.
So no, it isn't unreasonable to expect game developers to get better than what they are now, but it's ridiculous to expect them to suddenly get better than golden-age era games.
To be honest I really didn't like this game. At no point did I feel total immersion despite wanting to badly. I didn't care for the stealth in this game. Tranquilizer darts and stun guns aren't "one size fits all" approaches. People would die if you used them on everyone. Plus when you take down people from the shadows everyone checks on the same pile of knocked out people. Can't anyone figure out the guy who's darting their friends is still in the area?
The character models also bothered me. Mostly because of their faces. Even if the person is supposed to be upset their expression can't change at all, so it just makes the entire scene comical. The voice acting also didn't help. Finally during stealth I can break stealth and shoot up people, then go back to stealth mode, and nobody brings up the fact that I was killing people in the building despite being caught by cameras occasionally.
Finally, I don't know about anyone else but the color scheme gave me a horrible headache. I didn't even want to play anymore after a while.
I will give this to the game though, the story was fairly interesting and the augmentation powers were somewhat fun. Especially the freaky looking wall break power.
Is this your opinion or Yahtzee's opinion. If it's his opinion, why not just let him explain it, and if it's your opinion, why did you preface it with that line.
Daemonate said:
But is it as good as the game who shares its name? You know, that game whom many pundits consider to be one of, or in fact THE best game ever made? Well, not quite. But if you expected that, I think gaming in the modern age must be a long tortuous string of bitter disappointments
To expect that games get better overtime. That every game released is better than games that were released a decade ago is expecting disappointment? See, maybe it's just me, but I'd like to expect that people get better at their craft over time...not worse.
Wha..?? Yes, nice idea, but as I said; where have you been for the last ten years?
Games like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Thief Metal Age, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, Quakeworld, Tribes 2, etc, etc have not been bettered in their respective niches. They have scarcely been APPROACHED, let alone surpassed - and as Yahtzee points out, due to the strain of current-gen tech on development teams, they're simply never going to.
So, even when developers aren't getting worse - which due to larger team sizes, multi millio dollar budgets and and corporatisation of development houses, is par for the course - they can't do what they once did in terms of depth of gameplay and focus on particular elements.
So no, it isn't unreasonable to expect game developers to get better than what they are now, but it's ridiculous to expect them to suddenly get better than golden-age era games.
And you're saying we should just accept that and move on!? I'm sorry, but just because that's how things have gone for the past ten years doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about it.
Yes, I expect things to get better, and when they don't, which is frequently, I'll admit, I complain, and I will continue to complain.
To be honest I really didn't like this game. At no point did I feel total immersion despite wanting to badly. I didn't care for the stealth in this game. Tranquilizer darts and stun guns aren't "one size fits all" approaches. People would die if you used them on everyone. Plus when you take down people from the shadows everyone checks on the same pile of knocked out people. Can't anyone figure out the guy who's darting their friends is still in the area?
The character models also bothered me. Mostly because of their faces. Even if the person is supposed to be upset their expression can't change at all, so it just makes the entire scene comical. The voice acting also didn't help. Finally during stealth I can break stealth and shoot up people, then go back to stealth mode, and nobody brings up the fact that I was killing people in the building despite being caught by cameras occasionally.
Finally, I don't know about anyone else but the color scheme gave me a horrible headache. I didn't even want to play anymore after a while.
I will give this to the game though, the story was fairly interesting and the augmentation powers were somewhat fun. Especially the freaky looking wall break power.
Sorry, if that sounds insulting but: Really?
Yes, (some of) your points are correct, but really?
You know there's something called Willing suspension of disbelief, an ability needed to enjoy every piece of fiction.
Without it, you couldn't watch and enjoy the Star Wars films because you know that ,in Space, no one can hear your Death Star explode.
You couldn't play the beginning of Uncharted 2 because Drake would most likely cut his finger of while trying to climb up that hanging train.
And even in games as realistic and hardcore as the first Operation Flashpoint, the magic abilities of a medic to regrow legs apparently torn of by a grenade, would make every immersion impossible.
So ,if the fact that Tranqulizer darts (advanced future cyberpunk tranquilizer darts at that) would be a stupid idea to use on human enemies in real life turns you away from a video game, then I'd maybe consider sticking to documentaries and other non-fiction media.
This does not that there were no moments in the game that broke my sense of immersion (while it's nice and just plausible that some employees of Montréal based Picus Communication write some of their personal e-mails in (canadian) french, it leaves open the question why all citizens of upper and lower Hengsha city communicate digitally in English but often speak Mandarin on the streets), however after a minute or so I was able to take that as given and just continue to enjoy the surprisingly well fleshed-out world and the interesting quests.
And now onto something completly different:
To all you people out there saying that the way the endings were made is justified, "because we all know what happens in the original Deus Ex".
Screw you!
Screw
You!
Because that's the fan in you talking, believing that continuity or canon or whatever you might call it, is more important than the experience and choice of the player. You could hardly be more wrong. By supporting this mindset you are stripping videogames of their biggest advantage as a narrative medium: interactivity and choice.
I'm not saying that every game needs multiple endings or the illusion of free choice and there are enough good examples out there that prove that (the Uncharted or Prince of Persia series and many others), but if a game includes all those things, then the developers should have the balls to go through with it, even if it means declaring three of the four as "non-canon" and maybe upsetting a few fanboys.(It's not as if this didn't happen before, the evil ending of Bioshock leaves no way for Bioshock 2) However, if you make a choice and there are no consequences to that choice, then this choice is unimportant and therefore obsolete.
"Wait!" some of you will cry out "But can't that be used as a narrative tool, showing that one man can hardly change the fate of humanity as a whole and that our perception of interactivity in videogames is an illusion, while we are actually just following a handfull of slightly differently painted tubes, created by the developers."
Yes, you are right, a lack of choice or first creating and then brutally destroying the illusion of interactivity can be used for misguiding the player and get him to think, as popularly demonstrated by above mentioned Bioshock and its "Would you kindly...", but in this case I think you would be giving Eidos Montréal too much credit. This does not mean, that I am not confident that they could come up with something clever like that, their excellent world building shows that they might be interested in a bit more than just taking your money, while developing their games. It means that the way the endings were made are not convincing me to believe that they were intended that way. See, I have nothing against games that don't take me by the hand and repeat Every. Single. Plot. Point.(plot point plot point) three times for the slower ones of us, but I'm not going to suspect a deeper meaning behind something that seems to me more like simple lazyness.
If I'm wrong and Eidos actually wanted to show the limits of choice, then they could have made it a lot more clear without spelling every single letter of the actual meaning.
How about this:
Make a voiceover by a bitter old Jensen explaining that even though Darrow's unadultered confession caused an uproar and worldwide riots, the powers-that-be managed to discredit the video as a fake, painted the old man as a senile lunatic and put the blame for the augmentation malfunctions on a group of australian terrorists.
Or maybe let David Sarif explain, that even the widespread "NuPo-panic" wasn't enough to stop progress and the dangers of human augmentation were soon replaced by the fears of a newly rising terrorist threat.
And I want to know what happens to all the the characters that aren't in the original. I want to know what happens to the kidnapped scientists, I want to know what happens to Tai Yong Medical and the city of Hengsha after Zhao's death.
Fallout 2's ending told me about the fate of nearly every important location I visited and about what happened to my companions after the end of the game and that was more than ten years ago, surely with all our future space-man technology we are able to do something as simple and yet as effective as that again.
Just because I have a very strict range of disbelief doesn't make it stupid. If you've seen people die from stun gun attacks you wouldn't take it as a harmless attack either. All the things I mentioned just ruined the experience for me. Simple as that. maybe it's petty to you but I don't care.
It's the very reason most tranquilizer or knock them out with a blunt object scenes annoy me elsewhere. That's not stealth. It's easy to kill people doing those things.
Also, not liking that doesn't mean I can't like star wars. Everything about stuff like that is fantastical. In no way does any of that pass like a version of reality. So if there is sound in space that doesn't bother me because so much isn't passing for fact anyway. Deus Ex is different. We can make robotic arms, we can use hormone manipulation, and there are real world conspiracies. While still an alternate world it passes itself as a more probable alternate world. It tries to show technology that we could probably make one day (sooner in their reality). So I take it much more seriously.
Besides the stealth bothered me so I didn't use it. Not the biggest issue. Not nearly as much as the face animations, voices, overall story, and color problems bothered me. Those problems made me take the game back.
Is this your opinion or Yahtzee's opinion. If it's his opinion, why not just let him explain it, and if it's your opinion, why did you preface it with that line.
Daemonate said:
But is it as good as the game who shares its name? You know, that game whom many pundits consider to be one of, or in fact THE best game ever made? Well, not quite. But if you expected that, I think gaming in the modern age must be a long tortuous string of bitter disappointments
To expect that games get better overtime. That every game released is better than games that were released a decade ago is expecting disappointment? See, maybe it's just me, but I'd like to expect that people get better at their craft over time...not worse.
Wha..?? Yes, nice idea, but as I said; where have you been for the last ten years?
Games like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Thief Metal Age, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, Quakeworld, Tribes 2, etc, etc have not been bettered in their respective niches. They have scarcely been APPROACHED, let alone surpassed - and as Yahtzee points out, due to the strain of current-gen tech on development teams, they're simply never going to.
So, even when developers aren't getting worse - which due to larger team sizes, multi millio dollar budgets and and corporatisation of development houses, is par for the course - they can't do what they once did in terms of depth of gameplay and focus on particular elements.
So no, it isn't unreasonable to expect game developers to get better than what they are now, but it's ridiculous to expect them to suddenly get better than golden-age era games.
And you're saying we should just accept that and move on!? I'm sorry, but just because that's how things have gone for the past ten years doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about it.
Yes, I expect things to get better, and when they don't, which is frequently, I'll admit, I complain, and I will continue to complain.
Well, OK, even though I expect you will continue to be sadly disappointed. But you shouldn't go chiding DEHR for your unrealistic expectations - because then you become part of the problem. DEHR is one of the best steps to fixing what's been wrong with games this past decade. Is it there yet? No. But it IS one of the best games of the era. If you are overly critical of it, MORE critical of it than of a grey-ware tripefest that they didn't even try on, then the publishers get the message that they may as well no try and get things right.
And the game is FUN. It's really quite fun, and moving, and effective as a narrative, even if the earth didn't move as in the original, so harping on its faults is really mean-spirited and disingenuous.
Is this your opinion or Yahtzee's opinion. If it's his opinion, why not just let him explain it, and if it's your opinion, why did you preface it with that line.
Daemonate said:
But is it as good as the game who shares its name? You know, that game whom many pundits consider to be one of, or in fact THE best game ever made? Well, not quite. But if you expected that, I think gaming in the modern age must be a long tortuous string of bitter disappointments
To expect that games get better overtime. That every game released is better than games that were released a decade ago is expecting disappointment? See, maybe it's just me, but I'd like to expect that people get better at their craft over time...not worse.
Wha..?? Yes, nice idea, but as I said; where have you been for the last ten years?
Games like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Thief Metal Age, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, Quakeworld, Tribes 2, etc, etc have not been bettered in their respective niches. They have scarcely been APPROACHED, let alone surpassed - and as Yahtzee points out, due to the strain of current-gen tech on development teams, they're simply never going to.
So, even when developers aren't getting worse - which due to larger team sizes, multi millio dollar budgets and and corporatisation of development houses, is par for the course - they can't do what they once did in terms of depth of gameplay and focus on particular elements.
So no, it isn't unreasonable to expect game developers to get better than what they are now, but it's ridiculous to expect them to suddenly get better than golden-age era games.
And you're saying we should just accept that and move on!? I'm sorry, but just because that's how things have gone for the past ten years doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about it.
Yes, I expect things to get better, and when they don't, which is frequently, I'll admit, I complain, and I will continue to complain.
Well, OK, even though I expect you will continue to be sadly disappointed. But you shouldn't go chiding DEHR for your unrealistic expectations - because then you become part of the problem. DEHR is one of the best steps to fixing what's been wrong with games this past decade. Is it there yet? No. But it IS one of the best games of the era. If you are overly critical of it, MORE critical of it than of a grey-ware tripefest that they didn't even try on, then the publishers get the message that they may as well no try and get things right.
And the game is FUN. It's really quite fun, and moving, and effective as a narrative, even if the earth didn't move as in the original, so harping on its faults is really mean-spirited and disingenuous.
It's not unrealistic or unreasonable for an art-form to get better over time. I'll give you it's probably better than Gears of War or Call of Duty, but that's like saying it's better than a pile of horse shit! That's not the point. I think it should be better than what has came before it.
The boss fights of the first Deus Ex sucked big times. They were messy, short and required picking the biggest weapons and firing randomly.
If there was one thing Deus Ex is not worth remembering, it is those boss fights.
Even taking into account that Yahtzee has made hyperbolic judgement into an entirely new form of interpersonal communication, the simple facts mentioned in the review makes the game sounds absolutely awful, for those looking for an experience similar to Deus Ex.
While I won't waste much breath lamenting what modern console standards does to classic games, it would be nice if SOME new releases in classic franchises actually lived up to at least some of the hopes of fans of the original.
I have some problems with this game.
i'm playing, or at least I tried to play it, but it's unplayable on my PC.
I have some crazy delay with my mouse. FPS is nice, everything works perfectly fine expect that the camera moves 0.5-1 second later. I tried everything, downloaded the latest patch but nothing helps.
Good thing I took the game from my friend to test it before buying it.
Also, this captcha is less and less readable. Soon I will need a bot to read it for me. :S
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