Zero Punctuation: Deus Ex

Signa

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CrawlingPastaHellion said:
Signa said:
The first level is BRUTAL. People were telling me all the way back in 2000 how great it was, but I never got into it. I finally played it with a friend in 2010 and fucking loved it. You really have to die a lot if you aren't used to the game and what it is asking of you. Once you get past that point, it becomes pretty clear why everyone says the game is as good as it is.
I actually played it on hard, as I do most of my games, HR included. ;) Always up for a challenge.
Hm, see, I didn't think that the beginning of DE was hard as much as just "what the fuck I'm I supposed to do? I think it wants me to do this *fail* Ok, guess not, let's try this *fail* Maybe I built my character's stats wrong? *Fail*"

Nothing I did seemed to be good enough for the game. The area was too open for stealth, there was no real gobs of ammo and weapons to go in full assault, and exploring seemed impossible while there were so many bad guys and robots around. It wasn't until those few hours taking turns dying with my friend did I find that you didn't need the ammo I thought you needed, and enemies are actually blind and deaf, as long as you know how to exploit their bad AI and patrol routes.

Having played the Thief series previously probably didn't help with the stealth much either. It just has different expectations for the player.
 

Inconspicuous Trenchcoat

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ewhac said:
theriddlen said:
Also, few days ago I just like Yahtz have installed Deux Ex, and it's very playable (after you download 2 gigabytes of community fixes and mods).
Which fixes and mods would these be? I have an original installation that still works perfectly well, but it would be nice to make it even better.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=0854a290a60f2a59dea9f056e769faa3&t=1235278

EDIT: Right I didn't even read the "original installation" part. These instructions are obviously for the Steam release, but maybe you can get it working on the original? I'm not sure, you'll have to research it. At the very least, that link contains links to several nice graphical improvement mods for Deus Ex.

That'll make the game look much better, especially the lighting. Really helped me get back into it. As far as fixes go, I have no idea. But I didn't experience any bugs at all in my playthrough after installing the above stuff. I have the Steam, GOTY edition.
 

McShizzle

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ewhac said:
theriddlen said:
Also, few days ago I just like Yahtz have installed Deux Ex, and it's very playable (after you download 2 gigabytes of community fixes and mods).
Which fixes and mods would these be? I have an original installation that still works perfectly well, but it would be nice to make it even better.
Shifter [http://www.moddb.com/mods/shifter1] - fixes some remaining bugs, spruces up gameplay

New Vision [http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-new-vision] - High-res textures

HDTP [http://www.moddb.com/mods/project-hdtp] - Higher poly models (not finished, only a few models right now, but still nice)

Deus Ex Revision [http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-revision] - A remake of some levels that were bland (optional, but I like it quite a bit so far)

Kentie's Launcer [http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/index.htm] - UI and rendering updates (very nice)

Deus-Ex Enhanced [http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-enhanced] - Fixes some more UI stuff

Go on to ModDB [http://www.moddb.com/] to look them up.

Takes a little to get them to work together, but it's awesome when they do.
 

Helscreama

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Pscyon said:
I didn't get past the first hour either. Not when the game was new due to an old crappy monitor which made everything simply too dark (damn you stealth tutorial!) and not now since the game is simply too hard to get into without nostalgia mode which I lack for this particular game.
I'll be crucifed for this but I've never played the other Deus Ex games and I really like Deus Ex HR
 

Mangue Surfer

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Helscreama said:
I'll be crucifed for this but I've never played the other Deus Ex games and I really like Deus Ex HR
Isn't the contrary?
At this point, the hysteria behind this game already achieve critical mass at the point of anyone who do a little critic will be attacked by the fanwatchers.
 

Babitz

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You can kill 10 year olds in Deus Ex. I am sure Yahtzee appreciated that very, very much. Sadly, you can't do it in HR.
 

theriddlen

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ewhac said:
theriddlen said:
Also, few days ago I just like Yahtz have installed Deux Ex, and it's very playable (after you download 2 gigabytes of community fixes and mods).
Which fixes and mods would these be? I have an original installation that still works perfectly well, but it would be nice to make it even better.
Well, mine didn't work (colors and sounds were glitched). I followed this tutorial: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ceuyh/step_by_step_moddingguide_deus_ex_i_spilled_my/
 

TheRocketeer

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Now he's got my anticipation building. On one hand, I'd like to see what he has to say about Human Revolution, especially after revisiting the famous original title, but on the other hand, I dread the all-but-inevitable cutting to ribbons of a game I really, really enjoyed.
 

ewhac

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fuzzy logic said:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=0854a290a60f2a59dea9f056e769faa3&t=1235278
McShizzle said:
Shifter [http://www.moddb.com/mods/shifter1] - fixes some remaining bugs, spruces up gameplay

New Vision [http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-new-vision] - High-res textures

HDTP [http://www.moddb.com/mods/project-hdtp] - Higher poly models (not finished, only a few models right now, but still nice)

Deus Ex Revision [http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-revision] - A remake of some levels that were bland (optional, but I like it quite a bit so far)

Kentie's Launcer [http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/index.htm] - UI and rendering updates (very nice)

Deus-Ex Enhanced [http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-enhanced] - Fixes some more UI stuff

Go on to ModDB [http://www.moddb.com/] to look them up.

Takes a little to get them to work together, but it's awesome when they do.
Thank you both very kindly for the pointers. I'll be chasing those down tonight.
 
Nov 12, 2010
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Signa said:
Having played the Thief series previously probably didn't help with the stealth much either. It just has different expectations for the player.
Didn't play Thief before "Deus Ex" (the only one I played was "The Deadly Shadows"), but I used the same tactics I used in Thief: baton the hell out of them unnoticed. ^_^ That's what I call "guerrilla" style of gameplay, not really stealth, since you leave corpses behind, but rather stealthy assault (MGS3 had the same style of gameplay for me).
 

NoNameMcgee

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I don't get it. I really really don't get it. I don't understand the love for this game, and I never have. Its unituitive, its dull, its clunky and unpolished. The graphics are awful as well but that has absolutely nothing to do with my hate for this game.

I clicked on the review hoping Yahtzee would be the first critic to tear it a new one (since he normally seems to hate unintuitive gameplay and we tend to have similar tastes in games) but it sounds like even he found it quite good. I'm just at a loss now to be honest, I feel like I've played an entirely different game to everyone else, and I'm really starting to lose interest in what other gamers think about games since the majority seem to have such different opinions to me and discussing it all is so futile.

I've been playing Human Revolution and it absolutely destroys Deus Ex in every. single. way. The irony is, it's not even an excellent game. Its very good, and probably in my top 5 games of this year, but thats it. But it does everything Deus Ex did in a more entertaining, fluent, intuitive way. It is totally beyond me, how anyone can say a dated dinosaur of a game like Deus Ex can in any way hold a candle to Human Revolution, or for that matter, any decent game released in the last 5 years.
 

Dhatz

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sad truth about nostalgia: people like to delete impleasant parts of their memories. deus ex might have done many things well, yet it's no alibi that would make me play it just because everyone older than me says they did. Same with half life, Black Mesa is the only chance I'll ever try the franchise(continuity reasons).
 

Zing

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That about sums up my feelings when I tried to play Deus Ex for the first time recently. It really hasn't aged well.
 

Lim3

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IMO the Witcher 2 is better the Deus Ex Human Revolution.

DEHR is a good game, just the Witcher 2 is an excellent game!
 

NerfedFalcon

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Nothing about the awkward aiming that puts all awkward aiming before and since to absolute shame, where you have to stand still like an idiot pointing your gun at anything for 20 seconds before you can hit the broadside of a barn at ten paces, even if you're at Master level for that gun?

...Huh.
 

Fritos

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I think what makes Deus Ex such a great game is quite simply because it never felt like it was trying to be something it wasn't. Despite all it's flaws, it became something unique and I think the developers were in tune with that. Even though the voice acting was atrocious, animations ridiculous, and a lot of the 'solutions' to levels being downright clunky, I don't think any other game has enthralled and immersed me quite as much, because something about the way it was designed was just intuitively thought out. It just oozes brilliance on a level that seems genuinely human, and not systematically manufactured.

I realize most gamers aren't connoisseurs and the current market for games has made a clear distinction behind what is considered "good design" and "bad design", and Deus Ex definitely has more bullet-points from the latter, but I'm hard pressed to name a game that feels like it has more of a soul.
 

LookingGlass

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If not for the comments on this video, I never would have known about Yahtzee's Deus Ex song. So good job commenters, that was brilliant.

Now I'm wondering what else I've missed by stopping ZP videos at the credits section.