Deus Ex Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

[Grotesque]

Playing this game I kept thinking, "too bad for all these cool art assets because of the shitty knee deep gameplay and mechanics"

 

[Israfael]

Bought it for 10 kwanza potatoes on the sale, played a bit, early impressions:

1) attention to detail is, as always for this studio, impeccable, a lot of 'uneccessary' content that is usually absent from the modern games, a neat thing to have
2) I don't know who and how programmed this, but it's very unoptimized (eats 12 GB+ ram easily, has intermittent CTDs, GPU heating up like a volcano during cutscenes)\
3) very LONG cutscenes - into lasted probably 20 mins, then the illuminati meeting lasted around the same, caused some problems due to 2)
4) Improved variety and ways of getting into places / solving quests - a definite improvement over DXHR
5) Because of 1), no incentive to actually do main quest, which is a decline, probably.

I'd say it's worth 10 dorra, but not sure if full price is warranted.

 

[Gerrard]

Is this The Examined Life (of Gaming) you @Great Deceiver ?

What can be said/shown/revealed in a 37 minute video that I don't already know about Deus Ex?

Stopped watching when he said the assault rifle was bad.

 

[Tel Prydain]

Mainly DE: MD just made me want to play the original...
It plays alright as a shooter, but given we know most of what's happening from Human Revelation and the original, the conspiracy just feels uninspired and boring.
The game stops the moment the plot starts to pick up any steam, there's no interesting side characters, your actions have minimal impact, the game is too short over all and you don't visit enough locations.

I'd love a faithful remake of the original in this engine, but the whole thing is too constricted by being a prequel series and really needs to move on.

 

[Zombra]

To those who played this: is there anything like the not-Voigt-Kampff speech analyzer in Human Revolution? That was one of the most memorable things about that game.

 

[Sodafish]

To those who played this: is there anything like the not-Voigt-Kampff speech analyzer in Human Revolution? That was one of the most memorable things about that game.

Yeah but it's more popamolified this time round. Alpha/beta/omega indicators flash whilst they talk, then you tally up the flashes and press the appropriate awesome button in response. It's impossible to get it wrong.

 

[Israfael]

Finished the game on max difficulty, 31 hours on my clock. Did some of the obvious and non-obvious side missions (actually, i think their length is higher than the main plot line, so props to the frenchies, rare to see such thing in a modern game), finished without killing anyone (which is strange, because i definitely turned on the electrified floor in the meth labs to remove some kebab mooks, and turned turrets hostile while in the merc base in Switzerland (although i mostly used it as a distraction so i can shoot them with tranq darts). Last mission's resolution was a sort of surprise for me, expecting another A or B after the bank affair (which was kind of contrived, as Page et al. were not removing data till the next day, so i think there was plenty of time to go save the terrorist girl from the Akashic reader and rob the bank again).

Some recollections:
- Exploration and environment are much better than in DXHR (as far as i can remember, should probably replay it again), there's now not just stealth/Call of Duty paths, but several ways of getting in and doing various shit. It could have been expanded though, with adding some more reactivity
- 'good for what it is' reactivity, but it could have been much better (like you could invoke a civil war between Nikoladze and Botkovelli if you showed the casino guy the letters than his boss sent to Koller (about augs) / his mooks (about exterminating Botkovelli), or that you could rat out the psych 'doctor' to Miller). Maybe I just missed some of those things, but it felt like something was lacking.
- Well, and Jensen being his stupid self - after return to the UNATCO base and seeing the frenchie doctor it'd be 148% obvious that she's the traitor. Also, the nigga pilot (after seeing him chilling on the helipad, i'd surely knock him down after returning to Prague). Sarif basically taunting you that you are a clone with no real memory / fake SI augs.
- story was good, but interrupted at a very interesting moment. Obvious sequel/DLC fishing, but it actually might just anger people at Eidos for chainsawing the game in two.
- To be honest, they could have meed the maps bigger, consoles got like 8x memory upgrade and it's still small-ish. But then even more people would complain that they are lost
- some hilariously bad stuff about CRISPR/Cas9, it looks like it's been written by a person who knows what it is and who tried to get everything wrong on purpose
- to sum it up, good game for the $10 i payed for it.

 

[Leechmonger]

$20 on Steam lol

 

[udm]

$20 on Steam lol

Was about to post this. Fuck you for beating me to it.

Spoiler

Nah I'm cool bro

Spoiler

Just wanted to say lawl 67% off after 4 months

 

[Ivan]

is it seeing any more DLC?

 

[HoboForEternity]

why 67% when CPY released a free versiom?

 

[grimace]

Game Informer Best Action Game of 2016?

 

[hpstg]

If anyon is interested, there is a guide to make the game run acceptably in older systems, here.

There is also an album with some really nice screenshots.

Spoiler

 

[anus_pounder]

67% off on steam.

I preordered this shit on release, along with the season pass and I've got more than my money's worth out of the game. You'd be a fool to pass up the game at this price. I guess you could also get the high seas version, but there's something to be said about supporting quality developers.

 

[ghostdog]

Developers may have some quality, but sqeenix needs to get the message that shitty in-game microtransactions are cancer, and releasing half a game that will be completed with pre-planned DLCs is a fucking scam. Especially when said DLCs are being sold on release as a season pass, while the basic game was sold at full price and the DLCs almost doubled that price.

In short: Fuck them.

I may buy the final full package 75% off next year.

 

[Latelistener]

The only right choice is... GOTY 75% off. Works for almost every game.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Is the stupid post-intro-intro with the ugly chick still unskippable?
Are the cutscenes still uglier than the actual game (WHY) ?

Anyhow, I should have liked this game but can't be bothered to play past the first half or whatever. Got tired of breaking into every other flat for 1 box of handgun ammo and some booze.
Like witcher 3 it's a trap for those of us who got the completionist/secret hunting/exploration bug from older games imo.

Not really a bad game at all, just... Dunno. They even improved a bunch of stuff the players complained about from the first reboot game. Just missed the mark somewhat on a whole bunch of stuff anyway.

And why did they waste time on that stupid VR mode... Work on the campaign more. Make procedural side missions if you want. But why that VR crap...

 

[Ezeekiel]

Developers may have some quality, but sqeenix needs to get the message that shitty in-game microtransactions are cancer, and releasing half a game that will be completed with pre-planned DLCs is a fucking scam. Especially when said DLCs are being sold on release as a season pass, while the basic game was sold at full price and the DLCs almost doubled that price.

In short: Fuck them.

I may buy the final full package 75% off next year.

Wish I'd waited. Didn't think they'd mess up like that though. I mean, it's Deus Ex. HR may not have been super great as such, but I enjoyed it enough so I had that in mind when buying...
Always gotta keep your guard up nowadays.

 

[Grotesque]

Deus Ex: Mankind Fapping

Don't they must have the rights to use an iconic phrase from a prestigious SF book in such way?
I wonder what Dan Simmons has to say about this.

 

[Metro]

preordered

Only acceptable game to preorder is Warband 2. This will probably be $10 in another couple of months.

 

[Carrion]

I put a few hours into this. I'm barely out of the tutorial, so these are very early impressions.

I liked Human Revolution quite a bit when judged as stand-alone game, and it only would've required a few changes to greatly improve on that base. Sadly, most of its shortcomings seem to be present in MD as well: no leaning or full first-person mode, still the same takedown system, still that completely broken XP system, still cutscenes that take control away from you for no real reason. Not that it's surprising, but after establishing a fresh fan base with HR they really could've taken a couple of steps towards Deus Ex as they're still using the name after all. The whole prologue also seemed pretty convoluted, as if they had three or four different ideas on how to start the game and in the end decided to implement them all. At least the actual tutorial level was fairly decent and non-intrusive.

It's probably way too early to judge the level design, but it seems like they've learned some new tricks. The vents are still there, but the layouts already seem more complex and varying than in HR. Hopefully it remains that way.

The writing kind of sucks. I don't think HR was nearly this bad, but I might be wrong. The whole "Augs Lives Matter" thing is really dumb, of course, but it wouldn't be as grating if the conflict wasn't so hamfistedly portrayed. There's little subtlety to be found. They actually use the word "racism" in-game to describe the conflict, and once you get to Prague the game starts relentlessly bombarding you with this stuff in every way it can, in the least creative ways possible. There are neighborhood watches armed with assault rifles protecting people from "augmented crazies". There are aug ghettos. There's a plan to build a city in the middle of a desert "by augs, for augs". People can't put together two sentences without including "aug incident" there somewhere. It's not just this particular aspect of world-building either — Eliza Cassan interviews a guy who says he's running a non-violent organization, cuts him off mid-sentence, shows an unflattering picture of the man and then asks "is this the face of a pacifist?" before making way for an advertisement about how objective and neutral a news network Picus actually is. Did a 16-year-old write this? It's about as subtle as the radio shows in GTA or something, except without a hint of humour. How hard is it to write a news report that resembles a news report? All of the characters I've met so far have come off as utterly forgettable one-dimensional archetypes, but then again, HR wasn't all that different in this regard.

Before starting the game I disabled all of the on-screen clutter like the radar, the objective markers, the button prompts and the object highlighting along with everything that has something to do with the cover system which I'm not going to touch with a ten-foot pole. It's too bad that I had to enable the button prompts after about two minutes because I had no clue what I could actually do in the game. Without them there's just no way to tell which objects can be interacted with, as I don't want half the game world to be permanently lit up light a Christmas tree. Even with the prompts I find myself constantly running into every object in the game world just to see if I can do something with it. Did HR have this much clutter in it? It had some for sure, but I still played it without the object highlighting just fine. I'm guessing this "problem" will go away once I've clocked a few more hours into the game and learned to tell which objects are just fluff and which aren't, but it still kind of blows.

It's also rather annoying that all the background conversations are so quiet that it's hard to tell what anyone's saying, and there are not subtitles for that stuff. Then again, at this point I'm not sure if anyone has anything interesting to say.

From what I've understood, you spend most of the game in Prague, and I'm perfectly fine with that. The game doesn't have to be a globetrotting agent adventure, and a small-scale plot is something that I'd actually prefer instead of lame Deus Ex fan fiction written by people who don't really want to write a Deus Ex game. I'm just hoping that the first few hours aren't indicative of the quality of the rest of the game in terms of the writing...

 

[Tito Anic]

Bro has logical view on series. I agree that HR is not an Deus Ex game it is a tribute to Deus Ex.

p.s. And boy it looks ugly with that color filter aka "50 Shades of Yellow".

 

[Carrion]

I agree that HR is not an Deus Ex game it is a tribute to Deus Ex.

But it's not. I think this video was more accurate in this regard. HR drops some names here and there, shares similar gameplay elements and provides the occasional nod to Deus Ex in a number of individual scenes, but that's only there to win over the Deus Ex fans. I never got the feeling that HR was trying to be a tribute to anything. Above all it's a game that follows a very clear vision of its own that is ultimately very different from Deus Ex in many ways, with different influences, themes and goals. When David Sarif opens his mouth to talk about the Illuminati, it almost comes out as an afterthought, like they were forced to put that in because of the words "Deus Ex" in the title. From what I've seen so far, Mankind Divided takes things even further.

Even though Deus Ex is my favorite game, I'm fine with that. Deus Ex doesn't need a prequel, and Eidos Montreal were never really trying to do one. Doing something of your own is preferable to copying the works of others, even if HR and MD are usually at their best when they manage to successfully recreate some of that Deus Ex feel (i.e. well-designed levels with lots of player choice), and at their worst when they stray too far into the "modern action game" territory or try to heavy-handedly inject their own themes into the universe, beating you over the head with Icarus wings and racism allegories over and over again until you finally cave in like a battered housewife. What can you do, superior game design is superior.

 

[pippin]

I think the Accursed Farms guy said that Squeenix's DE should have been a new franchise and I believe he's right. The games look and feel more like Ghost in the Shell than Deus Ex, really. Invisible War goes fucking apeshit crazy with its storyline and lore, but most lements presented still fit on what was presented in the first game, although with a few touches, mostly in art design.

 

[Infinitron]

I never got the feeling that HR was trying to be a tribute to anything.

Don't know how you can say that when the game is made up to a large degree of characters, places, scenes that are obviously analogous to those in Deus Ex. That's more than an "occasional nod", it's a significant factor in the game's framework.

Unless you want to define it so "the themes are different == not a tribute".