The "I am actually playing DXHR" thread.

[mikaelis]

*Horribly optimized. Excruciating loading times, framerate chugs all over the place.

What PC are you playing on? (grafix, CPU, resolution). I have really shitty PC so I am on the fence here. I was able to play and finish Witcher 2, though, so there is a hope...

*Hyperconsolized save system

What dou you mean by hyperconsolized? Does that mean that you cannot save whenever you want?

 

[Gosling]

There's a little C&C - less than in DX but more than most games give you.

DX did have C&C?

Rescuing Paul was the only one that actually changed something in the game as IIRC not rescuing him would give you an additional objective of retrieving something from his body.

There's another one with Jaime Reyes: if you let him stay with UNATCO to spy for you he'll eventually turn up later in the game and give you a killswitch word for Gunther.

Otherwise, other C&C options were mostly cosmetic.

 

[Jasede]

*Horribly optimized. Excruciating loading times, framerate chugs all over the place.

What PC are you playing on? (grafix, CPU, resolution). I have really shitty PC so I am on the fence here. I was able to play and finish Witcher 2, though, so there is a hope...

I have a fair PC (580, i5, 1920x1080) and it runs fairly slow, with graphical glitches & flickering. Someone said this may be a problem specifically with NVidia cards.

I also have amazing RAM. HR don't care; HR gonna load slowly no matter what.

Shitty PC? Get the console version or pass until you upgrade your PC and/or the game has been optimized better.

 

[Trash]

Or try the leaked preview version to see how it runs and whether or not you actually like it.

 

[Jaedar]

This is the C&C I could think of for Deus ex:
Which weapon you pick at start
The subplot about the 'ton hotel manager and his daughter
What you tell the UNATCO doctor to do(Gunther killphrase vs aug upgrade)

Think that's about it for non fluff C&C. Yeah Paul can live or die, but it changes almost nothing as he has like 6 dialogue lines in total after the branching. It had some really cool fluff C&C though(like killing the unatco soldier in the first map)

 

[Baddygoal]

Can anyone confirm the existence of quicksave?

The leak was fine. Playing it will all assists turned off and difficulty set to Deus Ex is the way to go.

 

[I.C. Wiener]

What PC are you playing on? (grafix, CPU, resolution). I have really shitty PC so I am on the fence here. I was able to play and finish Witcher 2, though, so there is a hope...

ATI RHD 5770 @ 1.5gb vram, 4gb ram, quad core 2.4ghz cpu, everything at max settings (without manual ini tweaking).

What dou you mean by hyperconsolized? Does that mean that you cannot save whenever you want?

You can, but there are only 20 slots. Hyperconsolized might be hyperbole but it still bothered me and I think it will others.

Can anyone confirm the existence of quicksave?

The leak was fine. Playing it will all assists turned off and difficulty set to Deus Ex is the way to go.

There is, F5.

 

[mikaelis]

Or try the leaked preview version to see how it runs and whether or not you actually like it.

currently acquiring it

ATI RHD 5770 @ 1.5gb vram, 4gb ram, quad core 2.4ghz cpu, everything at max settings (without manual ini tweaking).

What sort of resolution? 1900x1200 or more like 1280x800 (and alike). If latter, I might still be able to run it on min settings.

EDIT::
Jasede: I can gladly accept free donation of XBrick or PS3 if you also provide converter box that will allow to connect it to the laptop screen (no TV atm).

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Do the extra DX11 effects make a difference? How is the perfomance with DX11 renderer compared to DX9?

 

[I.C. Wiener]

1680x1050. Also running windows XP so no DX11 if that makes a difference.

 

[sea]

Load times for me aren't too long, about 10-15 seconds, but they add up to become just a little annoying, especially with trial and error gameplay like stealth. Biggest issue for me is a persistent stutter that happens when you're moving around in an area, due to the game streaming in new data. I always get 70-100 fps, but the stutter really kills that fluidity. Hopefully patches or new drivers will fix that.

Do the extra DX11 effects make a difference? How is the perfomance with DX11 renderer compared to DX9?

Biggest one is tessellation, it does a great job of smoothing out character models - it's been a long time since I've seen a game that literally has no blocky edges around people's heads etc. The performance hit is also very minimal for this feature, 1-2 fps at most.

The other features include enhanced SSAO and depth of field, and possibly some slightly improved shaders. SSAO on high settings causes a major performance drop, so I just use the normal setting, and depth of field is only visible in cutscenes. All told it's a minor upgrade, but if you can use DX11 and tessellation, there's no reason not to.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

SSAO is ambient occlusion, right? I remeber having that feature in the Riddick game, and it completely destroyed the framerate despite not seeing a difference. Well, now I have a better video card but still, is there a noticeable difference?

 

[Ulminati]

I'm playing non-lethal stealth right now, haven't reached the first boss yet but I get the feeling he's coming up soon because I'm in some huge Metal Gear-esque mercenary base. My initial impressions:

+:
*Atmosphere is great, as is hub exploration
*Popamole stealth works surprisingly well. It's actually fun.

-:
*Horribly optimized. Excruciating loading times, framerate chugs all over the place.
*Cover combat is still lousy, though not completely unchallenging. Can be avoided.
*Graffix. There are no hair physics on ponytails and dreadlocks, textures look as pixelated as a japanese woman's vagina from several feet away, lip synching and conversational gestures are fugly.
*Everything third person sucks. The sticky cover can be turned off, thankfully. Stealth kill/takedown animations are too long.
*Hacking minigame is tiresome from the second time you do it, like every stupid hacking minigame
*Hyperconsolized save system
*Speech system seems to be completely randomized

Sounds exactly like what I feared, minus the stealth being fun.

Is he right, Ulm?

Pretty much straight on the ball. I haven't had framerate chugs, but I'm playing on "GIEF ME DESU EX!" difficulty. Loading times are *excruciating* if you find yourself dying over and over at a given spot. Always makes me wonder why the game has to reload the map you're already on when it loads a game.

I'm not sure what he means about the speech system being entirely random. I thought it was pretty well made. I also didn't overly mind the hacking minigame, but I can see why some people might. The game does make my inner graphixwhore cry though. Not because the textures (which are low-res), the lip sync (which is bad) or the fact that things like ponytails aren't animated. It's the god damn piss filter. Whoever thought that everything must be a shade of piss yellow ought to be shot.

There is this part in the chinese hub that almost made me cry. The entire city is two-tiered, with most of the action happening in the lower city which has an oppressive, boxed-in feel with the huge roof overhead. When you finally get on an elevator into the upper city and are treated to a vista of parklands and pleasant housing - COLOURED ENTIRELY IN SHADES OF PISS - I couldn't help but feel someone had just taken a shit on a classic painting just to be avant-garde.

It's a good game. Maybe even a great game. But it has a ton of small irks that keep me from calling it a classic game. And nearly all of those irks can be traced directly back to the fact that this is a console game that has been ported. If it had been a PC game from the start - and whoever thought to colour everything piss-yellow had been shot - it would've been an instant classic.

 

[sea]

SSAO is ambient occlusion, right? I remeber having that feature in the Riddick game, and it completely destroyed the framerate despite not seeing a difference. Well, now I have a better video card but still, is there a noticeable difference?

Here are some comparison screenshots:

SSAO off: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/56091 ... B6DB48DFC/
SSAO normal: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/56091 ... B3E4AC01D/
SSAO high: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/56091 ... A3A46C30F/

SSAO off: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/56091 ... B08B4686F/
SSAO normal: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/56091 ... 195E5F3D3/
SSAO high: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/56091 ... 3F9DC03E5/

Setting SSAO to high reduces some artifacts and some of the dithering/smudginess, especially in motion, but overall the leap isn't too big between them when you're actually playing. You can see, however, especially in the first set, the difference between normal and off is pretty drastic... not always, but in indoor scenes especially, and when examining the bottoms of objects etc., it's definitely apparent.

I do think that the stylised visuals are complemented well by the SSAO effect, better than some other games, and going from off to normal, the performance impact is small enough to not be a big deal on most computers. However, switching SSAO to high decreases my framerate by as many as 30 or 40 fps, which means it generally isn't worth using unless you have a pretty modern system.

It's also worth noting that SSAO introduces a small degree of input lag due to the increased rendering time. On normal, it's very small, but on high, it can make mouse movement feel fairly sluggish. If you desire responsiveness above all else, disable SSAO. I'm alright with the normal setting, but there's been a lot of complaints about mouse smoothing and lag in Human Revolution, and I actually think that the SSAO settings are to blame, as the developer says there is no acceleration and they use raw mouse input.

 

[Grunker]

All those things you talk about will boil down to minor annoyances for me. But shitty, boring, AP/ME/GoW-like cover-shooting will reduce it to, at most, a fun aside (a la ME) or a boring could-have-been (a la AP).

 

[sea]

The cover shooting is completely optional, and especially on the hard setting, the game's combat is very challenging - you will die if you try to run and gun, or even play it like a regular cover shooter. Health regeneration is slow enough that healing items can actually still be very valuable, for instance, and one mistake will often mean your death. It's also more skill-driven, with weapons that have pretty distinct traits, strengths, weaknesses, and skill and accuracy are actually pretty necessary to win. Weapon mods make a massive impact on play and nearly replace XP for combat-oriented characters as far as progression goes. Don't dismiss it so quickly, it's nowhere near as popamole as Mass Effect/Gears/etc.

 

[Monocause]

-:
*Horribly optimized. Excruciating loading times, framerate chugs all over the place.

Don't know what your problem is but I was able to play the leak flawlessly. Framerate drops occured only shortly after entering a new area but that is to be expected.

If you've a quadcore perhaps try fiddling with affinities and stuffies. I played the leak on a dual core with 2 GB RAM and a HD 3850 with all the leak's graphics maxed out and had no reason to complain.

*Graffix. There are no hair physics on ponytails and dreadlocks, textures look as pixelated as a japanese woman's vagina from several feet away, lip synching and conversational gestures are fugly.

No mention of the art direction? The graphics are simple by modern standards but in no way ugly.

*Hacking minigame is tiresome from the second time you do it, like every stupid hacking minigame

Well it didn't tire me out. Later in the leak there were more complex servers to hack. Trying to do it ASAP on the police station added to the suspense. But I guess this is taste specific

*Hyperconsolized save system

Wut. You have a quicksave and a bunch of slots. What do you need more? Geez man, get a grip.

*Speech system seems to be completely randomized

Wut.

To sum it all up - your list consisted mostly of nitpicking. Stop developing your codexitis and don't bring up ridiculous "criticism" like the save system next time. Having 20 save slots + a quicksave is in absolutely no way something to criticise a game for. If you consistently use more than 20 in your games perhaps you should reexamine your saving habits.

 

[Grunker]

The cover shooting is completely optional, and especially on the hard setting, the game's combat is very challenging - you will die if you try to run and gun, or even play it like a regular cover shooter. Health regeneration is slow enough that healing items can actually still be very valuable, for instance, and one mistake will often mean your death.

All of this is the case in ME2 and AP.

Challenging =/= fun. It's easy enough to make bullets do a 1000 damage, but it has to be within the context of an interestering well-exectuted frame. No cover-shooter I have tried has delivered this, and I've yet to see and argument that says DX:HR is any different.

I really hope someone will deliver it though

It's also more skill-driven, with weapons that have pretty distinct traits, strengths, weaknesses, and skill and accuracy are actually pretty necessary to win. Weapon mods make a massive impact on play and nearly replace XP for combat-oriented characters as far as progression goes. Don't dismiss it so quickly, it's nowhere near as popamole as Mass Effect/Gears/etc.

I'll take your word for it, but AP had a pretty good upgrading-system also - it was LEAGUES ahead of ME and GoW in terms of stats. Yet the combat wasn't much more fun - it was still a case of POP-IN-POP-OUT shooting.

 

[I.C. Wiener]

No mention of the art direction? The graphics are simple by modern standards but in no way ugly.

I don't mind the art style. It is very orange, but I've developed an immunity to it from New Vegas. Once you turn off the highlights I think it evokes a very effective atmosphere... which I said.

To sum it all up - your list consisted mostly of nitpicking. Stop developing your codexitis and don't bring up ridiculous "criticism" like the save system next time. Having 20 save slots + a quicksave is in absolutely no way something to criticise a game for. If you consistently use more than 20 in your games perhaps you should reexamine your saving habits.

Regarding saves, there are two people playing this game at the moment, and between both of us we like to keep a good backlog of saves to rewind if we fuck up by picking bad augmentations or missed something. And If you didn't notice, I said I liked the game, and acknowledged that some of it was nitpicking (bad combat and bad optimization are not nitpicks). It is possible to have negative criticisms for a something you hold a positive opinion of. I just can't fully recommend it to the codex.

As for the speech thing, go talk to the guy at the police station who you have to persuade to let you into the morgue. His responses to your dialog choices are determined randomly. You dialog choices are always the same. It would have been interesting if your changed as well, but as it is it's a combination of typical RPG's save and reload random speech check combined with ME's dialog wheel. I like that you can actually see what you're going to say before saying it, though.

 

[sea]

The fact that you can play the game entirely as a first-person shooter and not at all suffer for it instantly elevates gameplay beyond a standard cover shooter. Sure, it's not Crysis or FEAR or whatever your standard for semi-realistic shooting is, but it's still leagues better combat-wise than the original Deus Ex and definitely pretty competent overall. You can cry popamole all you like, but the fact is I have seen very few semi-realistic shooters that don't have that aspect to them... and in Deus Ex, you've at least got augmentations and a lot of weapon variety to make things more interesting.

That said, I don't love the combat, but it's still functional and effective, and I really like some of the weapons and the upgrades they get. Fully pimped-out Combat Rifle is pretty damn awesome. But Deus Ex is not a gun porn game and never has been, and I don't think it's worth being too critical of this aspect when combat is, for the most part, a fairly minimal part of the game next to all the other facets.

 

[zeitgeist]

At about 3/4 of the game.

Interesting:
- plays somewhat similar to the recent MGS games regarding stealth and all that
- hacking while the world goes on around you fits this type of game
- carrying turrets is an amusing concept

Bad:
- aug system is very simplistic, and most of the augs aren't really needed, especially the hacking ones (which there are so many of it's not even funny)
- ditto for the weapon upgrade system
- boss fights are just plain bad even if one thinks they have a rightful place in the game
- hacking minigame is incredibly easy, after the first couple of times you might as well be watching the hacking progress bar instead
- no tech-related skills, multitools, etc (and the general feature list from DX is heavily reduced)
- almost all (cosmetic) C&C is lifted straight from DX and not improved upon at all, same goes for bits of character design, level design, mission design etc.
- no melee weapons
- levels are very obviously not designed with the player having the orange highlights turned off in mind
- very few interactive objects

Horrible:
- the majority of the game is incredibly linear in its tasks and objectives, which was very disappointing to see after they hyped the "hubs" and C&C so much
- the story is so non-engaging and irrelevant that I just tuned it out, not caring about it at all, which is a massive decline when compared to DX

I think that's about it as far as DX-related stuff goes, pretty much everything else that can be said about the game applies to any similar console FPS/TPS (AP, ME and so on).

 

[sea]

- the majority of the game is incredibly linear in its tasks and objectives, which was very disappointing to see after they hyped the "hubs" and C&C so much

Really? I managed to skip entire objectives and jumped ahead in the story due to my own exploration and stumbling upon information before the game led me to it directly. Choice & consequence isn't incredible, but there is a good deal of it that begins to manifest later in the game and it influences the story and your options in missions in some positive ways (sparing Zeke Sanders means he gives you some access codes later on, Van Bruggen will give you money if you help him out, the decision to choose to get your aug chip replaced later in the game has a very significant effect on one portion of the game, etc.). It's about on par with the original Deus Ex, and I'd say that's a good thing. If you didn't notice any of these things, then obviously you haven't been paying much attention to the game at all.

- the story is so non-engaging and irrelevant that I just tuned it out, not caring about it at all, which is a massive decline when compared to DX

Honestly, I'm not sure why you feel this way. What's not gripping about the story? The fact that you're not 13 anymore and you've become jaded and cynical? The stuff surrounding the Illuminati, aliens, AIs etc. has been cut down, sure, but the conspiracy stuff is just as thick as ever and a lot of the characters are pretty interesting. The game really does keep you guessing until the end regarding who the villains and allies really are. On an objective level, Human Revolution's storyline is just as competent as the original Deus Ex's. Maybe you don't like it as much, and you prefer Jock to Malik, Jacobson to Pritchard, fine, but I'm not sure how you could call it "horrible" and "irrelevant".

No offense, but I get the sense your attitude towards the game kind of stems from a preassumption that it's going to suck before you even start playing it. I've seen that attitude around quite a bit and it's pretty easy to look at any game and say "it's shit" so long as you just go in thinking it is. No, it's not as good as the original Deus Ex. It's also ten years later, made by a different developer, in a different market climate, and for the most part it still manages to hit most of the right "Deus Ex notes" without those being drowned out by other problems.

Oh, and have augments really been cut down so much? Skills are basically out, but some have been rolled into augs, at least, and the core number of augmentations seems to be pretty close to the original Deus Ex, when you factor in that some features have been removed or changed. They also have a much greater impact on gameplay than in the first one, in my opinion.

 

[Monocause]

As for the speech thing, go talk to the guy at the police station who you have to persuade to let you into the morgue. His responses to your dialog choices are determined randomly. You dialog choices are always the same. It would have been interesting if your changed as well, but as it is it's a combination of typical RPG's save and reload random speech check combined with ME's dialog wheel. I like that you can actually see what you're going to say before saying it, though.

I did. You have a couple of responses and have to pick the one that you think suits the NPCs mood/will push your agenda forward. If he starts being aggressively defensive lay back a bit. If he's crying over himself either sympathise with him or hit him even harder.

This isn't something to complain about. It's one of the features that's actually praiseworthy and innovative and forces you to focus on the conversation and figure out what kind of personality you're dealing with instead of figuring out the 'correct order' and pick it every single gameplay. If you find it too difficult you can always get the SOCIE aug.

Regarding saves, there are two people playing this game at the moment, and between both of us we like to keep a good backlog of saves to rewind if we fuck up by picking bad augmentations or missed something.

Still - c'mon, that's nothing to bitch about. Minor inconvenience at best resulting from your personal preferences which ain't common - most people will probably use at most half of the save slots, overwriting the previous ones as they go.

And If you didn't notice, I said I liked the game, and acknowledged that some of it was nitpicking (bad combat and bad optimization are not nitpicks). It is possible to have negative criticisms for a something you hold a positive opinion of. I just can't fully recommend it to the codex.

Yeah, sorry. It's just that I got so used to the negativity on the Codex that I sometimes look into the abyss and all that stuff, starting to see hypernegativity when it just ain't there. Your tone could be a bit more positive if you did like the game though - as it is now your post gave away more of a 'meh' feeling.

 

[Ulminati]

I've found quite a lot of C&C actually. Probably more than Desu Ex had. Things that spring to mind

Spoiler

If you spare Zeke Sanders, he'll show up a little later and give you passwords for a computer in an upcoming mission. Much later he'll ambush you with an emp grenade and try to kill you

Spoiler

If you give the dutchman a gun, he'll show up later and give you some cash. If not, he'll get shot

Spoiler

Lots of conversations go differently depending on whether you kill someone or simply stun them

Spoiler

When you complete the bomb sidequest after returning to detroit, you can omit defusing the bomb to get a bunch of policemen killed

Spoiler

Your pilot may or may not be killed depending on whether you opt to stick around.

Spoiler

You begin suffering glitches in your augs that become more and more frequent the longer the game goes on. You can install an upgraded chip to avoid them, but if you do, your augs will be shut down entirely in an upcoming boss fight.

Spoiler

If you fasttalk your way into the police station in detroit, the guy at the desk gets fired and shows up to yell at you later

Spoiler

Depending on whether you win an argument with the humanity first leader on TV or not, an upcoming dialogue with his second-in-command changes drastically

There are a bunch of other small touches I probably missed out on. But safe to say if you count everything there are probably more (minor) changes because of the players choices than in the original Desu Ex

 

[I.C. Wiener]

I did. You have a couple of responses and have to pick the one that you think suits the NPCs mood/will push your agenda forward. If he starts being aggressively defensive lay back a bit. If he's crying over himself either sympathise with him or hit him even harder.

This isn't something to complain about. It's one of the features that's actually praiseworthy and innovative and forces you to focus on the conversation and figure out what kind of personality you're dealing with instead of figuring out the 'correct order' and pick it every single gameplay. If you find it too difficult you can always get the SOCIE aug.

In that particular conversation I felt as though there was little cohesiveness between the dialog choices I used and his reactions. Some seemed a bit schizophrenic (the end of conversation has him go from 'You're a dick Jensen' to "Wow, you're such a nice guy, I have to cry now" like a light switch) and some seemed a bit one size fits all. This was one of only two significant conversations I've had in the game (the other was the hostage situation, which I also think could have been handled better, but that was because of bad writing) so it might turn out great. Those were my initial impressions after all.

Yeah, sorry. It's just that I got so used to the negativity on the Codex that I sometimes look into the abyss and all that stuff, starting to see hypernegativity when it just ain't there. Your tone could be a bit more positive if you did like the game though - as it is now your post gave away more of a 'meh' feeling.

I'm trying to be neutral. I like it in a personal way. It's consolized in a way that would make the stereotypical codexer vomit blood.