Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the Codex verdict?

[Kitako]

• Boss fights were an abomination.
• Like most later years games, by the end of the game you get all the skills, so it doesn't really matter since you don't have to sacrifice anything.

Beside these things, I still think it was a great game.

 

[Ulminati]

I enjoyed it for what it was, even if it was not a worthy sequel to DX. I have no desire to replay it to see if doing anything different could change any outcomes however.

 

[Menckenstein]

6/10 - it erased some of the pain of IW but some design decisions were so that I found myself getting angry with the game and trying to force myself to like it more than I did. I blame the higher ups more than I blame the development team because tehre are so many interviews where they talk about having to dumb stuff down.

 

[Kaol]

4/10

I'd say it was pretty much equal to IW. Worth a playthrough but i wouldn't want to play it through again.

 

[potatojohn]

6/10. Enjoyable enough popamole gameplay with an attractive futuristic animeish aesthetic. Fun, but fails to make any significant contribution to gaming like the original did.

 

[DraQ]

7.5, voted 8.

It's not that much worse than the original.

Singular worst offender is battling fucking bosses:
1. They are completely unnecessary as characters.
2. Battles themselves are atrocious, pigeon-holed, happen in confined "arenas", are crappily arcade-y, disallow majority of otherwise valid playstyles and outright rape sneaks and hackers.

Worst offenders apart from that are meta-knowledge introduced by TPP cover system, badly thought out XP rewards (you are punished XP-wise for not hacking even the terminals you know passwords to and for not taking down every enemy), badly realized cinematic takedowns/typhoon (they effectively stop time, making them a bit of a game-breaker due to cutscene induced enemy incompetence, non-lethal takedowns are also completely silent, even if they involve Jensen brutally beating the crap out of some poor fuck(s)), story falling apart towards the end (might be fixed by "Missing Link" DLC, but I haven't played it yet and we're discussing vanilla here anyway), failure to properly portray and address issues inherent in its transhumanist themes while clearly trying to and some cutscenes where Jensen, *cough*, "stands there like a lemon".

AI is quite bad, but seems better than original, actually. Some weapon upgrades would benefit from being switched around.

Shooting mechanics is nice and on "Give Me Deus Ex" difficulty game is actually quite a bit harder than original on "Realistic".

Other than that it's pretty much Deus Ex, with a bit less nonlinear design (but still quite nonlinear), hacking minigame (that is actually quite decent due to being sensibly designed - it's essentially Uplink lite, but could be made better by not making every terminal a separate "map") replacing both hacking and lockpicking/electronics, mostly optional, surprisingly tolerable cover system, some really nice diplomacy mechanics and better art design.

It's a pretty faithful attempt of making a worthy successor/prequel to the original and seems to be crafted with quite a bit love.

 

[Crooked Bee]

6/10. Enjoyable enough popamole gameplay with an attractive futuristic animeish aesthetic. Fun, but fails to make any significant contribution to gaming like the original did.

This.

The only thing I really enjoyed about it was the conversation mini-game. (Yeah, shoot me.) It was... I dunno, refreshing?

The rest was just okay. Wouldn't replay.

 

[Carrion]

The cover system is completely optional. Played through the game twice on the hardest difficulty level without using it once. It also makes you use the Smart Vision aug instead of TPP.

 

[Tigranes]

7/10. Enjoyed it quite a bit when playing, but not much replayability and not a lot of memorable stuff that stays with you, since the writing was fairly humdrum.

 

[Gord]

story falling apart towards the end (might be fixed by "Missing Link" DLC, but I haven't played it yet and we're discussing vanilla here anyway)

Not really, unfortunately. It's rather irrelevant to the plot and presents a somewhat self-contained side-story.
On the plus side, it has pretty neat level design and no stupid boss fight (rather the "boss" behaves more like a standard human enemy).

 

[Infinitron]

story falling apart towards the end (might be fixed by "Missing Link" DLC, but I haven't played it yet and we're discussing vanilla here anyway)

Not really, unfortunately. It's rather irrelevant to the plot and presents a somewhat self-contained side-story.
On the plus side, it has pretty neat level design and no stupid boss fight (you can actually just knock the "boss" out, should you choose so.

Not entirely true. The DLC does explain where the hell that Hyron supercomputer came from and what are the logistics of "producing" it.

 

[Gord]

Oh yeah, had forgotten about that.

 

[Wyrmlord]

One annoying thing about Human Revolution is that if I wanted to start a new playthrough of it, my patience will be tested. Heavily.

• I will have to again rewatch a five-minute long first-person cinematic.

• I will have to again go through the tutorial compulsorily.

• I will have to again go through the walk around the office routine.

• I will have to again listen to the briefing before the first mission.

THEREFORE, it will be half an hour before the proper game will even begin. Half an hour. At least.

And then, I am daunted by the thought of having to go through the boss fights all over again. They will all be easier the second time, but they just make me nauseous thinking about them.

Worse, there will be the inability to skip dialogue and having to hear every single line all over again.

 

[Carrion]

Human Revolution did the tutorial part better than most games nowadays, though. It plays pretty much like the rest of the game except that you get to see some videos you never actually have to watch unless you want to. They could've made the tutorial optional like the GREAT tutorial of DX but I guess a forced action part in the beginning of the game is pretty much the standard nowadays, no matter how lame it is.

When it comes to the cutscenes and other stuff, I don't see how they would take any more time than running around Detroit or Hengsha later in the game. People are so damn impatient. Boss fights can also be won in two seconds by spamming Typhoon.

 

[Vicissitudes]

2/10 - majestic immersive cinematic dlc experience. With some extra GOLD BLOOM OF THE NEO-WORLD":

 

[Deleted member 7219]

like the GREAT tutorial of DX

Hahaha.

 

[DraQ]

One annoying thing about Human Revolution is that if I wanted to start a new playthrough of it, my patience will be tested. Heavily.

• I will have to again rewatch a five-minute long first-person cinematic.

• I will have to again go through the tutorial compulsorily.

• I will have to again go through the walk around the office routine.

• I will have to again listen to the briefing before the first mission.

THEREFORE, it will be half an hour before the proper game will even begin. Half an hour. At least.

Just keep a save if it's that much of a problem.

2/10 - majestic immersive cinematic dlc experience. With some extra GOLD BLOOM OF THE NEO-WORLD":

I think you need to replace your graphics card.
It seems to have melted.

 

[Vicissitudes]

MHORE BLOOM GOLDEN SHOWER FOR YOUR MODERN PLEASURE:

now it's 1 minute fun in PSD, but who knows this could be your art direction in DX:HR34

 

[Kaol]

I'm sad the codex seems to have such bad taste.

 

[sser]

4/10. Just couldn't get into it, really. It also kept feeling like I was playing a console game on PC. Total playtime was about 4-hours.

 

[Hepler's Vagina]

Great - fun level design, good lore/story, multiple paths, fantastic art and music (I was OK without the "piss filter" mod).

Re XP - you don't need to kill/takedown. The highest XP is for Ghost and Smooth Operator (750XP). This is better than the sum of XP for shooting all enemies, even if all are headshots (20XP per guard, usually 5-6 per map).
Re bosses - typhoon works as "killallhostiles" on all bosses except the last one. Or a revolver maxed out (explosive rounds, fully upgraded for damage) which makes the final boss battle last 15 seconds.

 

[Carrion]

Re XP - you don't need to kill/takedown. The highest XP is for Ghost and Smooth Operator (750XP). This is better than the sum of XP for shooting all enemies, even if all are headshots (20XP per guard, usually 5-6 per map).

Takedowns still make it possible to get the Smooth Operator bonus. I'm also pretty sure non-lethal takedowns give you much more XP than ghosting.

And 5-6 guards per map? More like 5-6 per room.

 

[Infinitron]

You can also get Ghost with takedowns as long as you aren't seen by the person you're taking down (or anybody else) until the actual takedown cutscene

Yes, it's kind of broken.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Takedowns don't prevent ghosting. You have to be seen for Ghost XP to fail. Actually, I don't really feel like trading takedowns for DX1 melee would improve things that much. Melee mechanics sucked in DX1 as well and had wonky collision detection. DX:HR just bypasses the whole thing by making takedowns your prime aug power, essentially, in a twisted manner kind of replacing all the gear you carried in DX1 in terms of resource management. The key improvement in stealth that sets DX:HR firmly above DX1 is the fact that the AI is wayyyyy better. The other important parts are that DX:HR rewards you for good stealth (I have never ever felt the need to ghost in DX1, it's annoying and offers nothing to the whole), and expands steath to involve something other than alternate routes 90% of the time.

One thing I welcomed as well was that tranquilizer didn't cause GREAT PAIN to its targets and could be used for setting up traps from afar.

Anyway, I think I also have to point out that due to most aug choices in DX1 being rather obvious (probably the only one that someone might mistakenly not take is muscle boosters), you always had everything essential for doing everything, same with spending XP. The only things you might miss were almost always just curios or redundant, like the shit you skip until the end in DX:HR. Similarly, it didn't take that much effort to open every lock in the game and still never fall below 5 relevant items after you reach the amount, except maybe with Multi-tools on some occasions.

In fact, the most peculiar difference between the two is that in DX:HR hacking is godtier. In DX1 you don't really need to level it at all if you can speedread/remember where you left off.




It's still not total shit though, like fucking Swimming.

I really preferred the "baton in the ass" approach

Nigga you gay (you wanted to be quoted out of context)


PS: Actually, here's my take on why DX1 had better level design in general: It's because most of the time the level was probably first designed for a "normal FPS" with Augs then gleefully being let to bend the map over the table and sodomize its standard approach. It's the whole "you should do this" "nuh uh nigga, I'ma break the whole shit" feeling you get since the game doesn't ever try to limit you. In DX:HR, most of the time the levels are designed specifically with Augs in mind, which makes them merely open approach instead of "I have violated this level and made it my bitch."

 

[Infinitron]

PS: Actually, here's my take on why DX1 had better level design in general: It's because most of the time the level was probably first designed for a "normal FPS" with Augs then gleefully being let to bend the map over the table and sodomize its standard approach. It's the whole "you should do this" "nuh uh nigga, I'ma break the whole shit" feeling you get since the game doesn't ever try to limit you. In DX:HR, most of the time the levels are designed specifically with Augs in mind, which makes them merely open approach instead of "I have violated this level and made it my bitch."

This is a great point. Jumping off five story buildings full of hostile soldiers in Hell's Kitchen