What game are you wasting time on?

[Musaab]

Was playing Starbound, but now I shall wait for the bugs in the new release to get patched.

Between trolling posting on here, I'm playing Infra Arcana. Dying over and over and over and over.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Crooked Bee

I def. gonna play Oath and Origin. But AFAIK 1/2 remake still uses the original "bump into enemies" combat system. How is this shit, compared to Ys6 system?

I thought WTF is that shit at first, but then I actually ended up enjoying 1/2 a lot. The combat was extremely simplistic but also weirdly compelling and, well, fun; it's also a pretty charming game overall. Like I said, extremely simplistic though, and obviously nothing like Ys6/Oath/Origin. Just give it a try if you want and if it doesn't click for you, just forget about it and move on.

 

[Blonsky]

Bastard Bonds

The good:Alot of choices when creating your character, alot of different characters or creatures to make a part of your party/camp, development of camp, exploring the maps/stories, turn based combat.
the bad: once you take over a map it becomes secure, after awhile it becomes not secure again and the same level and type of monsters show up on it as before (makes recapturing it boring), turn based combat could use some more skills or tactics.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Lately i've been playing a lot of minesweeper

At a glance you fucked up in the bottom right because the cluster of 2s lets you solve that part, but the upper left looks like it was essentially up to luck. But you still wasted your shot on somewhere you didn't need it, and in a place where you had a 40% chance of hitting a bomb, instead of like that upper left 4 where it's only a 30% chance.

 

[Leechmonger]

Having beaten System Shock 1 for the first time I went back and replayed SS2. I gotta say, I was kinda disappointed. There's a lot of things I think the first one did better, and they quickly add up to make SS2 the inferior game.

Let's start with the game's RPG elements. I'd previously played through SS2 with a bog-standard Standard Weapons build, so this time I went Psi + Exotic weapons to see how differently things would play out. The good news is that the Adrenaline psi ability is monstrously powerful and provides a completely viable melee approach to the game. It's enjoyment is somewhat hampered the game's awkward melee system, which was a step down from the simple animations in the first one. Even so I had a lot of fun one-shotting enemies with the wrench/shard, especially with max agility and the agility boost active. That said, this pretty much trivializes the game on normal (and probably on higher difficulties as well). It's also pretty much the only viable approach that going psi gives you, aside from an exploit involving the invisibility and ring of fire abilties that lets you kill enemies with impunity (I abstained from doing this, or getting invisibility for that matter). There's only 4 attack abilities none of which are very effective nor are fun to use. Lots of abilities seem to have been thrown in just to round out the number of abilities at each rank because they have seemingly no practical application. Notable exceptions are the healing ability (practical but forgettable) and the rank 5 shield. Likewise the exotic weapons are complete garbage with the exception of the crystal shard which is just a spiky thing you hit people over the head with. All in all, I went in expecting to play as a mage but ended playing a straightforward warrior (who needs to constantly buff himself). I knew melee was going to be powerful, but I didn't realize it would be pretty much the only thing I'd ever use.

Then there's a bunch of miscellaneous criticisms I have to make. First off, inventory management in this game is a fucking bitch and completely out of place in a game as simple as this one. It's busy work with few to no interesting decisions to make. The first SS had the good sense to give you a virtually infinite inventory whereas this one's RPG aspirations led it to make mistakes like this. Oh, and if the game really were an RPG it should be using a weight-based inventory system anyway. Second: while I like that the map automatically highlights things like replicators I hate the fact that it fills in huge chunks of the map as soon as you enter them. I much prefer the mapping out process of the first one. The actual levels were more memorable in the first one as well. Third: hacking continues to be shit, but of a different kind this time. Where the first game had an overly involved and completely shit minigame this one errs on the side of simplicity and RNG. It still adds nothing to the game and simply wastes your time. I honestly prefer Bioshock's hacking plumbing to this system. Fourth: the story felt much more Hollywood-esque than it's predecessor. Also some things just didn't make sense, like how Shodan betrays you at the end despite having no problem with raising a cyborg army in the first game (and recruiting Diego specifically). Finally: the game just goes on for too long. There wasn't enough gameplay variety to keep me engaged all the way through and I actually had to force myself to finish it. This was not the case with the first one.

Overall: nah/10

 

[baturinsky]

Still playing Magarena. It's very user-friendly for quick MTG fix, but I'm already feeling it's limitations. For example, I can't even make AI pick random deck from specific standard - options are mostly only random deck of specific color(s).

So, I'm trying to move to Forge, even though it's interface is quite confusing.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Playing Insanity's Blade which I can recommend for all beat'em up/platformer hybrid lovers, although this is more Golden Axe style than say Valdis Story. Thanks agris playing this, that's how I spotted it.

 

[janior]

Men, X-PirateZ is fucking great, didn't expect that to be THAT good!

 

[agris]

Playing Insanity's Blade which I can recommend for all beat'em up/platformer hybrid lovers, although this is more Golden Axe style than say Valdis Story. Thanks agris playing this, that's how I spotted it.

Hey, that's cool! Yea, its a good couch game imo.

 

[Gregz]

Stranger of Sword City



I'm only 7 hours in, but this game is really addicting. Scrooge was raving about it on shoutbox, so I decided to try it. I have to agree with her, it's the best blobber I've seen in a long time. There is some animu (it's a jrpg port), but it's not over-the-top.

If you are a combatfag, enjoyed the Wizardries, or enjoy blobbers in general, SoSC is highly recommended.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

>sees Stranger of Sword City recommendation
>Comes with recommendation of "not over-the-top animu" content
>Checks on game on Steam
>Nothing but horrible animu content
>Zero gameplay content shown
>
>

Meanwhile, I took a look at a game called "Stick it to the Man!" a 2D platformer that tries very hard to be Psychonauts, and seems to succeed in places by the looks of things.

Unfortunately I had to quit after 15 minutes, not because I was feeling sick of playing the game or anything, but because this is NOT that hefty of a game graphics-wise...yet it was causing my graphics card to go into overdrive for no particular reason, and I was afraid it would overheat and have a meltdown.

I browsed the options, and my sole options were to disable shadows and Depth of Field...neither of which helped me at all.

Unoptimized piece of crap gets no love from me.

 

[CryptRat]

That's weird. Stick it to the Man! is not extraordinary but I don't regret playing it, the story is pleasant, the game is funny and the puzzles are easy but enjoyable enough. I hope you'll manage to play it at one point.

 

[Gregz]

blah blah blah

>Zero gameplay content shown

blah blah bitch bitch blah

Right back at you.

If you're too lazy to google (title + gameplay + youtube) you should probably find a new hobby...maybe jerking off and smoking weed?

Anyway, your loss, I'm really enjoying it.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Stranger of Sword City

Floor designs seemed really bad; I didn't play for very long (a few hours), but in a blobber floor design is the most important thing for me. If the dungeon/maps aren't interesting then it's not worth playing. Don't see myself going back to it.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Stranger of Sword City is a great game. Yeah, the dungeon design can be a little too simplistic, but I think everything else is top-notch. I'm no master of the blobber genre or anything though. I just find the mechanics and aesthetics quite nice and addicting.

 

[sser]

Zombie Night Terror for about two hours. Basically Lemmings with zombies. Good pixel animations and amusing humor.

Still returned it at the 2hr mark. Not worth $11.

 

[Krivol]

Stalker Call of Prypiat - because it's fucking raining all summer in Poland (so potatos will grow strong!) and it makes me feel salkery.

Since 3 days I haven't eat anything but canned food, kielbasa and bread. And drunk kossack vodka of course.

 

[Mustawd]

Heroes of a Broken Land. I just want to finish it. It's hella repetitive, but muh autism makes me finish it.

 

[PeachPlumage]

Debating on either getting back to Shadowrun: Hong Kong or giving Wasteland 2 a go as it has been sitting in my library for ages.

 

[janior]

Debating on either getting back to Shadowrun: Hong Kong or giving Wasteland 2 a go as it has been sitting in my library for ages.

Everything is better than lameland 2.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Debating on either getting back to Shadowrun: Hong Kong or giving Wasteland 2 a go as it has been sitting in my library for ages.

Ensure you have plenty of time to play Wasteland 2, it's not a title you play somewhat through, put down, then pick up again later.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Debating on either getting back to Shadowrun: Hong Kong or giving Wasteland 2 a go as it has been sitting in my library for ages.

Ensure you have plenty of time to play Wasteland 2, it's not a title you play somewhat through, put down, then pick up again later.

Yeah, it's a title you play somewhat, put down, and never pick it up later.



Just kidding I haven't played it.

 

[80Maxwell08]

I just finished the Neverwinter Nights 2 OC. Well that ending narrator sounded as bored as I was playing it. At least I finished it to bring my character to MotB.
EDIT: And it crashed 20 minutes in. I think I'm going to take a NWN2 break now.

 

[Sizzle]

I just finished the Neverwinter Nights 2 OC. Well that ending narrator sounded as bored as I was playing it. At least I finished it to bring my character to MotB.
EDIT: And it crashed 20 minutes in. I think I'm going to take a NWN2 break now.

Don't take too long, if you've at least enjoyed NWN2 OC, you're going to love MoTB, it's like Planescape: Torment's younger brother

 

[Durandal]

I just finished Human Revolution

Spoiler

It really feels like a streamlined DX. I can only describe HR's level design as a line disguised with boxes each of which contains a different layout, but the levels themselves never feel like a coherent whole. There's about two-four rather obvious entry points to each 'box' and even less points of exit. When I missed an objective, I had to backtrack all the way in the level just to get complete it. In DX, backtracking was always minimal because of the more interconnected and open level design. The scope of HR's levels is simply too small to allow for a proper choose-your-own-approach philosophy in level design. Take the military dock level in DX where you need to board the ship whose name I forgot. There were all kinds of silos and other office buildings you could explore and in/exfiltrate in many ways. However, you could also skip all of that shit if you knew what you were doing. You'll miss out on some goodies, but it's that freedom in approach which made DX so good. Not to mention how interconnected all of those sections were. With levels as linear as HR, you can't connect two 'boxes' when another box is inbetween. This approach also carries over to the hub structure in HR. Hub areas should not waste my time. I don't want to walk through three underground passages in Tristram just because I forgot to buy some potions from the potionmaster on the other side of the map. If I need to get from one end of the hub to the other, DX usually had some shortcuts in the shape of geometry, using your augs, or just hidden unlockable passages. Hidden passages and 'shortcuts' are present to some degree in HR, but with the rather tree-like structure of HR's hubs instead of the circular structure of DX's hubs, more time is wasted then there has to be in the first place. At least I could use the speed aug if I wanted to go really fast in DX, but the sprinting duration and speed in HR is painful, even with upgrades. Hopefully the increased power in technology (of consoles) should allow for bigger levels in MD, and by extent more possible approaches to obstacles.

Then there's the bizarre choice concerning perspective. Stealth(y) games like MGS and Splinter Cell have a third-person perspective for looking around, and a first-person perspective for more precise aiming. Which is what HR should have done aside from either sticking with a first-person perspective and leaning, rather than being largely first-person with a third-person perspective while in cover. A third-person perspective in stealth games always gives you an advantage in terms of vision and situational awareness by default. Why should you only be able to use this advantage when you glue yourself to a wall? Why are you not always able to switch to a TPP when you can do so any time by sticking to cover which you can do everywhere? Yet at the same time you get so many abilities which make it easier for you to track enemies to the point where one can't help but wonder why someone would largely restrict you to a FPP to begin with. The only reasoning behind this that I can think of is that DX was first-person, so to honor tradition HR also had to be first-person. The fact that you have a third-person camera, a Soliton radar which highlights enemies, a mark and track ability, and a wallhack ability, is all just incredibly overkill.

The progression system in HR is also borked. Whereas DX had you choose between one of two augs from each canister and you'd have to stick with that aug for the entire game, the question of choosing your augs in HR is more of a question of 'when' than 'what'. You will gain more than enough Praxis points to unlock all the useful augs and more by the end-game if you've also followed the sidequests. You can't unlock everything, but certainly more than enough. Even though I opted for a stealth playstyle at first, I ended up having more than enough points after spending most of them in the trees I found necessary (the entire stealth enhancement tree is a giant fucking third wheel, do not fall for it), and spent the rest in stuff I rarely used to begin with. In HR, you don't have to stick with your upgrade decisions as much because the gameplay allows you to switch between different styles more freely. You don't have to put points in weapon skills so you can properly use them as you did in DX. You could use a category of weapons you were untrained in, albeit with a severe handicap in terms of accuracy, because you shouldn't be skilled at everything to begin with. That's a common problem with open-world sandboxes like Fallout 4 and Skyrim which allow you to do everything in one playthrough, because instead of making your upgrade decisions feel unique and have them pay off in some way, you end up becoming a superhuman regardless of what you do which then ends up killing the replay value since you can't really play with a certain build and playstyle in mind. It's not FO4 where you become god after two hours in the wasteland, but your build will only feel unique for about the first half of the game. Do note, HR does allow and recognize different playstyles with levels having secret pathways which can only be traversed if you have the X aug, but the upgrades only really serve to make those playstyles easier than allow new possibilities. It is why DX is considered a first-person RPG whereas HR is more of a first-person shooter/stealth game with RPG elements. Upgrades in older RPGs would define the way how you played for the entire game. In newer RPGs, you tend to be pretty strong and able to do many things to begin with, and as such upgrades would either give you a special edge in encounters (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic), or make you even more overpowered (Dishonored). Because of the generous amount of Praxis points you receive, the game tends to veer to the latter.

I like the idea of your energy being separated in cells which recharge once partially depleted. It encourages you to use your augmentations in short bursts rather than all the time (though this would only really apply to cloaking, considering other augs either deplete one cell completely or so slowly that it's unlikely for you to use an aug like that for so long). One thing I absolutely do not get, is why takedowns require energy. If you don't want to chew another candy bar, you'll have to wait 20-40 seconds before you can perform a takedown again. I'm guessing the designers wanted stealth players to evade enemies completely, yet at the same time taking down enemies earns you XP which is necessary for obtaining Praxis points. You do get a Ghost XP bonus for completing objectives without being seen, but you'll still get that bonus if you take down enemies from behind. On top of that, enemies often drop money, candy bars, ammo, and plenty of pocket secretaries containing a password to some system (more on that later). Another inexplicable decision is to turn all takedowns into fancy third-person animations where Jensen kicks someone's shit in, while time is stopped. I can only assume that it was too late for the development team to redesign the stealth takedown system into something more sensible using simple melee weapons, but cinematic takedowns with retractable carbon blades make for good promo material anyways. The problem with time-stopping energy-reliant takedowns is that it not only looks retarded when you think about it, but also takes away more control from the player than necessary. Naturally most stealth players would opt for a KO-everyone-and-dump-their-bodies-in-a-corner approach when even the XP gains encourage you to do so, but now you need to spend more time hiding in shadows or either KO enemies with your stungun or tranquilizer. I can understand the energy cost considering you can takedown an enemy even when he's alarmed and you're in front of him, since you could takedown EVERYONE with no effort that way, but you shouldn't even be able to instantly takedown everyone at any time in the first place. Had you had melee weapons, none of this band-aid design wouldn't even have to be present. Thankfully there is an upgrade which lets you takedown two enemies at once at the same price, although the range for such context-sensitive actions is a bit of a pain.

In DX, you hit an enemy from behind with a melee weapon in order to knock him out or kill him, or deal with the shitty neck hitboxes so you can knock him out with your prod. While I prefer being absolutely certain in stealth games that I am within takedown range of an enemy rather than risk missing because of some shitty hitbox and get caught on the spot, I don't like losing my ability to perform melee attacks either. That's why I like the backstabbing motion of the Spy's knife in TF2 the most, where you will automatically raise your knife if you are within backstabbing range and attacking will then instantly kill someone from behind, but you are still freely able to swing your knife around if you wish to do so. Besides, with the Speed and Combat Strength aug combined with the Dragon's Tooth I could play DX as if I were Raiden from MGR, but that's unfortunately missing in HR. There is still plenty of shenanigans to be had in HR, like throwing vending machines, jumping off the Hengsha rooftops and performing an Icarus Drop on an unsuspecting crowd of people, barricading doorways with objects and exploiting the dumb AI, or accidentally involving civilians in a double takedown as they try to resist you with kung fu techniques right before you smash their shit in.

In HR there's also a new hacking mini-game. Everyone agrees that hacking in Deus Ex was a no-fun waiting exercise where you did nothing but wait, and didn't even have enough time to read all the e-mails with just a Trained hacking skill, so that could obviously be improved. Now hacking involves capturing nodes, fortifying nodes to slow down traces, use viruses you find through more hacking or exploration to make hacking easier, and so on. It's not as RNG as SS2 nor as overly extensive as SS1, but the way this new hacking minigame is implemented brings its own share of problems. One thing is that every lock is now hackable. In DX, you either had to pick locks with a lockpick or bypass shit with your multitools. The tools were dispensable, but could be made more efficient by upgrading their respective skills. This also tied into the aspect of exploration where finding break-in tools is a treat, but so is finding item caches to use them on. The dispensability of the tools would also make the player step back and seek alternative solutions to bypassing locks, so as to not waste them. Maybe you could find a key or code, or use explosives, or just find another path. There being two types of break-in skills which you couldn't be simultaneously efficient at without spending a serious amount of skill points would also influence which one you would prioritize over the other. Lockpicking is useful for doors and locked boxes, whereas Electronics is useful for keypads, electronics, and other security measures.
In HR, now you hack to open safes, doors, computers, security, and everything, meaning hacking is pretty fucking essential and you'd be stupid for not willing to take it (much like the Computer skill in the original). You can easily max the hacking tree at the start of the game and turn hacking into a cakewalk once you also upgrade hacking stealth to reduce detection chances. But since the developers have to keep in mind that someone might not want to take hacking for whatever reason, they have to scatter the passwords for the story necessary players so non-hacking oriented players can still access important terminals for lore and other information. However, this results in dozens and literally DOZENS of pocket secretaries either placed in places where they shouldn't be in the first place. All of them are some vague excuse to display the password to some terminal, and there are so fucking many of them. At some point the writers just gave up on continuously having to remind NPCs to delete the e-mail containing their passwords, and just dumped the password. Realistically this is incredibly stupid, and prompted me to never really read pocket secretaries again because they're all the same shit. Deus Ex also had datacubes containing usernames and passwords, but they were nowhere as numerous because the shit you could hack in DX wasn't nowhere as numerous either. However, at some point all those codes made me grateful, because the hacking minigame became so repetitive after I maxed out the capture and stealth trees that I didn't even have to do anything but brute-force my way through. I had plenty of nukes and stop worms to carry me through in case something went wrong anyways, I never had to use Fortify past the first levels, and never upgraded it either. But then for some reason, hacking systems is always more beneficial than just entering a code, because hacking system earns you XP, and systems have various nodes containing bonus XP, credits, and viruses which you could capture and obtain once you hacked the system. So if I want to get more XP, money, and viruses, I need to manually hack everything regardless of whether I have the code. It's the same problem with gaining bonus XP for neutralizing enemies, where not doing so will miss you some bonus XP. But I don't want to hack another goddamn thing because the minigame becomes so easy and repetitive once you level up your skills! I just used the automatic unlockers on keypads I didn't have the code for but could hack in a jiffy, because I didn't want to suffer through those fucking minigames again. The minigame itself isn't all that engaging once you got the hang of it, but it's the sheer frequency of the hacking you must do which left a completely horrid taste in my mouth. If hacking was a timed puzzle minigame like in Alpha Protocol I could have some fun with it, but the shitty-ass implementation of HR's hacking is why I prefer to wait while the hack is done in DX.

Deus Ex rewarded you points for exploration and completing objectives, HR rewards you for EVERYTHING. Found a secret vent? Good boy, here is some XP and illogically placed credit chits. Looking behind the backdoor of any store in Hengsha? A guaranteed XP bonus and item for you! Here's a guaranteed bonus for each obvious soft wall you break! Let's litter sewers with breakable walls and inexplicably placed items behind them! Non-lethally takedown someone? Here's an XP bonus for taking him out, for taking him out with a takedown, and taking him out non-lethally, and for taking out two guards out at once. There's even different tiers of XP bonuses depending on what kind of area you discover, with unimportant areas netting you the Traveller bonus which earn you 100 XP, and the Pathfinder and Trailblazer bonuses only appearing when you access secret areas with the use of augs. Regardless of what you do, you get rewarded, and this Skinner box approach to handing out resources is what kills it. You didn't get skill points all the fucking time in Deus Ex, you gained the majority through making progress and completing objectives, with exploration bonuses being nowhere as frequent or as major. The largest bonuses in HR do come in the form of completing objectives, but the constant stream of XP bonuses make the occasion feel less special.
There is also another reason why the exploration in HR is inferior to the original: items. In HR, you'll mostly find ammo, credits, access codes, maybe some candy bars and health items, and very rarely some weapon mods or Praxis kits. But for the most part you get credits. In Deus Ex, the items you could obtain were much more varied in terms of usage, but they were also less frequent and hidden behind locks or keypads. There were more utility items like hazmat suits, rebreathers, NVG, camos and ballistic armor which could act as a temporary substitute for augs you did not have installed. The lower frequency of obtained items also meant that the value of said items could be higher, and also made it feel more rewarding. Exploration was also the most guaranteed way you'd get aug upgrade containers. Despite all the Praxis points you get in HR, I can only recall finding four-five of them through exploration. The more constant and less satisfying rewards you get for exploration is what ends up hurting it.

And the economy in DX wasn't as bad despite the shittier living circumstances. Money is barely an issue in HR at all, you'll have more than enough if you don't buy everything. All you really need is 10000 creds for the obligatory 2 praxis kits whenever the LIMB clinics restock, and maybe some cheap weapon mods from the local salesmen. If you loot every body and have basic eyesight to perceive credit chits on the floor, you'll never run out. There's simply not enough stuff to spend it on. In Deus Ex, the prices for items were high enough that you had to carefully consider what you should buy first, because your budget is already limited as is. That, and you couldn't sell stuff in DX for maximum bonus money. Not like you really need the extra money in HR to begin with, but that's beside the point.

Another thing is the AI. The AI in DX was dumb, but not infuriatingly dumb. The AI in HR on GMDX difficulty is more than capable enough to kill you, but is a right bitch to deal with in stealth. When someone sees you and turns hostile for just a split-second before you perform a takedown on him, all nearby enemies are magically alerted to your presence and know your immediate position. No radio call for back-ups or running towards alarms, one guy sees you, everyone becomes hostile. Stealth games operate on a very thin margin of error. In other stealth games, if you get caught, you can either resort to more violent or noisier means to prevent the alerted guard from raising an alarm, or you can make a clean getaway by hiding under a table until the guards magically forget about you. In HR, it takes a rather long time for the guards to drop their alarmed/hostile state (on GMDX) to the point where it isn't really worth all the trouble just because a guard turned hostile for a second before you took him out. This becomes even more troubling when you are trying to get in range for a double takedown instead of a single one (one instance where contextual actions are a bad idea). The guards in HR also have this weird habit of checking out any sight or sound, no matter how slight. Usually in stealth games guards have multiple states inbetween being unalerted and checking something out, and plays into the margin of error I was talking about before. In other stealth games you can intentionally lure guards by knocking on a wall or whistling, but they don't check out every fucking sound you make. You can exploit this behavior in HR, but more than often you might unintentionally fuck up which will come bite you in the ass. Aside from that, there isn't anything really special about the AI of the guards in HR. They take cover, turn on alarms, and so on. One notable thing about the AI in HR is that guards react to doors mysteriously opening and closing on their own, but that's about all I can think of.

One common mistake made by developers when making something with multiple approaches is that they often assume your average (casual) player will play the game like Cowadoody regardless of all the forced tutorials and hints shoved in their face, and thus make it considerably harder for someone to play guns blazing regardless of whether you have the right upgrades. In HR (on GMDX difficulty), you die really fast with or without Dermal Armor compared to the original, and it feels like you have a lot less HP than in DX. Because of your small health pool and how fast it can deplete, I'm okay with the regenerating health and the lack of limb damage, because you can die in two seconds anyways, and wasting healing items on your leg which will all be for naught after the next shot the enemy fires at you feels kind of pointless. The regeneration speed isn't too fast to allow for CoD shenanigans either, and I appreciate healing items acting as health bonuses rather than standard medkits. Aside from that, the ammo you receive is very limited in HR, and ammo now takes up inventory space, meaning you can't carry more ammo then you would ever use like in Deus Ex. If you were to go guns blazing and not take super accurate shots all the time, you'll probably run out of ammo in no time. Heavier enemies can tank some shots alright, and blind firing is almost discouraged because of how much inaccurate it is and how much ammo it tends to waste. Even if you're playing lethal, the game still wants you to play stealthy (which in most cases means upgrading the pistol to OP levels and headshotting enemies out of cover left and right. It's actually easier to just cloak and fire at will, because most enemies won't even return fire when you're cloaked. That, and the third-person cover system makes first-person shooting feel more clunky in comparison, because you are going to take guaranteed damage if something with a gun looks at you when you're not hiding in cover. If you were able to lean past walls, this might have not been as much of an issue. While I appreciate that going guns blazing doesn't involve standing in one place and killing everything with your Heavy Rifle, the system in place makes combat playstyles harder than it really should be.

What I do not get is why you would outsource essential parts of your game to another company which doesn't seem to share the same design philosophy at all. HR touts that you can play the game in any way you want, but the bosses shit on that idea hard. I'm aware that the Director's Cut apparently fixed this by adding alternative solutions, but I didn't play the DC because it somehow had more bugs than the original version, which involved choppier transitions to ironsights, computers, and cover. It was something I couldn't fix, so I stuck with the original instead. It's the same problem with bosses in id Software games where the entire game revolves around fighting hordes of enemies at a time, and then you introduce this one big guy with a fuckton of health who isn't any fun to fight, because all the levels and weapons are designed around fighting multiple enemies at once. Same goes for HR, where the bosses tell non-lethal stealth players to go fuck themselves. Luckily I happened to carry an upgraded 10mm pistol just in case because I'd heard the game would pull this kind of bullshit. The boss fight arenas do contain illogically placed weapon caches for stealth players to get armed, though that feels like a band-aid more than anything. In DX the bosses might have been a joke which would die in a single GEP or killphrases, but they weren't a pain in the ass. Well, the bosses in HR aren't a pain in the ass if you know what you are doing. The first boss can be solved through liberal application of concussion/EMP grenades and an armor-piercing pistol. The second can also be solved through liberal application of concussion/EMP grenades and an armor-piercing pistol. The aforementioned tactics won't work on the third, but for the third I just activated my cloak in front of the boss and stunlocked him to death with my heavy rifle I spent lugging around the whole game just in case. The fourth boss was somewhat more interesting in that regard, but still easy if you knew what you were doing. That said, the bosses themselves aren't even that interesting. The first one will chase you with a minigun as you hide behind cover, the second one performs hit and run attacks while running away cloaked, the third boss has a slightly more interesting arena layout, but the attacks are too simple. The final boss is essentially a bunch of rotating turrets while enemies spawn in, and probably easier than the rest. The set-up for the third and last were pretty cool though. The Tyrants themselves didn't get much in the way of characterization aside from the intro level and some e-mails (read the novels if you want your backstories, nerd), which is kind of a shame. I heard the Missing Link has a boss fight done right, but I'll check on the Missing Link later.

I do love the new cyber-renaissance artstyle of HR. One gripe with DX I felt is that most of the world looked like it would belonged in today's time rather than the future. I guess that's a more realistic approach, but stuff like architecture, fashion, and culture do certainly change with the times. However, it seems the art in HR took a precedence over visual clarity. I'm talking about the piss filter here, and I'm fairly sure it's a filter, because the CGI cutscenes look more colorful than the game. I don't mind the main color of the game being yellow, but the problem with modern games is that there is a lot of visual clutter which makes it hard to discern objects from backgrounds. This is hardly the case in games like Deus Ex and Thief where you can discern an object from miles away. At times I wasn't sure what objects were interactable with in HR and which weren't, so I ended up turning on the object highlight to be sure. The lack of interactable objects is also kind of a shame. The object highlight in HR isn't too intrusive, but made hidden objects pop out more than they should've, although I wouldn't be entirely sure that I could spot those secrets without the highlight because of how much objects tend to blend with the environment. Another thing which the object highlight completely makes obvious is the breakable walls. Breakable walls are denoted by a crack (and a contextual action pop-up if you happen to walk past one without realizing it), but the object highlight smears a giant yellow outline around it. I'm not sure if breakable walls were supposed to be secret in the first place, but with your first cell always automatically recharging I had an uncontrollable urge to break down every last wall I saw. Remember how I said your lockpicks and multitools were limited? Artstyle is great on paper, but could do with more colors and less yellow.

When everyone heard Icarus in the original HR reveal trailer, most people thought it sounded pretty good, including myself. The soundtrack in HR... is a bit too ambient for my tastes. This is more subjective than anything, but I think the soundtrack in HR is more ambient than it should be. Aside from Icarus, the UNATCO theme rearrangement, and maybe some tunes during the Hyron Project fight, nothing ever stood out to me. The problem with hiring these kind of high-profile composers is that they are often just used to composing background noise as cinematic bullcrap demands it. I don't think it has anything to do with the skill of the composers, but rather the direction of the soundtrack. It's why IMO the soundtrack of HR can't even come close to DX's soundtrack. DX's OST was memorable. It had recognizable melodies, wasn't afraid to get serious, and was varied. When you hear one track of Deus Ex's soundtrack, you are immediately transported to that one level. One problem with HR's soundtrack is that all of it sounds too samey. Everything sounds like it was composed in the same style. The Hengsha hub might've had more oriental-sounding instruments, but aside from that I can't really describe what sets one track from the other. You can't put the UNATCO theme, Opponent Within, DuClare Chateau, Hong Kong Streets, and the MJ12 Lab theme in the same album and possibly call it samey. All the different locations you visit should have vastly different themes to accompany them and make one level/track stand out more from the other. I don't deny that HR has some pretty good ambient tracks or that ambient soundtracks can be good (see: Thief), but in terms of a soundtrack for a game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a soundtrack in the style of the original Deus Ex would have suited the globetrotting you do a whole lot more. Maybe some people prefer atmospheric cyberpunk ambience when walking down a metropolis, that's fine by me, but the lack of variation and memorability is what brings HR's OST down for me.

The story is okay-ish, though even Jensen acknowledges that following random leads and making big leaps is what he's been doing the entire time. There are a lot of similar story beats to the original (everyone is reliant on expensive drugs as a means for the Illuminati to control the population, you are a special case who does not require such drugs, you can rescue your pilot from a life or death situation, there is a hotel ambush after you meet up with someone important, underwater ocean labs, visiting China to meet a Tong, the final boss is hooked to a giant supercomputer, etc.) if you pay attention. The game also asks the important question about the ethical constraints of augmentation, though the argument surrounding the dependency on Neuropozyne kind of falls flat if you consider that Sarif Industries was about to unveil augmentations which didn't require Neuropozyne. The game does a good job of staying neutral while showing how divided everyone in the world is through NPC conversations, riots, faction leaders, and other events. There is no definite answer to be found to the question, just opportunists and the misinformed masses (unlike DX where everything is the work of Majestic 12). There are plenty of e-books scattered around the world explaining the lore, although most of it was technobabble on the workings of augmentations or propaganda, and are quite frankly not interesting to read. It does earn you a Scholar XP bonus, so there's that. The voice acting is certainly a step up from the original's amateur VAs and terrible foreign accents, people in Hengsha actually speak Mandarin and the average person on the street sounds more convincing. Jensen is more of an actual character than an one-liner dispensing robot than JC was, and opinions on that may vary. Some prefer an emotionless cypher to play as, some like to play with someone who had a past and shows some emotion. I don't think the dialogue was as thought-provoking as the original, though. Most high-ranking people you talk to are so far up their ass with nothing really interesting to say. The themes of conspiracies and 'trust nobody' were executed much better in the original when you were taken to the MJ12 base beneath the UNATCO bunker as you made your escape while meeting all of your former workers. In HR it was rather obvious everyone was hiding something. Since HR is a prequel, you thankfully don't get to fight the Illuminati immediately. A common pitfall with prequels is to interweave too many things then what was originally intended. HR is thankfully not that guilty of that crime (there are some shout-outs to Deus Ex characters you never meet, although the bonus mission where you save Tong Jr. was a bit too much) and leaves many things intentionally open for the inevitable sequels. We'll see in August how that pays off. The way the endings are presented to you do suck though. You literally have to press one of four buttons to decide the course of humanity. Two of them are locked until you talk to the required person in the last level (something which does not get a quest marker!). If I can just reload my save to see what would happen if I'd press the other button, the idea of having to choose something with no real gameplay consequences later on is kind of pointless. At least Deus Ex had you perform different tasks in the last level to get your desired ending, and made it feel that you were working towards something to make it happen.
And I wish they'd stop reusing Lambert's VA for everything. I don't want my CO to voice a bunch of nobody guards, damnit.

Also something new is the social augmentation. There are now new kinds of 'dialogue battles' where you are trying to convince the other into giving something you want. Unlike the actual boss battles, these ones do not hinder progress, and are actually quite nice. The dialogue is a mix of old and modern, where you see keywords highlighting the core of the dialogue options, but you do also see what exactly (sometimes relatively) what you're about to say. During these 'battles' you can usually choose between three approaches and it's up to you to decide which one will be the most effective. If you have the social aug installed (I think) you also get to see the personality of the person you are dealing with. Depending on what your opponent says, you get to see which personality (alpha, beta, omega) their lines resonate with the most. At some point you can activate your social aug, release some pheromones, and choose one of three approaches (which one is the most effective depends on the personality type of your opponent, and requires you to pay attention to the dialogue instead of just skipping it), although your pheromone attack kind of feels like an instant cop-out if you paid some attention to the blinking lights. But the game does recognize this as you trying to brute-force your way through to victory regardless of anything you just said, and sometimes using your pheromone attack might not produce the most desirable results even if you do win. The real dialogue battles also come with a psychological profile of your opponent which can provide you with some hints with what to say. It is kind of weird how using your pheromone attacks can magically convince anyone to see the light, though. I thought you were ex-SWAT, not Jesus.

While I can laugh at something as absurd as the windmill Gundam in G Gundam, the whole Windmill character had me cringing to no end. Consider me triggered, but when you first discover that the password to the Dutchman hacker's PC is WINDMILL, and then it turns out that's his actual alias. When you actually meet him, I can't tell whether he is doing a terrible impression of a Dutch or a Jamaican accent because DUDE WEED LMAO. Even one of the fucking TYM guards jokes that a password to one of his systems could be windmilla dfahuisdhiujkdaskjdfuckigrgnfrogjks

tl;dr While nobody expected HR to fill in the huge clogs shoes of the original, it surprised everyone by not being as bad as Invisible War. The UI is still functional for PCs, you can still see that the spirit of DX is there to some extent, it manages to do some original things for better or worse, and it certainly could have gone much worse if you look at most reboots and modern sequels. The game is held back by many odd design choices and a lack of scope, and may be worth one or two playthroughs. However, it is still a farcry from the original. If you want to satisfy your Deus Ex urges, replay Deus Ex again with a mod like GMDX or something. If you want an action packed trip to Detroit, then Human Revolution might do the trick.