DX3 reviews?

[Neveos]

The general consense "worse than 1, better than 2" describes it best.

This is true, but barely so, tbh. Not because of how bad it is, but because of how good 2 is (taken lightly). It is obvious that 2 fails hard towards the end, and in other general mechanical ways, so HR is definitely better quality. But HR lacks that je nais se quoi that were present in DX and IW that made the games interesting. Even after IW, you felt intellectually stimulated. Not so much in HR. I think the only thing HR might have taught me was that the blind can still imagine what sight is like because despite eye malfunction, the brain knows how to interface with a working visual apparatus. But that's not the kind of learning DX is famous for.

-edit- I mean through Morpheus, DX even predicted youtube and facebook.

[fantsu]

OK, my friend has finished the game now.
We have quite the same taste usually.
First he thought that it was pretty good, but he actually thinks that DX2 is far better than DX:HR...

[Jonas]

Yeah I'm sorry, I'm usually a big believer in subjectivity, but Deus Ex 3 is objectively better than Invisible War

[EER]

Yeah I'm sorry, I'm usually a big believer in subjectivity, but Deus Ex 3 is objectively better than Invisible War

Not that I don't agree that HR > IW, but you've established an objective scale of betterness? So that means it is now possible to create the OBJECTIVELY BEST game ever!

[Jonas]

It's already been done, that game is The Nameless Mod!

[Dragon]

+1 to Jonas.

For me TNM is still the Deus-Ex 3. Trying to quantify how much DX:HR is better than DX:IW or worse than DX is difficult. You see this for example on me requiring 6 pages and I still notice after finishing it that I forgot stuff to talk about. I guess you need like 10 pages to properly talk about the game mechanics, where it works, where it breaks and how it compares. The article posted above does a fine job at talking about the most important problems and achievements. So I would say where exactly DX:HR is located in between the other two is subject to personal opinion a lot. What is though sure though is that it is better than DX:IW and that it can't fully stand up to DX. Later one is though not a problem as they can keep the good things for the next game and rework the bad ones. It's actually quite possible the next one gives DX a run for the money if they learn from this one here the right things and I have the feeling they actually can do so.

[Undisputed]

I may post a review in a new thread but there is obvious inspiration mainly from Invisible War, but I feel they captured a few things that sets the first Deus Ex apart from other games. They even executed the presentation similar to Invisible War (if thats a spoiler sorry) but I won't go too far into it and break it down as it will reveal spoilers.

I like the game, and feel it has potential and they should continue to make it better, but this game has fell flat as far as expectations and how redefining the game could of been in our current generation of gaming where everything is so basic and similar.

The biggest thing I feel they need to focus on is making larger, more expansive environments that you can fully explore, not just 10-15 major buildings and a bundle of small rooms in the main cities. Why? Deus Ex is a perfect game for it, although I feel the lack of content may cause the game to become boring unless they incoporate a ton of side stories and missions to immerse the player to become intrigued.

Well, I'll save this for my review thread and explain it more thoroughly

[nerdenstein]

I felt Deus Ex: HR had more expansive enviroments than the original.
Hells Kitchen had three 'buildings' you could enter. That's much less than HR had.
The rest of the buildings were just player boundries.
I guess that goes the same as HR but HR did have more exploration within the HUBs. China had a fair amount of exploration over Hong Kong.

That all being said, I still prefer the Deus Ex maps. There is just something about them that makes them more... awesome. I'm struggling for words here.

[fantsu]

OK, so I had some sparetime (actually I'm sick from the work, but already feeling better ).
Went to spend some time on my friend and tried Human Revolution.

He has it on PS3, so I don't know how PC-version differs.
Started on highest difficulty setting from the start.
I played maybe 4 hours. Maybe 3 and half.

Anyways I got my way to Shanghai, I didn't talk with everyone or checked out every place, just made some progress and tried to get used to the controls. I wanted to see how the characters develop and see some from the map design. Hear some voice acting and check out the textures and animation. Get known with the hacking and all that jazz.

SPOILERS FOR HR!
Hmmm, ok. As an lifetime fan of the original and friend of IW and P:SB... hmmm... HR is an OK game. I would compare it to IW and P:SB more than in the original. Some references were cool, like the old UNATCO tune from radio and Manderley mentioned.

The game has tons of great things.
The controls were good too. Everything seemed to be in place.

Game looks good enough, some places very good. I liked your own apartment and the opening window.

The cover system works good. Some minor problems, and I really thought that I would hate it and the 3rd person camera, but I guess thats the modern gaming and I can accept it now.

I LOVE the ironsight aiming. The guns look good and sound good also.

Jensen seems to be good protagonist, I like him.


SPOILERS AGAINST HR!
Loading times are terrible in HR. At least in PS3-version is so SLOW!

The cutscenes doesn't fit into the game at all! The transitions are poor, people are teleporting from scene to scene. Directing was missing almost entirely!

The menus are confusing and I really didn't get all that XP to PRAXIS-point system. Why? Why cannot the AUGS be bought with XP straight?

About your apartment still... why is the mirror broken? Why is the game missing ALL mirrors? They took some shortcuts. Your character is almost fully animated anyways (with 3rd person views and all).

The map is stupid. I don't want to have all the blueprints available. I want to see some trouble finding those, just like in original, you had to BUY the maps for the Versalife labs.

Weapon mods seemed pretty bad too. Most of the mods fit only to pistol or SMG and before buying you cannot know if they'll fit or not. All and all they were pretty underpowered also, they didn't change the weapon enough.

What is with that hub design? Why the streets were so confusing and maze-like? Why you have to crawl in sewers to get into places?

The voice acting is terrible. It sounds like the actors just read their lines from the paper. I also hated how some people said the same things. In the Hive (bar), there was 4 or 5 guys saying the same things! "Lower city is dangerous", I hate to hear that same line with the same voice many times in a row. That woman in Detroit spoke about the humidity and her hair in at least 3 different places.

The voice acting lines were pretty bad develop. People always talked about the things you can do RIGHT THERE. On the gates on the Hive, the man said that there is a way in from the back too. And how nice! Just around the corner there is a way to crawl in. And when I crawled in I found datapad from the toilet that had the code to the basement, and teh same minute heard that the basement has the offices. Just too convinient. They think we are idiots? I want to be in an adventure, finding things out my own, not in an tutorial for the whole game. Of course there is some "random" things also, like NPC's answering their phones and saying few lines or grabbing that datapad from the pocket and pressing the screen few times... after a while it gets old.

The map design is poor. The apartment areas in Detroit AND Shanghai.... omg. Same apartments over and over. Same layout. Everytime. Even some minor details were the same. It felt like having deja vu 5 times in a row. You KNEW where that table was, with that same computer on top of it, even before you stepped into the new apartment. Horrible. Seeing that one guy washing the same window at Sarif after I did the first real mission broke the feeling.

The map desing in the first missions was too straightforward. sometimes there was like two different doors to take, but in the end the result was the same. Deleting multitools and lockpicks really simplifies the structure of the missions. There can be only two major ways to do things: Hacking OR not-hacking.

The sidemissions... pfff. Random people standing by the streets telling you to kill somebody or to break into some generic apartment. I'm not into that. It is the way making the game artificially longer and doesn't develop the main characters or bring in new ones. This is the way Bethesda makes their games and it is TERRIBLE! I hate useless fetch-quests to make some money or XP just to make your character stronger. And after that they call those games RPG's... hah! I want to live the life of the protagonist and the world, not to grind experience or cash.

I wont even go into bossfights. Only saw the first one and it was enough.

Every people talking about the same things (augs) and every news in TV's taking what YOU have done earlier makes the world flat and generic place, where there is no depth to explore and reason to exist.

"Yesterday we obeyed Kings and bent out necks before Emperors. But today we kneel only to truth..."
-Kahlil Gibran


I don't know how long I am in the game right now, but overall it is pretty big dissappointment so far, and I really hope that the team will change before the next game and they dare to make the things in their own way.

I WILL play this game through some day later and see how it changes. I want to make more complete playthrough also and check out every corner. Might just take some time to get motivation for it.

[Dragon]

Side Note:
You can see what upgrades fit a weapon. It's a bit finicky though. If you open your inventory screen and look at the details of a weapon you see on the left side of the weapon image three images with boxes in them. These are the upgrades the weapon can take if not grayed out. So to know if an upgrade matches look at the color of the boxes which are not grayed out and compare it to what you want to buy. A stupid and error prone system but it allows you to avoid buying what you can't use. Special upgrades state also for which weapon (usually 1 only, sometimes 2) they work with. Damage upgrades have no real effect. Clip size is also rather useless in DX:HR as is the reload time. If you get in a pinch you can anyways press the magical take-down button to win no matter in what stupid situation you are in.

[sleepy47]

I see more similarities in IW than the original and actually think IW is the better game in some respects. Take away the 3rd person perspective and sneak mechanics, and you have a cross between IW and Snowblind, (which I enjoyed in a brainless sort of way).

The alternate routes in HR seem contrived to me, (IW was guilty of this as well), whereas the original seemed like a lot more thought went into creating alternate paths and ways to complete objectives. Many of the augs in HR are pretty much useless in my humble opinion, and all the "cool" augs just a way to sell more copies.

I finally got the original going again with some help from this forum, (after cracking my original disk), played for a couple of hours last night, and it was immediately apparent how much more fleshed out the world is. And even after playing DE at least 5 or 6 times before, still found something I never had before. I can't be sure but I highly doubt HR will have this kind of replayability.

I'll reserve final judgement until I finish HR. I believe I'm almost done now and I will say that the further I get into the game the more I'm enjoying it as the story and pacing seems to be picking up. But thus far, I'm probably more a fan of IW than HR as shocking as that may seem to many of you.

Yes, IW was guilty of many things, and the ending err...endings truly sucked, but I felt more connected to the story, and to me, it had more of a Deus Ex vibe than HR.

[Xesum]

HR references DX1 way too much in my opinion.

However, I found that HR had much better stealth, combat, conversations, inventory, loot, atmosphere, plot/game progression and the augmentation menu.

• Stealth is better because of the camera angle and how it merges into a cover system that works great and seamlessly on PC.
• Combat has much better gun play, and the guns feel like weapons. (although that plasma rifle didn't really make sense continuity-wise due to the plasma rifle being a new thing in DX1)
• Conversations weren't just a long blue strip of hard to read text. (they also didn't make you say things in a manner which didn't seem fitting (cough cough LA Noire))
• The Inventory system has auto arranging to make the most of your space, you can turn that off if you want to do it yourself, and you can rotate stuff.
• NPC loot felt much more realistic (although Shifter did do this to DX1)
• The atmosphere felt much better with lots and lots of ambient sounds filling your ears as you wandered one of the various generic back alleys, with the occasional jingle just to remind you what city you're in.
• Deus Ex 1 was like Fallout 3 in how it progressed, you had to walk through the same 35 minute intro to actually get into the action, whereas HR feels more like New Vegas where it gives you the quick intro and then throws you more into the open more quickly.
• I also prefer how HR is more to the point, "Here's some girl you had a relationship with, you have a dog, here's your adversary with a pony tail, some shit is going to go wrong and a conspiracy is going to happen because Deus Ex.". Whereas DX1 just prick teases you like a burlesque dancer and doesn't seem as effective (although this could just be down to desensitisation due to playing it so much.)
• The merging of the augmentation menu and the skills menu is a good thing in my opinion as the game feels more streamlined, everything's down to your augmentations as there's not much human left in Sarif's personal attack dog, you can't really have much skill with a metal arm - it's all down to the metal arm and the brains input - although I suppose this point is countered in DX1 as JC Denton is mainly human with some blue wires here and there, so skill would still be viable.

However, the game lacks any distinct music, I can't remember a single track of music as it isn't outstanding.

I think they were referencing DX1 with the voice acting.

Oh! That brings me to the references.

Easter Egg references where you actually have to work to get them ie: Manderley's Emails in the Detroit Precinct or The mentions of high ranking members of the Illuminati - although the Illuminati were always said to be hidden from sight but always there, I felt that they were too 'out of the shadows' at times in HR

But the masses of DX1 references like the Crouch behind cover, the nerdy support character, an interesting pilot that you can save or not, the locations being - America, somewhere Asian, some French place and a Top Secret Place.

Then there's the cut scenes which seemed out of place, ugly and stupid.

Boss fights were too easy and didn't make much sense apart as you didn't really build up a relationship with them like you did in Deus Ex, this is how most boss fights are done in RPGs, you build up a relationship with the person you're going to take down, you get to know them, know why you're fighting and know what your fighting for, Bioshock did this perfectly in my opinion, Half Life 2, despite not really being an RPG also did this well.

The game gets too easy as you progress and unlock more augmentations.

Then there's the whole part after You find Megan and most of her team in Singapore which basically seems to be kinky mummified quantum women multitasking drones and zombies, which appears to be designed by some Japanese person.

The endings in general seem pretty lame and aren't that creative, they've copied Fallout, it's just a bunch of scenes with a gravelly voice talking about stuff that references to your karma and how you're still human and stuff.

So anyway...

In conclusion, I feel that it's got solid gameplay that works well and is very entertaining, but on the other hand the story could've been better and the general working of events and characters could be much better.

But hey, at least you can practically kill almost everyone (or just bitch slap them).

[Jaedar]

If you want to kill people -crouch behind cover- if you want to make a covert approach -crouch behind cover- if you're feeling lucky -crouch behind cover-. Heads up JC, your medical situation is lethal -crouch behind cover-

[PlausibleSarge]

I find the cover system awkward and annoying, and I REALLY miss the skills system.

and dont get me started on the boss fights


IMO a perfect game would be DX1 with a modernized interface, modernized graphics, and some extremely minor changes to things like conversations to make them a little easier to navigate etc.

[TheUnbeholden]

How is the level design? More free or not? Good overall feeling of all the places?

The level design is consistently top-notch. I would have liked more missions like Liberty Island or the Paris cathedral where you're free to move around your objective building and scope it out before picking a way inside, but that's a small gripe. The levels are fully as multipathed as in Deus Ex, and many of the paths are quite specifically tailored to certain augmentations (the most obvious one being the wall-punching one that's used surprisingly often). There's fewer hubs (two to Deus Ex's three) but they're fucking huge and full of atmosphere and side missions.

How long the game is compared to original? Any good NPCs? Can you kill innocent people? Does that affect to the storyline? Hows the new JC? Just an annoying kid or a man of opinions?

Steam says I've played for 37 hours and I just got to the second to last mission. In practice I left the game running for a few hours while having dinner etc., but it's probably still around 35 hours so far. I'm expecting to clock in around 38 by the time I hit the credits. There are some good NPCs, your computer guy Pritchard is well written but he's a pain in the ass, your boss David Sarif is reasonably nuanced and sympathetic despite his flaws, and your pilot is the best of all, but I won't say too much about that for fear of spoilers. You can kill innocent people by the truckload, unfortunately it doesn't affect the storyline much - there are a few major NPCs you can kill and it will change a few things down the line, but certain plot-critical characters have been made immortal. Adam is fine, it feels like he has a bit more personality than JC (which mainly comes out in the - highly flawed, unfortunately - dialogue minigame), but his voice isn't as cool.

Augs, items? Any nice new things? Hows the weapons? are they on par to eachother so you can use your favorite, or are some just strictly better than others? Are weapons upgradeable?

Lots of good augs, shame you can upgrade pretty much all of them in a single playthrough though, so it's only the first half of the game that's considerably affected by your choices. The weapons feel much better and more satisfying than in Deus Ex, and the sniper rifle isn't as imbalanced (in fact it's nearly useless because it's enormous and unsilenceable, you'll probably end up using the tranq rifle or the crossbow instead). In general the large weapons aren't really worth the inventory space they take up, pick a combat rifle at the start and upgrade it fully and it pretty much beats everything else hands down.

Skills, how they differ? More skills? Do you need the skills or are they just for looks? Does the experience system work like in original?

No skills, only augs - but the aug upgrade system is more involved than in DX, I'm pretty happy with the change.

Hows the AI and the combat? Any good one-liners from the enemies? Are they "human enough" or just robotic things you have to mow down? Any chance to change your missions or the side youre on?

The AI is fine both in and out of combat - out of combat they sometimes look behind them or to the sides on their patrols which makes the stealth more interesting and when they come looking for you they feel reasonably intelligent. In combat they take cover and use grenades properly. Haven't noticed any good one-liners, but there's lots of interesting overheard dialogue if you're sneaky enough to trigger them. No chance to pick your side as far as I know, but you get a choice of multiple endings at the very end - just like in Deus Ex.

Replay value, can you see EVERYTHING when playing the game first time through, or is there small details, just like in the original, that might take years to notice?

Hard to say at this point, since I haven't quite finished my first playthrough yet, not sure when I'll do a second one. I'm getting the impression I've pretty much seen everything, but I know a few choices you make change things in small ways, similar to saving Paul or letting him live in DX1 - I saved and went back to try another option for one situation and though the consequences turned up fairly quickly, the difference was pretty big.

Any other things that this game is VERY GOOD at?

Yes.

Any other things that this game REALLY SUCKS at?

Yes. I will be saving that for a blog post when I'm done though.

Thanks!

No problem, thanks for reading (assuming you have).

I pretty much agree with everything except level design.
So I'm going with Jaedar on this one...

I disagree with your opinion that this is a small gripe. The levels are consistently constructed in a "corridor of rooms" type of way. Sure, each room often has two or three exits, but no matter how hard you try, you must always go through the packing room to the cafeteria to the lab. Compare this to deus ex where you could finish plenty of missions without even seeing half the map. The maps do a decent job of seeming open and freeform, but they kinda aren't(at least most of them, some are actually really good, like the police station and some of the later maps). I also find the rewards for exploring the maps to be quite tame, especially towards the mid and end game.

Adam is fine, it feels like he has a bit more personality than JC (which mainly comes out in the - highly flawed, unfortunately - dialogue minigame), but his voice isn't as cool.

The dialogue battles may be highly flawed but they are also very engaging and I would say the best part of the game for me.

Augs, items? Any nice new things? Hows the weapons? are they on par to eachother so you can use your favorite, or are some just strictly better than others? Are weapons upgradeable?

To expand, yes weapons are upgradable and its one of the games biggest strengths... along with the Aug system (combining skills and augs into one)

You can buy weapons and alot of other things now. Sort of emphasizes the corporate world that society is turning more and more into, I felt as though the prices where way to low on weapons & consumables however theres a mod that fixes that.

http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=122159

I also think that you should be able to stack grenades and mines (and stack more health and energy packs) like the mod allows.

Thankfully augmentation is quite expensive like it should be (its new technology and one would expect it to be mainly for the rich)

Any other things that this game is VERY GOOD at?

I think the art direction is quite nice.

The only other main things to cover is the multi-paths and multi-solutions that Deus Ex is famous for. Did it come out well in this? Yes I think so to a certain extent.

Exploration, theres quite a bit of it and its a definitely a emphasis... but levels aren't as big and theres only really one level that reminds me of Deus Ex perfectly size wise.

Storyline was decent enough, kept me engaged towards the end... Characters where decent enough expect Megan which felt like a tacked on love interest and wasn't adequately resolved in the end of the game so you felt that was kind of pointless.... The Bosses where pretty much cardboard cut outs.

Any other things that this game REALLY SUCKS at?

Third person switching in takedowns and cover is distracting for me. Being forced with radar and health regeneration can make the game easier in many situations.

Bosses lack characterization (if you didn't read the companion novel that was released before the game, you wouldn't even know who they are), forces you to defeat them with guns (so you can't sneak past them or hack turrets or anything like that...)

XP system is unbalanced and bias towards non-lethal takedowns and hacking, which ends up making you almost max out everything by the end the game (you'll end up getting everything you want through this method)

Religion/Transhumanism/consipiracies & other concepts and how well they are explored (so in other words Philosophy), in storyline, and in game readables... unfortunately it only covered Transhumanism well, every other concept is barely touched upon even conspiracies which is a real shame because I've always thought of the original Deus Ex as heavy in conspiracies. 90% of readables cover the science behind Augs, only about 10% are about philosophy so its the exact opposite of the original Deus Ex in this regard.

Then theres minor nitpicks like theres no ATM's, no animals, no children, no swimming and no melee weapons in the game, which is a shame because I wanted to take immersion to a new level and kick cats around...
and not just kill kids but drown them as well. Now that would be taking emergent gameplay to a new level.
You can only pick up 50% of objects in the game, so half of the things in that game that seem like you could pick them up are non-interactable which is weird. Seems Eidos Montreal spent most of the engines processing power on graphics rather than physics objects.