[Talbain]

[Toups]

so far my experience with this game (after having completed the first mission, so...) is that it's a satisfactory deus ex experience, which, while being a goddamned miracle in this day and age, is still "only" satisfactory. as a fan of the first game I was hoping for something that would develop upon the original in provocative ways, but for once I appreciate a little slavish devotion to the original's structure and pacing. there are quite a few concessions to modern game design, and they are annoying, but they don't kill the experience and after about 20 minutes of play I had completely forgotten about them. my only real complaint is the cut scenes -- not that they exist, but that they are pre-rendered, and on PC at least, look considerably worse than in-game. which is kind of crazy because my graphics settings are pretty minimal (it won't even let me run it with AA ;_;). also, there seems to be a bit of cut and paste level design going on, but the set pieces themselves aren't ever repetitive so it's not that bad. just lots of reusing environment types and concepts.
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[Toups]

also, I am surprised at how much I enjoy the hacking minigame. I wish that the game rewarded you equal experience for discovering passwords to circumvent hacking, because now I find myself hacking things that I already have the password for, just for the bonus XP and possibility of extra credits.
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[Felix]

I definitely tired of the hacking past a point, and was basically just spamming auto-unlocks during the last mission, but it could be a lot worse!

The XP balance is pretty good, in that I had basically gotten all of the augs I wanted by the second-to-last mission after doing what felt like half of the sidequests available to me. I think there are a total of 10 "Praxis Kits" that you can buy from LIMB clinics throughout the game, and each one of these effectively counts as a levelup, but unless you either a) hack for money constantly or b) kill a bunch of dudes with expensive guns in the vicinity of a shop so you can sell them back one-by-one while getting around the fact that you can't carry duplicates, you're not going to be able to afford them.

This, too, fits right under "satisfying enough," in that I can't really imagine anyone's ideal build being much different from mine (at all, as there are some really useless augs in there), but you can certainly privilege different augs in the early game -- for example, I maxed out hacking and inventory space before taking cloak or dermal armor, and I only learned how to jump high, lift heavy things, and fall safely the first time that I encountered an appropriate obstacle for each. I don't think I ever hacked more than one or two L5 terminals, either, and I definitely had some spare auto-unlockers, so that aug probably wasn't needed.

The (inevitable, and always satisfying) moment where you finally realize you've got a healthy amount of ammo and your character is powerful enough that you're going to be sticking to the same routine for the rest of the game comes right around Montreal.

[BEIGE]

The boss fights in this were jarring to me at first, but on playing through this game a second time they've really started to grow on me. Similar to the Malik encounter, they force the player to use their skillset in a drastically different way while still ensuring the choices that the player's made with their augs isn't going to screw them as is evident in the third boss battle.

[Toups]

man, I didn't realize you could upgrade inventory space. where is that one, under arm upgrades?

I immediately bought the social aug and am really enjoying the "persuasion" system. this game gets lots of small details right that so many other "fp rpgs" (bioshock, oblivion, etc.) get wrong. I respect it for that if nothing else. the writing is also pretty good -- plot wise, so far, but also general dialogue, voice acting, emails, etc... is all pretty convincing and shows attention to detail. there are a few annoying inconsistencies, but I'm finding the world building to be pretty convincing so far.

I'm still unsure of what augs I need, since I'm trying to play through the entire game stealthily (which so far is pretty easy even on the hardest difficulty). the only thing that's been difficult is hacking so I've put a few points into that, and upgraded my max energy and recharge to make silent takedowns easier. I probably should've bought the silent movement upgrade before them though :\
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[Swarm]

I enjoyed this. I played the game almost exclusively stealth-like and doing takedowns, just because it was much easier to conserve ammo that way. I didn't kill anyone except for the assault on the dropship, because I wasn't gonna let Malik, my shorthaired Female Dropship Pilot die to a bunch of heavy rifle weilding fags.

I think I liked the visual aesthetic? The black and gold revolution thing seemed to work alright. Hengsha Island was very Blade Runner and Designers Republic-esque.

[TXTSWORD]

[Felix]

He's new, he's made a bunch of largely intelligent posts so far. I'm sure he won't say it again.

[Swarm]

[DJ]

[TXTSWORD]

Really? I remember saying a little something like that and a ton of dudes came down on me. ;\

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

let's stay on topic: does deus ex 3 have any embarrassing gay characters?

("I'd love to be your chamber boy")

[Talbain]

No, but it has an extraordinary number of prostitutes (and plenty of racist stereotypes).
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[Toups]

gay in what sense
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

should be just hearing and sight, unless the game has some advanced technology I'm unaware of.

[Talbain]

It's only available in the augmented edition.
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[Toups]

augmented audition is definitely exclusively gay
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[Broco]

[Mr. Mechanical]

The social aug is basically a win button. It gives you hints as to the personality type of the person you're conversation-battling and at some point you have the option to spray some pheromones and select a dialogue option that caters to their specific personality type. As long as you pick the right dialog that matches up with their personality you'll "win" the conversation every time.
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[BotageL]

the conversations are much more interesting (and really not that hard anyway) if you play them without the augs
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[bza]

[Talbain]

[DJ]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah I think I know which part you're talking about. It was great.
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[remote]

In short, Malik was the best character in the game.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Felix]

[DJ]

[BotageL]

He's talking about the gaudy social aug interface, DJ, not the object highlighting.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[SuperWes]

High Jump is at once the best and most useless augmentation. It's the best because you can jump around a bunch of augmentation protesters and they do nothing. Worst because it lacks any practical benefit and only reveals invisible walls.

-Wes
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[DJ]

Actually I used that sucker all over the place. Sure, you can (almost) always stack stuff but it still came in really handy for climbing to upper Heng Sha.

Just don't get High Jump but not the Icarus Landing System unless you want to spend a lot of time regrowing your leg flesh.
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[Toups]

[drobe]

The notion that your augmentations devise psychological profiles for people you've just met is a little far fetched. However, I really don't mind pheromone release and remote monitoring of vitals. At the least, they didn't decide to go all Snow Crash-Neurolinguistic hacking on us.

Guys, lets invoke our internal Kim Stanley Robinson and think of plausible science fiction solutions to social engineering. No one will buy our books.
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http://i.imgur.com/9ATgokP.gif

[Dracko]

The best thing about Human Revolution is how it makes you want to replay The Conspiracy all over again.
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[remote]

The PS2 game specifically, or is that just like calling the first Star Wars film A New Hope?
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Toups]

the PS2 port of deus ex is weirdly awesomer than it should be
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[Dracko]

It's the best FPS on the platform.

May as well start using subtitles since we'll be hearing about this franchise for some time yet, I expect.
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[Felix]

The PS2 game was actually how I first played DX (I sat out early 3D PC hardware until Half-Life 2 due to a lack of interest in high-profile PC titles of the day, sustained enthusiasm for consoles, and laughing at my poor buddy's financial decisions around the time that 3dfx went up in flames). I remember being able to smell a loading-pause hallway from a mile away, as well as some unnecessary FMV, but it really was a fine port.

[remote]

Is it just a fine port, though, or does it add anything that really sets it apart? Now I'm tempted to pick up a copy.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[BotageL]

Mostly some minor graphical improvements, and I think the recut of the opening sequence to reveal slightly less information from moment one helps the pacing a bit.

I played up to Vandenberg on a rented copy of it when I was a kid and couldn't afford a PC copy. Luckily, I found one for real cheap a week or so later.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Toups]