Deus Ex

[psyco6]

Anyone play Deus Ex Human Revolution?
I like it a lot, similar to Fallout with the quest and playing like I want to.

[pershainovitsh]

Nope, but I've played through the first Deus Ex and am playing the second one right now. Both are pretty good, but time hasn't treated them well. Both are prone to crashing, so I have saved a lot. In the end of Dx 1, I had about 400 saves. I was saving almost every minute. But it was a very long game, at least in today's standars.

Dx 1 doesn't have DirectInput enabled, so the mouse will only move in one dimension at a time, so no diagonal aiming. Surprisingly I could get used to that. But after playing it for a couple of hours and then doing anything else with the computer, I was moving the mouse in the weird fashion I had to play the game. There is a way (go to Preferences through the in-game console) to enable DirectInput, but it causes a big so you can't use the cursor in the menus, such as inventory.

I've noticed that people really don't like Deus Ex 2, but I think it's okay. The aiming is better, the characters look a bit better (although they don't blink this time), there's a ragdoll system so you can throw bodies and items where you want. I think it works on the same engine as Thief: Deadly Shadows, which I'm also playing at the moment. Both have the same throwing animations, both have similiar guard behaviors and both have annoyingly long (less than a minute, but still) loading times between areas. For some reason the levels are split into smaller levels, and are divided by these.. portals or doors.

Anyway, Deus Ex has the best and the funniest quotes I've ever heard in a game. The combat sucks in both games, in the first he enemies just run like headless chikens, and without the right skills you won't even hit them, and in the second one the enemies take ridiculous amounts of bullets before they die. Unless you do a headshot with a sniper. Still, a fun game.

Here's a compilation of JC's funniest quotes [contains some minor spoilers if you watch it. ]: www.youtube.com/watch?v=htnhNyRiAfE&feature=related

[psyco6]

I use Rule #2 from Zombie land "Double Tap".

[pershainovitsh]

Well, I'm quadriple-tapping with the pistol and shotgun, but the enemies just don't want to die... Maybe there is a melee weapon as good as Dragon's Tooth in the original Deus Ex to be found.

To people who don't know how powerful Dragon's Tooth was: with any other melee weapon (with no melee-enhancing augmentations) it takes about 2-3 hits to kill a normal human. But with Dragon's Tooth you can kill with one swipe. Even the strongest and heavily armed guards (actually they may be robots) it takes only two hits, and one hit from behind. With firearms those robots take quite a lot punishment, and they are equipped with rockets.
Dragon's Tooth also could destroy nearly any destructable item with one hit. The only downside of this lightsaber-ish weapon was that it took many inventory slots, four if I recall correctly. But it was worth the space it was using, you could basically just run to the enemies and hit all of them until no one remained. Especially if you have the invicibility augmentation, you can be the Predator. I guess the Silent Footsteps or Faster Runnning augs would help too, but I never found them.

Anyway, double tapping seems to work fine in some games, and probably in real life too (why would it be used if otherwise). Usually I can't hit a barn in Project Reality, but once I tried experimenting with the double-tap technique. Surprisingly, one or even two of the shots landed where I was aiming!

[psyco6]

I get sick of hacking into computers and such.That gets frustrating I'm about ready to trade it for rage.
I get sick of the it always being dark and depressing.That is how it is getting where I live after the time change LOL.I did enjoy shooting up the Hive Nightclub .

I like the post apocalyptic genre better.

[pershainovitsh]

At least in the first two Deus Ex games, there was always an option to hacking (and pretty much everything). Maybe you can find an username&password for the computers and security terminals? Or maybe you can go around it? Or have a break of playing Human Revolution for a week or two and then try again.

I find it a bit contradictive that you don't like darkness and depression, but you like post-apocalyptic stuff.

[psyco6]

Nov 12, 2011 17:44:43 GMT 1 pershainovitsh said:

I find it a bit contradictive that you don't like darkness and depression, but you like post-apocalyptic stuff.

The weather is nice in the Fallout series.

I'm trying not to cheat by looking up pass codes and such.I'm taking a break from it.

[psyco6]

Thank you for the advice.I got through the part I was stuck on.
I now use Scorched Earth in the game.I find it works for me rather than the sneaky Pete stuff.
This game isn't all that bad.

[pershainovitsh]

Good that my advice helped. In games like Deus Ex, changing your strategy can be useful, maybe for the rest of the game, maybe for a few minutes to get around something tricky. In Deus Ex 1 I was pretty much forced to be stealthy and try to avoid fights, since the aiming was so bad (and if you hadn't put skill points on the right categories, there was a huge amount of deviation) and there was so little ammo. Well, at least for my (silenced) pistol+crossbow+sniper+combat shotgun+Dragon's Tooth sword combination. Most of the time I only had one or two spare clip for my guns.

Hod do you think it's cheating if you look for the passcodes? I didn't mean checking them from the internet, but from inside the game. Dx1 had usernames and passwords hidden in some places, and Dx2 had them too, but this time you didn't actually get to read and type the codes yourself, preventing cheating by making you actually find the code on every playthrough. Is hacking the only way to access security terminals in Human Revolution?

[psyco6]

That's why I go in heavy and kill everyone.I thought you meant check online for codes lol.
It is fun to turn turrets and robots against enemies.Cool story with a lot of twist.

[psyco6]

Beat it and enjoyed the choices in how to end the game.

[pershainovitsh]

I started playing Deus Ex: Invisible War (the second in series) again, continuing my game. Now it's somehow more interesting than before. I realized I could be a stealthy character, and basically play it like Thief, either avoiding enemies or knocking them out, while avoiding setting off alarms.

I chose my augmentations so they would help my stealthy approach:
- invisibility is obviously a great help, although it drains a lot of energy when used, even when maxed out.
- silent footsteps is another helpful augmentation. With it maxed out, I barely make any sound whether I'm sneaking, walking or running. Also lets me fall from a height without getting injured. This one's passive, so it's always on, and doesn't drain energy.
- strenght augmentation. Lets me pick up heavy items, throw them far, makes my melee attacks stronger, and gives a couple of extra inventory slots. So I can pick up heavy items and place them in front of a door so no one can open them (of course the item must be on the side the door opens), and I can throw garbage cans and other stuff at enemies to kill them.
- EMP attack on melee. This lets me destroy enemy bots and surveillance cameras with melee. Handy, and I don't have to use the rare grenades or half a dozen mags on a bot.

Here's my strategy: I sneak crouched everywhere, locate the enemies, and decide the best way to deal with the situation. If I must take them out, I will turn invisible and follow them until I'm close enough to bash them with my baton (which knocks them out). If possible, I try to hide the bodies.

The physics engine makes the game very fun. Do you want to break into a coffee shop (!?!) ? Throw a trash can through the window and get in. Unfortunately there are often alarms that trigger when a window is broken, but if you have a certain modification for a gun, you can shoot the glasses without setting off any alarms.

But there's a couple of things that make it frustrating to play. The constant crashing makes you scared to do anything. Once I tried to skip a conversation cutscene that starts every time you go into a tavern (which you must enter many times) and it of course crashed. I tried skipping it again, and it crashed again. So I have to listen to the conversation every single time I go there (and why do they always have to have the same argument about disabling weapons in a combat zone? They've had the conversation three times already!)

And once I pissed some armed factroy workers, who started shooting at me. A guard heard the shooting (I didn't fire one shot) and came to check what's going on. He saw how the workers were shooting at me, but of course he didn't do a thing. I'm quite sure it's not about corruption, but rather bad coding.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the gameplay and the plot.

Edit: I don't know how do my posts end up being so long.

[pershainovitsh]

Just finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I liked it a lot. As usual, I was playing a stealthy character. If I could avoid enemies, that's what I did. If it was possible to knock them out by punching or by using the stun, I did. In other cases, I used a silenced pistol with a laser pointer and armor piercing rounds. I also upgraded my hacking ability to the maximum and hacked everything I could find to open locks, access security terminals and to gain experience points. The augment that allowed me to jump very high proved to be surprisingly good and useful. So was the augment that allowed me to fall from any height without receiving any damage.

The story was really good and full of twists and references to the first Deus Ex, which takes place about 10 years after Human Revolution.

I liked how almost everything has a consequence. If you kill a person who is a part of a side mission, you fail the said side mission. Unless of course you are ordered to kill them. Even minor things had an effect: as an experienced gamer I searched every room and place, and a work mate of mine said he had been receiving complaints of me going to the ladies' restroom! As my defence I can say that it was empty at the time and I misinterpretated the futuristic gender sign above the door.

I didn't like the boss fights. There were some in the first Deus Ex, but they were a lot better made. You knew them a lot better than the people you fight here. And there were other ways of defeating them than just shooting.

In my opinion Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the best game made this millenium. It has a good plot, good gameplay (shooting guns, especially the pistol feels really good and you always had a choice to do things differently), good systems (augmentations were better designed) and everything. I highly recommend this game.


Now, I thought I could start the game again, this time killing all the enemies and even the quest handlers (or going completely stealthy, you get bonus xp for "ghosting" a level without getting seen and you get an achievement not only for that, but also for not killing anyone except the bosses). But thanks to Steam (-ing pile of...) which has to be running to play the game (even if I have the disc version, and I think it even downloaded the full game from Steam instead of installing from the disc. Well, at least I don't need to put the disc in the tray when I play), it's becoming quite a hassle. First of all, if I wanted to back-up my saves from Deus Ex 1, all I needed to do was to go to the Deus Ex installation folder and copy the Saves folder. Which is actually exactly what I did before I upgraded my computer by changing every component... Because of the save limit in DE:HR (99 saves max) I had made some back-up saves. The saves were found in a bizarre location in the Steam installation folder that I only found thanks to some Steam forums.

So now I just deleted every save file from there and tried starting up the game. But no, it wouldn't restart. Apparently Steam's cloud sync was synchronizing my save files, or in practice adding the removed ones back. The other option to delete saves is to go to "load game", click the "x" next to the save file and click accept when it asks whether I'm sure I want to do this. A little misclick and the game starts loading the save. This way deleting 99 saves would take about five minutes I think. Why must it be so difficult? I don't think I would have any troubles with Deus Ex 1 if I deleted the save files. It would take a minute or more depending the amount of saves. You know, just "paint" the ones you want to delete and press delete. There's no reason why you should do this one by one. I'll see if I can find a better solution here.