Deus Ex: HR....you could have been the one.

[Carpenter]

The endings were fine, and pretty much what I expected from a game that seemed to be running out of budget towards the end. It's still one of my favourite games.

Now if they could only remove those insipid fucking boss fights.

I have to admit, I didn't mind two of those boss fights. The one where you lost your powers if you made a certain decision beforehand I thought was pretty cool, and the first one I thought was actually a good test of everything I figured out before that point.

I hated that they forced you into a combat role but you were still able to hide and use explosive traps to fight him. I would have liked an expanded story and the ability to let them live and have it affect the story, but other than that I thought it was pretty cool.

I liked the way the first guy was a bit robotic, as if it was a showcase of what Jensen could easily become. Mythological walking through the room and shooting at anything that moves. It pretty intense.
I was mostly built for stealth at that point so it really forced me to think of new ways to beat him.

Could have done without the others though.

I agree with you, but my problem with what you just described is I don't think it was ever the developer's intention; you made your own battle using tactics that worked for you. I was playing a largely stealth role but I was taking guys down with a silenced pistol and the tranq gun, meaning I didn't really have anything in the way of mines and the like when I got to that boss, and my current weapon set did precisely fuck all against him.

That's the only reason they left all kinds of weapons lying around the room, because otherwise people playing certain types of character would have been royally boned and had to restart their game.

It all just seemed very lazy and ham-handed to me, when the rest of the game is so open-ended, that with bosses they stick you in these little rooms and just force you to lay the smackdown on guys until they die (as you say I'd have liked the option to let the first guy live after I defeated him.)

I would have considered it a masterful touch if you were able to talk your way out of each of the fights, and I wouldn't feel I'd have lost anything from my experience by not having to do them because for me the most satisfying moments in HR came from clashing wits against enemies in the dialogue trees, not shooting at them in the corridors.

The boss that messes up your augs depending on your choices was a nice touch, though, but still annoying as shit because the full-on gunplay wasn't all that great in HR.

They also supply you with grenades and I think mines in the room, although I am not sure about the mines. really wish they just had grenades double as mines like in the first game, that was a system far ahead of it's time. On that note, I liked HR's version of mine disarmament better, but I played through almost the entire game before I realized it was even possible.

But as horrid as the boss fight was compared to the rest, they still supply you with the gas canisters and the fire extinguishers (which stun him for a short time) which I liked.

I'm not saying it was good, I just don't think it was as bad as people made it out to be.

You made another good point though, the gunplay wasn't that great.Aiming always felt off for me and I know this may seem like blasphemy, but I sort of wish I had to option to just play in third person. The cover system seemed perfect for the steal bits, jumping out of them made it almost impossible to tell if an enemy had me in it's line of sight until I exposed myself too much. The aiming never felt right either, no matter how much I adjusted it.

I know people say "you don't get it, DE is never meant to be a shooter" but that's not true. The original worked great as a shooter, it just required you to think before you react in certain situations. With the obvious parallels to Robocop, I would think HR would have been even better as a shooter.

 

[rob_simple]

They also supply you with grenades and I think mines in the room, although I am not sure about the mines. really wish they just had grenades double as mines like in the first game, that was a system far ahead of it's time. On that note, I liked HR's version of mine disarmament better, but I played through almost the entire game before I realized it was even possible.

But as horrid as the boss fight was compared to the rest, they still supply you with the gas canisters and the fire extinguishers (which stun him for a short time) which I liked.

I'm not saying it was good, I just don't think it was as bad as people made it out to be.

You made another good point though, the gunplay wasn't that great.Aiming always felt off for me and I know this may seem like blasphemy, but I sort of wish I had to option to just play in third person. The cover system seemed perfect for the steal bits, jumping out of them made it almost impossible to tell if an enemy had me in it's line of sight until I exposed myself too much. The aiming never felt right either, no matter how much I adjusted it.

I know people say "you don't get it, DE is never meant to be a shooter" but that's not true. The original worked great as a shooter, it just required you to think before you react in certain situations. With the obvious parallels to Robocop, I would think HR would have been even better as a shooter.

I agree that the boss fights aren't as bad as people say, but I think they were woefully unpolished compared to the rest of a game; I just couldn't help but feel that they were added as an afterthought to appease the gun-toting CoD lunatics that can't go five seconds without shooting someone in the face.

I wish there had a been a completely third person option too, but mostly just because I thought Adam looked cool as fuck. I can't really remember too many problems with the aiming but I tried to go for CQC takedowns whenever possible, other than that there were just the standard problems of getting my guy to look the right way depending on how he chooses to bond to his cover.

I'm with you, I don't understand those people really, the thing I loved about DE was that it was whatever you wanted it to be, which is what I felt let down HR because there were times when they went 'fuck choices, this is what you are doing now get on with it.'

Overall, it still allowed for more freedom of choice than most games in recent memory and is one of the few where I think I could go back for a second playthrough and have a completely different experience. For that I think it deserves shedloads more praise than it has ever received.

 

[soren7550]

Deus Ex: HR will always be burdened by the terrible, crippling gameplay flaw that it is a stealth game pretending to be an RPG.

EDIT: Dammit boyfriend, stop posting in my account! I *WILL* tell people your name if this keeps up! Especially your middle name!

 

[Carpenter]

They also supply you with grenades and I think mines in the room, although I am not sure about the mines. really wish they just had grenades double as mines like in the first game, that was a system far ahead of it's time. On that note, I liked HR's version of mine disarmament better, but I played through almost the entire game before I realized it was even possible.

But as horrid as the boss fight was compared to the rest, they still supply you with the gas canisters and the fire extinguishers (which stun him for a short time) which I liked.

I'm not saying it was good, I just don't think it was as bad as people made it out to be.

You made another good point though, the gunplay wasn't that great.Aiming always felt off for me and I know this may seem like blasphemy, but I sort of wish I had to option to just play in third person. The cover system seemed perfect for the steal bits, jumping out of them made it almost impossible to tell if an enemy had me in it's line of sight until I exposed myself too much. The aiming never felt right either, no matter how much I adjusted it.

I know people say "you don't get it, DE is never meant to be a shooter" but that's not true. The original worked great as a shooter, it just required you to think before you react in certain situations. With the obvious parallels to Robocop, I would think HR would have been even better as a shooter.

I agree that the boss fights aren't as bad as people say, but I think they were woefully unpolished compared to the rest of a game; I just couldn't help but feel that they were added as an afterthought to appease the gun-toting CoD lunatics that can't go five seconds without shooting someone in the face.

I wish there had a been a completely third person option too, but mostly just because I thought Adam looked cool as fuck. I can't really remember too many problems with the aiming but I tried to go for CQC takedowns whenever possible, other than that there were just the standard problems of getting my guy to look the right way depending on how he chooses to bond to his cover.

I'm with you, I don't understand those people really, the thing I loved about DE was that it was whatever you wanted it to be, which is what I felt let down HR because there were times when they went 'fuck choices, this is what you are doing now get on with it.'

Overall, it still allowed for more freedom of choice than most games in recent memory and is one of the few where I think I could go back for a second playthrough and have a completely different experience. For that I think it deserves shedloads more praise than it has ever received.

Well I find your first statement to be really judgmental. COD players are not the issue, lazy design is. Those "COD fans" can easily "shoot something with a face" long before that. The boss fights didn't follow a first person shooter template, more a standard 3d or 2d platformer style boss fight where you have a repetitive pattern and you have to exploit it.

I agree on a lot of that but I think much of that "you can play through again" stuff is overrated. The choices don't amount to much besides dialog changes. Some of them were really cool, but pretty much all of them had no major effect on the main story.

Also I think the game did have some awesome boss fights if you can stress the definition of boss fight. The battle with the guy in the sewers planting bombs and turrets I thought was pretty cool honestly.


If this is a game that impressed you with the storytelling and choices, you should really try LA Noir or even Alpha protocol (lazy combat but very good story and choice system) because I thought they handled it much better.

If the game had been finished, subplots and mysteries solved in a satisfying way, or the main plot fully fleshed out instead of ending abruptly on a "Rage virus" climax, it could have been a good game.

As it is, it's one half of a very good game. That is just disappointing.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

I actually liked the endings. They made sense and fit with the tone of the rest of the game, plus it wasn't ME3 style where all of your choices were terrible and led to the same outcome.

 

[jollybarracuda]

I thought it ended well enough, even if it was just a "choose your ending" kind of thing. What made it better for me was that they really gave compelling arguments throughout the whole game about augmentations and whether or not they are beneficial or not; so by the end, it was like it said "Okay, you've had the whole game to think over whose side you want to be on- now choose".

It's still a bit of a cheap ending, and i would have loved a bit more from it, but im happy with what they put together. Now the bosses...

 

[viranimus]

Wow.. just wow.

Honestly I thought DEHR was by far and away the single best game of 2011. It wasnt a retread (CoD or Skyrim) wasnt niche oriented (Dark Souls LA noire) Wasnt a medicore rushed sequel to a great game (Arkham city) Wasnt made by ubisoft. You get the idea.

Ill grant you that after you leave detroit the gameplay really bogs the game down horribly. In Heng Sha, Montreal, And Detroit and hengsha revisits are massive time sinks. I also have problem with the inventory system being rather antiquated, and annoying to deal with.

But really it was a good game, and a resurrection of a loved game, that managed to update the game but remain faithful to the original for better or worse.

Then there is the narrative. The games narrative bogs in the middle but damn near every game is guilty of this. However the last act and the "endings" made for one of the most compelling and enjoyable experiences ive had in gaming. I see the endings being the best endings for any video game I have played in years.

Funny how different tastes and perspectives can see the same thing in a different way.

 

[Charles Scholle]

I didn't care for the endings, but not just because of the tone shift, or the way it fed out of the "Endingtron-2000." My problem was how it seemed to take Adam out of the decision. See, the choices were up to him, but they were all based on someone else's opinions. Whichever choice you made, it felt to me not so much like YOU, the player, Adam Jensen had made a decision as you had decided that someone else was right. You spend this game doing jobs for a boss who turns out to be untrustworthy, often against an organization founded by a politician/group of politicians who turn out to be untrustworthy, or a genius scientist who turns out to be untrustworthy. What I really wish was that there had been an option to just walk away, or disappear, or you know, NOT have to kill myself and everyone (including all the blameless people who I'd had to non-lethal my way through to the final boss-fight) while getting Darrow, Sarif, and the politician-guy out of the picture.

I didn't mind that the girlfriend turned out to be alive, I just wish they'd bothered to resolve that better; you show up, she's alive, she tries to explain why she's been doing...um...what she's been doing (sorry; almost spoiled it), and then whoops! Adam has to jet off to the Antarctic, but maybe we'll resolve this later.

Out of curiosity, can anyone remember an instance of someone who was really glad that they'd been augmented? Because there are people who are pro-augment and anti-augment, but you never see someone who's about to get augmented or has been augmented who thinks it's the greatest thing ever.