The old view counts were brought across from vbulletin which counts every sub-page view as a view, that is, going from page 1 to page 10 would be 10 views.
Iām going through it for the second time right now, and Iām just as ambivalent about it as I was before. Itās got some of the highest high points and lowest low points of any game Iāve played.
It turns out that getting used to the controls is not like riding a bike. It took me a couple hours to get used to it again. And gameplay in the beginning is pretty bad, at least if youāre trying to play as a stealth character like me, because you just donāt have your skills high enough to pull it off. And then thereās the story problems at the beginning:
The main plot of the whole game is obvious by the time youāve gotten to the end of the tutorial. The first time I played, I didnāt mind so much because I assumed that it was so ham-fisted on purpose. They couldnāt be this dumb, so they must be building up to a big plot twist, right? But playing through it a second time, I know that the whole main plot really is that juvenile. Everything bad that happens in the world is because of this one evil corporation and its comic book villain CEO. Maybe they were intentionally dumbing it down for a teenage audience, but if they did they went too far.
The middle part when youāre in the three cities is outstanding. I was very interested in finding out the secrets of the minor factions and how all those characters related to each other and the terrorist plots. The locations felt exotic. The most interesting characters emerge and the dialogue system lives up to its potential. Iāve never been more on my toes in a game than when I walk in on Steven Heck and I have to decide how to react to him in real time.
There are some real choices to make too:
My first time through I allied with Albatross & G22. This time I did with SIE & VCI. Both made sense as allies and both made sense as opponents. My number one reason for wanting to replay the game was to see what happened if I chose differently, and it fully lived up to my hopes.
Gameplay is also the best in the middle. Itās challenging, but youāve got enough tools at your disposal to have multiple approaches to choose from. I assume they must use level scaling since you can go to the cities in any order, and it actually works out surprisingly well.
Then we get to the endgame and we have problems again. There are some big plot twists, but the dialogue is handled very poorly. Youāre abruptly told something shocking in one sentence and expected to make big decisions by the time that sentence is done being spoken. This isnāt a weakness of the dialogue system, itās just that these particularly dialogues were poorly written.
Like when Mina admits she betrayed you. The choices show up. āGet outā or āstayā. The way the conversation has been going so far, I assume āget outā is like āGet outta here? Are you serious?ā Oops. This is very high on my list of most infuriating ragequits of all time.
Besides the dialogue issues, we get back to the content of the very dumb main plot.
Leland offers to recruit you. I guess if you say yes to him, you would get a different ending? But why would anyone ever say yes to him? Heās been nothing but pure comic book evil for the whole game. He makes nothing but the most feeble efforts to justify his actions. And why would Leland make the offer in the first place? Everything Thorton has done up to this point in the game is clearly incompatible with working for him. The player has never been given any other choice except hating Leland until now, and suddenly weāre supposed to be able to change our minds?
Besides being dumb, I found the main plot pretty creepy. Itās basically a 9/11 truther fantasy, where (((The Corporations))) are behind all the evil in the world. Of course itās just fiction, but thereās a large part of the worldās population that actually believes in this kind of stuff and they donāt need any more encouragement.
The gameplay suffers in the end too. Abilities like chain shot get ridiculously overpowered. And then thereās the worst boss fight in history. Youāre supposed to use a sniper rifle, but in the PC port the mouse sensitivity is way too high to have any control. All you can do is hope that he moves his head under the reticle 3 times in a row. If he doesnāt, heāll kill you within a few seconds. This is my number one most infuriating ragequit of all time. I had to reload about a dozen times here in my first play-through and Iām not willing to do that again, so I guess Iām done.
Wow. I didnāt mean to write all that. Iāve never had so much to get off my chest about a game before, both good and bad.
Funny, the āmiddleā you talk about is like 80% of the game. Tutorial + Saudi + Ending are just the bookends.
I agree the beginning is rough because your character abilities are limited but this is just classic RPG early lvl growing pains. Every RPG has it in one form or another. The only major difference is this game has shooting so people get more confused about it because they are expecting instant-gratification precision aiming. The fools! As far as being stealthy in the beginning, pretty much all the Saudi missions seemed to be designed as noisy gun fights so it didnāt bother me that much but I would agree. You need more skill points and character perks and better gear to open up the stealth option. It can still be done but it is tricky.
Yeah, some of those you were clearly not supposed to win without a lot of shooting. Maybe I should have bought one suit of armor for sneaking and another for fighting and switched depending on the mission.
I stealthed everything in multiple playthroughs. it is quiet possible but of course fiddly.
Once you get Master Awareness and Invisibility (whatever itās called) it becomes sooo much easier to stealth everything. Also the auto-cloak when spotted is handy.
IIRC in the Saudi missions youāre limited to just Silent Running and Awareness for the most part so once youāre spotted the jig is up. Anything is possible though.
Iāve never understood how the game got released with that voice for the main character. Easily the dullest flattest performance I can recall in 30+ years of gaming.
I generally liked the game, but that voice actor was horrible.
Stephen Heck really makes up for it.
I tried playing this game, but the hacking minigame was too frustrating for me.
It is extremely frustrating at first. I donāt know what itās like on consoles, but on the PC itās not that hard once youāre used to using the mouse to control it. Just unfocus your eyes and try to notice where the numbers arenāt changing. And if you really canāt do it, I think you can use EMP grenades to bypass all the hacking thatās absolutely required.
I also remember there where ini tweaks that made controlling everything so much easier. But I canāt seem to find them again.
The mini-games are easy and can be completely very quickly (which is important because time doesnāt pause when youāre doing the mini-game) but take some getting use to at first. I strongly recommend 2 points in Sabotage to make them easier and add the ability to EMP them quickly when the situation demands it.
For the hacking mini-game, which has the most problems with Mouse and Keyboard, I highly recommend not moving the codes from their initial starting positions at the top (easy to do) and just scan with your eyes for the static numbers then bee-line the correct code into position. (note that the keyboard controlled code moves slower than the mouse-controlled one too) It takes practice but after Saudi I was a pro. There are a few exceptions throughout the game that give you very little time. Like 10 seconds. Best to just immediately abort and EMP those.
Sadly what I have in mind is not there. I think it had something to do with frame smoothing so that the movement of mouse especially in the minigames worked much better. There are some posts in old forums referring to this but the one specific post that had everything in one place eludes me at the moment.
Perhaps this? I remember trying various fixes the last time I played but sadly I donāt remember which one actually worked in the end. I still had major troubles with sensitivity in the hacking minigame.
So you guys are saying I should play the PC copy of this when I try again instead of the 360 copy? Because mouse controls on the hacking mini game make it easier? Hmmm, something to keep in mind, I guess.
I mostly stopped my playthrough in Taiwan I believe because I was turned off by the jankiness of the controls and the stealth portion of the game. And the fact that if I saved the game and died, when I reloaded from that saved game, something really weird happened, I forget what.
I donāt think thereās any real benefit to playing this game on PC to be honest (besides the FoV tweak maybe). Also, thereās a pretty nasty bug in the game that removes enemies if you reload a checkpoint, it shows up pretty often on the pc, no clue about xbox.
Yes that was it! Thatās the reason I stopped playing. Every time I died, when I reloaded from a checkpoint, the enemies were gone. It made me feel like I was constantly cheating.
And that was on Xbox.
Is this game backwards compatible on the XB1 now?
Sadly, no. And on the page requesting backwards compatible titles, it doesnāt show up until page 16 currently, so itās not likely to be a priority either.
Edit: Gosh, RezHD is on page 16 too. What is wrong with people?