pyrhic
3081
I was thinking this very thing.
I thought AP told a better story and the gunplay was SO much better.
I’d be curious to see if anyone did serious gunplay in DEHR at hard level. In general, i found the guns too weak, too inacurate, and without a reticle, too unforgiving whereas the AI was an unusually good and lethal shot.
I’m surprised by the Alpha Protocol love here. I bought it in a Steam sale, and it took me about 40 minutes to get to the “I don’t want to play this anymore” state. Whereas, despite the things I’ve bitched about in this thread, I felt DEHR was excellent.
For example, Alpha Protocol expects you to use stealth, but doesn’t give you much more in the way of tools for stealth than the original Deus Ex did. DEHR is far better at stealth than either game. Alpha Protocol has that awful, vague conversation system where you have no idea what you’re going to say, and which penalizes you if you don’t react immediately. As much as I dislike DEHR’s conversational “battles,” they’re infinitely better than AP in that regard.
I’m not alone in those relative reactions to the two games. DEHR has a metacritic score of 89; Alpha Protol’s is 72. Given that we’re talking the 7-9 scale, that’s night and day.
I didn’t really feel like I needed more tools, and I don’t recall stealth in AP being any more difficult than in DEHR. You were always in a third-person view which made spotting enemies easy.
Alpha Protocol has that awful, vague conversation system where you have no idea what you’re going to say, and which penalizes you if you don’t react immediately. As much as I dislike DEHR’s conversational “battles,” they’re infinitely better than AP in that regard.
Replies weren’t described exactly but for the most part, they were not as vague and unpredictable as you claim. But at least AP had real choices which is only very rarely the case in DEHR, aside from “accept/decline quest” (and why would you ever decline a quest?). The conversational “battles” in DEHR are few and far between, and in the one I played most recently the correct responses were utterly impossible to figure out, even with the help of the implant – I just had to reload and try different things until I won. Infinitely worse than just about any conversation in AP – never mind that writing, voice acting, and characterization are much better in AP as well.
Razgon
3084
Im curious - Does people honestly think Deus Ex: HR is a bad game? Or is it just the semi-usual nitpicking I’m reading wrong?
Hunty
3085
I think it’s a great game. For me it just occupies that sort of space where it’s so good in so many ways that saying so seems a little bit redundant. So you can’t help but end up critiquing the stuff that would have made it even better.
Warning
3086
So I somehow figured out 28 hours into the game that I can disable cameras. I feel really stupid.
That’s because you’re trying to min/max the conversations (as DE:HR would have you do) rather than simply trying to do what you want with them. Don’t like someone? Tell them to go fuck themselves and the game has a cost/benefit for that choice. Not all of the conversations are successful, but it’s one of those things that you really start to appreciate the more you take risks from the original “don’t piss anyone off” approach that we’ve been trained into through the years when you replay.
I’m not alone in those relative reactions to the two games. DEHR has a metacritic score of 89; Alpha Protol’s is 72. Given that we’re talking the 7-9 scale, that’s night and day.
It’s not a game with a broad audience, largely because it requires patience beyond 40 minutes in order to appreciate it. That’s fine, I don’t expect everyone to like it and there are many sound criticisms that can be offered of the finished product. It has a story architecture that I haven’t seen in a game since voice acting and increasing production costs launched everyone into the modern Bioware/Molyneux/etc illusory branching path thing. As Townsend noted in the other thread, that’s something that only a minority of players are going to appreciate, so why bother? It’s even possible that DEHR had more of that in mind originally that got shitcanned as the shiny bits that guarantee sales took more of their time.
But metagamer is what you use when you don’t have substantive opinions available to discuss (ie it’s a new game, you’re a stockholder trying to find an indicator in a subject you’re not interested in beyond how it can make money for you, etc), it’s not a blunt instrument with which you refute them because you don’t care enough about the topic to form arguments. If you want to talk AP the threads here should provide ample grounds for comparing your experiences to those of others.
And, again, I like DEHR, and it’s my first DE experience that has lasted more than the first hour of gameplay (I just haven’t really had the opportunity to play the first without getting distracted, and the second was abysmal on the xbox). But it’s not the scale of choice that I expected given what the buzz around the game was, that is, going beyond the pathfinding in the level to a more systemic level of impact. It’s still a damned good game and well-spent 50 hours by my reckoning.
It took me forever to figure out that if there’s a two way connection to the red security nodes on a hacking grid, it’s often a much easier route to hacking since hacking all reds (especially when it’s just one) gets you everything on that grid. At that point I’d hacked everything in every level almost through the end of the game…
Teiman
3089
@Lizard_King Thanks for your comment about AP. I was about to write that, I even made some attemp to put my opinion on words. But your post has everything I wanted to say about the subject with better writting.
No, I think it’s pretty decent actually! Just strangely flawed in some ways, and rather boringly workmanlike in others. I certainly wouldn’t advise people against playing it, but it’s no GOTY candidate for me, no more than say Dungeon Siege 3.
No more than Dungeon Siege 3? Heh, and i thought i would be criticized me for being too harsh with the game! :P
Dungeon Siege 3 is underrated! The start is pretty meh, sure, but I loved the city with its gnomes and revolutionary robot workers.
Teiman
3093
Why has no one tell me about that robot workers?
Do you have a video of that?
Withouth a video everyone will still think the game is about fighting bad controls and the camera, in a diablo-like game with poor looting.
Hugin
3094
I don’t think it’s bad. But I think it’s…clunky?
I’m playing the PC version, and all the menu/UI buttons are oddly unresponsive and feel slightly misaligned, as if they’re overlays on a hotspot map that’s scaled improperly.
A lot of the game systems just don’t work very well until you put points into augs. So instead of a powerful feeling of “I want to spend points to be awesome at such and such”, it can feel like “I need to spend points to not be terrible at such and such, and any points I spend in one area means hours more of another area of the game not working very well”
And yes, the default movement speed is really driving me crazy. Getting anywhere feels like it takes forever, especially if it involves powered aug stuff on a timer, like the stealth.
It may be nitpicking, but cumulatively the game isn’t much fun for me, thus far. As I said earlier, it’s not comparing favorably to me to ME 2, Bioshock, or Far Cry 2.
Increase the base movement speed and the base sprint duration by 50 to 100 percent, and let me start the game with say, 4 praxis points to spend immediately. Fix the weirdly “off” feeling UI buttons. Redo that awful, awful informant woman. Cut back slightly on the cat hair moustache feeling of some of the mission design. That would go a long way.
Hunty
3095
I’m being super completionist, and yet I somehow missed her. I guess years of London living must have honed my “walk through streets ignoring people digging through the bins” skills to perfection. A slightly depressing thought. Anyway, in this instance it sounds like missing her was the best solution all round, really. I wonder what the voice actor’s take on it is.
That said, it’s far from alone in the field of ropey accents in this game. See the aforementioned Foghorn Leghorn impersonator, or a notable lady of the night who appears to be inspired by Cartman. It’s almost up there with original Deus Ex. Well, maybe not quite.
Warning
3096
Thank you! It’s been driving me nutty and I was worried it was just me or something about my system.
Wait til you meet the vaguely British/Irish/Scottish/? scientist voiced by a Frenchman near the end.
Hugin, in case you missed it Kurina linkeda recent mod that would allow you to address many of your concerns (and gets rid of the startup logos, which is worth it on its own). I guess it depends on how much restraint you think you can have, but I was grateful for the opportunity to test out combat Jensen in a small dose in a game I have no intention of replaying.
Thanks, that’s kind of you to say.
Incidentally, good to see you around these parts again, Lizard King.
You can turn the reticule on in the options menu, it is just turned off by default. Head shots are no less lethal on hard, so I really didn’t find it any different.
Anyone else notice that the incidental music in China is lifted directly from Fallout 2? I think it’s the New Reno theme… :)
