The biggest problem with the boss fights (and they had a lot of problems) was that you died really quick, especially during your first attempts. I know that Jensen was generally pretty fragile, but as I played stealth that didn’t really matter.
First time I fought Barrett I died in about 3 seconds. What did I learn from that ? Good boss fights ask you to learn the encounter, but they generally give you enough time to see what happens, except if you’re playing the hardcorest of games (manic shooters ?), which DX3 certainly isn’t.
Heck the boss fights in Ninja Gaiden are less directly lethal than those designed by Grip, although they’re pretty much as hard as it gets this side of playable.
The MGS boss fights can be rather tricky, and they’re of course mostly brilliant, but they always give Snake some time before eating the ground, even if your strategy is beyond hopeless.
I’m not against boss fights in games like Deus Ex, after all super cyborgs fit the universe, but in order to be playable and to give options they need to be battles of attrition rather than silly shootouts.
They could have lifted some great ideas from MGS. Something like Sniper Wolfor an urban version of The End could have been great.
Imagine tracking a boss in the crowded streets of Hengsha, setting traps, falling into ambushes…
I’ve done it several times, a few times unintentionally. If you want to do it on purpose, it helps to have the X-ray vision aug, but often you can tell because there’s a triangle on your radar that is probably on the other side of the wall.
It has two problems. You only get about 10 XP, not even the 30 XP you get for a lethal takedown, and it’s loud. Anyone anywhere nearby is going to be alarmed. Any hostiles who even see the hole later are alarmed, just like seeing a body. Which is reasonable.
The original Deus Ex had boss battles, and they didn’t suck. For one thing, you knew the people you were fighting (Navarre, Gunther, Walton Simons) pretty well, and for another, they were pretty much in line with the rest of the game.
Regular people can kill you very easily in DEHR. The first time I tried to arrest O’Malley, he drew faster than I did and plugged me. It’s not quite real-life lethal, but it can be close.
The main problem with the damned boss fights is that 3 of the 4 of them don’t start you behind cover, where you belong. If they just let you scout the situation so you knew the terrain, and didn’t start the combat with you stupidly just walking out in the open, they’d be a lot more pleasant when you first play. Once you know the terrain well enough to know where to run after the cutscene ends, all the boss combats are much nicer.
And then I finished.
If ever I should meet the dick brained jackass who decided to make the ONE achievement that I didn’t get dependent entirely on wandering around lots and lots of hostile territories and finding stupid little glowy blue things that you can’t go back and get later when you’re out, I promise here and now that I will strap him down to a surgical table and tie every single one of his butt hairs together. Then I will pour honey on him and leave him on one of those African ant piles that’s the size of an apartment building. I don’t even care about the points. I just want the stupid little badge icon that says I did everything. So very pissed about that.
The game itself? It did alright. The great thing about the boss fights is that if you plan ahead, you barely have to do them. You can basically win the last one without even trying if you have the right weapon and the typhoon goes a long way towards addressing the rest. I don’t particularly like what they did with the “endings,” which I can say without spoiling anything are just The Guy Who Isn’t Christian Bale rasping seriously over a bunch of ugly ass stock footage. That’s not closure. That’s just annoying. Particularly when you can hear them building the dialog elements behind the scenes based on your play, and the decision that you make at the end that picks your ending doesn’t change that. When you tell me every time how much trouble I went to to be moral and not do the wrong thing, it gets really easy to see the zipper.
Tony_M
3444
Thats a good point. The thing that offended me about DEHRs boss battles was how arcade they were. Enclosed environment, super tough enemy who plays by different rules, environmental factors there to help you win or provide complications. They didn’t have glowing weak spots, but thats their only saving grace.
DE had boss battles. DEHR has Boss Battles.
Tony
I got it once by accident. I didn’t have the vision aug and was punching through walls to see what was up and by accident he did a takedown. Yay!
I dunno, I think I may blame Square on this. I can imagine the discussions with the executives back in Japan like this:
Square Exec: Where are the boss fights?
Eidos Montreal: We don’t have any.
Square: What do you mean? All games must have a boss fight.
Eidos: …
Square: 3 boss minimum!
That explains the boss fights in Spacechem.
Pogo
3447
That’s nobody’s fault but your own. Achievements that depend on the player being OCD are stupid in the first place, but why are you actually trying to get that achievement? What’s it give you? Nothing. It’s an achievement that adds nothing to the game.
Good achievements are things like… kill 5 dudes with a Typhoon, or get through a level by only using takedowns, or kill 3 guys with one sniper bullet or something. Collect all eBooks? Fuck that, sir. Do yourself a favor and reprogram your brain to stop caring about “collect-a-ton” achievements.
I must admit that’s the secret to having fun with achievements. Being able to tell which ones aren’t really fun a-tall. Though now and then, here and there, there have been games which gave you in-game rewards for doing achievements. I liked that.
Oh, normally I would just disregard it. That’s not the problem. My problem is that it’s literally the only one that I don’t have, and I can’t get it without starting all over again and meticulously sneaking around and reading other people’s iPads, and I can’t have the little badge on my account that says “This dude finished that game” if I don’t get it. That’s just crappy design. Plus, you’d think that the old guy would have copies of all the crap he’s written in, like, a library at his little house or something. Sooooooo pissed over that.
The rest was fine, though. Just a terrible taste to leave in my mouth when I did the whole hard part of not killing anybody and not setting off any alarms and playing on the hardest difficulty.
RepoMan
3450
I rather prefer playing along and then suddenly getting an achievement without having any idea that it even existed. Makes me feel surprised serendipitously, without either spoiling anything (due to plot-related achievements whose very titles give something away) or diverting from my normal course of play.
If I ever, ever had time to play something twice, I might start achievement-hunting, but that basically never happens…
I’ve played through most of the game and here are some thoughts:
The first game was a lot darker. Much of the population walking around with the Gray Death was part of that. The entire atmosphere of the game was more dystopian and the themes covered by the game much broader. Deus Ex 3 simplifies matters to “Augmentations or Not?”
The original Deus Ex had much more interesting villains. Bob Page was no Jon Irenicus but he’s much better than the characters here. Walton Simons’s malevolent creepiness is on a level above what Deus Ex 3 offers.
However, the characters in general and the plot construction are very well done in Deus Ex 3. It’s a more polished game than the original.
The RPG elements of the first game were better implemented. The augmentation system was more balanced and a lot less powerful than the augmentations of 25 years previous. Who knows exactly what happened to the Typhoon system in the intervening quarter century.
The stars of the original Deus Ex, the plot and gameplay, are both again on display. This game takes a lot from the original game and doesn’t feel anything like the amazing breath of fresh air I experienced when playing the original. This is a game content to re-tread old ground rather than forge a new path.
It’s a very good and fun game, although there’s nothing special here.
LockerK
3452
It annoyed me that all of the gameplay achievements were telling you that the suave, stealth hacker was the “right” way to play this game. For a game and series that prides itself on letting you choose how you want to deal with missions, there seemed to be few instances where kill them all was a viable choice.
I ended up beating the game in ~25 hours and while it was a great experience, there were enough things that didn’t click that I wouldn’t put it on my GotY list.
TurinTur
3453
When was that? Because i don’t remember it in my game…
Pogo
3454
Yeah I agree with that too… they really seem to be pushing the player away from making violent decisions. Deus Ex wasn’t just about stealth, it was the freedom to make the choice and you got rewarded either way (though the first game still kind of rewarded exploration more than front-door-firefights). This game pushes a bit more in the stealth direction and it sort of sucks that I’m not rewarded for good gunplay. I should get 500 xp just for killing everyone in the police station, dammit.
Do you have to be completely wrong about every game you comment on? If you’ve played both ways, you would readily see how much more rewarding it is (in terms of XP, not necessarily cash) to stealthily bypass enemies or to use silent takedowns without triggering alarms. It’s also extremely rewarding to be able to hack keypads. Right now I can only hack level 2 and have little upgrades in it except for a point in Fortify, and the game quickly gets up to level 3+ keypads even in Detroit. Thankfully, the game doesn’t tend to put too many critical things in high security places that aren’t level 5… and I bought up all the AUDs from the gun runner.
LockerK
3455
Looking through the Steam achievements:
50 Hacks
50 Takedowns
100 Knockouts
No Alarms
No Kills
I’ll grant that takedowns can be lethal or non-lethal, but the only achievement for someone going through as a killing machine is to fully upgrade a gun, which a stealthy explorer will probably end up doing anyway. Throw us a bone with an achievement for 50 headshots, 25 walls destroyed, or something along those lines to reward a more violent playthrough.
Edit: and as Pogo pointed out, the in-game rewards for being stealthy are much greater: 750 bonus xp from Ghost + Smooth Operator for not being noticed on each mission.
And quicker than a lethal player, because there’s only, like, four upgrades you can apply to the dart gun and then you’re completely finished. You can actually get it all the way up to spec as early as FEMA.
Everything about the game pretty much screams that you’re supposed to be playing more Metal Gear than Doom, including the designers, and that includes the achievements.
Raife
3457
The measly 10xp (+10xp for a headshot) is pretty much all the evidence you need that the game is weighted against killing. I think you even get less xp for a takedown kill than you do for a KO takedown.
Tony_M
3458
Mock Achievements all you like, I agree they are stupid. But leave us OCD gamers out of this. We’re not hurting anyone, we’re just checking under every box in this dead end alley to make sure we didn’t miss a random Pocket Secretary.
Tony
In the real world, this is crazy behavior. But in the real world, janitors don’t keep boxes of sniper rifle ammunition in their lockers.
