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gaming DEHR > DEMD, A stupid opinion about FPS tutorial comparisons


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I'm an excessively biased Deus Ex fan so I can not be trusted to type a review of the game. So instead, I'll be comparing it to my favorite single player game ever that's still my favorite single player game ever even after 7 playthroughs. This blog breaks down both games part by part to explain why usually DEHR is better than DEMD

 

 

TRIGGER WARNING: Excessive praise

 

 

Intro/Tutorial

 

DEHR's intro and 2 tutorial levels are truly perfect. At the start of the game, there's a cut scene of a Picus news report about current events happening before the game takes place and introduces you to who your character is, who your boss is that you'll be forming a boss/worker relationship with, and who the girlfriend you'll be on a mission to rescue is. You see them interact with each other and learn a hint of what their personalities are like. After it ends, you can explore the room and learn how to move, look, and action button. Then when you (Adam Jensen) talk to Megan Reed, Adam Jensen's GF, you 2 start discussing the history and future plans of the company you work at while strolling through the labs for 2-4 minutes and get subtly introduced to other scientists who are about to get kidnapped. Then you go in an elevator and talk to the IT security guy who'll be your advisor throughout the game. And then you go to your boss's office for finalize things. Look at all of this delicious juicy story

 

Then the building gets hit by a terrorist attack that security at 1st thinks is a massive fire and you go check it out. In the 1st tutorial, there is no HUD. It's just you with 1 gun and infinite bullets. The health meter doesn't need to be shown because even when it is shown, the screen indicates how much health you have by how red the screen gets. Here you learn how to move, aim, and shoot, where are the 3 most essential things to FPSs. The only other things you'll learn here are crouching and picking up items

 

After the 1st tutorial, you see an intro movie about Adam Jensen getting rescued and healed at a LIMB clinic. Even during this like 2 minute movie, the game drops a subtle foreshadow. "His body can take it" -David Sarif. "Miraculous" -LIMB doctor. In the universe of Deus Ex, you'll learn that not everyone can handle augments and they'll need a special drug to help them physically and psychologically cope with it. But that LIMB doctor was surprised by Adam's biological compatibility with the technology, which is why he said that 1 word

 

After Adam fully recovers after 6 months, he returns to the office with a glitchy HUD and your 1st task is to meet the tech lab IT security guy again, Frank Pritchard, to learn a little bit more about him. And he explains how the HUD works in a way that doesn't sound like a game is being explained how it works. As for the rest of the 2nd tutorial, you basically learn how low level augments work, learn to play pacifistically or violently, and at the end, you'll learn how the dialog system works. And the story behind the 2nd tutorial is that radical protesters hijacked a secret factoring lab and no one in Sarif Industries knows how nor why they knew about it. To exit it, you talk to Fareta, your VTOL pilot, and you 2 get to know each other

 

LOOK AT ALL OF THIS STORY!!

 

DEMD's tutorial sucks. You jump into the game with all of the abilities of the previous game. The tutorial isn't even a straight line to help give the player a sense of direction. There's even a puzzle before you fight a single enemy. It doesn't narrow things down the the essentials so you can learn things 1 at a time, you just go full speed at the start. The story behind the tutorial is that you're an anti terrorist soldier and you're doing a solo stealth mission that has almost nothing to do with the main story. Bland and generic as fuck

 

DEHR: 69/10

DEMD: -1/10

 

 

 

That's all I feel like typing after work. Part 2 will be IDK IDK when

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Having played through every Deus Ex game save The Fall, I have enjoyed all of them, even the much maligned Invisible War, although that was clearly the weakest.  The good thing about the Deus Ex series is that each game does seem to bring something good and interesting to the table, its not a constant decline from the original like what often happens with sequel entropy.  Here are some thoughts on each iteration.

 

The Original Deus Ex:  Probably still the best.  Its got the tightest design, the best story and the most content.  

 

Pros:

 

Best Interface:  Everything is done from a first person perspective with solid controls.  Taking cover is simple of matter of walking up to a corner and leaning around the wall.  The reticle expands when movement or another effect compromises accuracy.  Its simple, reliable and you are never disoriented by pre-rendered BS or find yourself unable to take cover behind a wall because the game won't recognize the wall as a wall.

 

Tight Resource Management:  The player must carefully manage ammo, energy, non-regenerating health, "hacking" tools and other items carefully, as all are in limited supply.  Smart play and careful management of resources are what yield success.  It also makes exploration that much more important.

 

Best Levels:  They may look ugly, but the levels in this game are easily the largest and most expansive with the possible exception of Prague in Mankind Divided.  And a great many levels are this way.

 

Most Content:  Far more levels and locations than in the other games.

 

Best "Hacking":  What is considered hacking in other games is actually divided into lockpicking, electronics and computers.  Each which basically takes a one or more of a consumable resource and a small amount of time (where you can be spotted, shot etc.) and fits in organically with the resource and exploration gameplay the rest of the game is constructing around.  No stupid minigames here.

 

Best Bosses:  Between the time devoted to get the player to know the bosses story wise, the ability to defeat the bosses at differing points on time throughout the game and the wide range of methods available to defeat the bosses, the original does bosses the best, although Mankind Divided does get close.

 

Melee Weapons:  The game features a wide variety of solid, useful melee weapons.

 

Best Story:  The story is easily the deepest of the four games and carries the highest stakes, with the most competing and intricate factions.

 

Most Enemy Variety:  Your not just fighting generic guards and robots in this game, you go up against mutant monsters, Roswell grays, Men in Black, and augmented cyborg soldiers.  

 

Cons:

 

Weapons:  For such a brilliant game, the weapons are kind of boring.  Its got your typical pistol, shotgun, SMG, sniper rifle, rocket launcher setup with only a few stand out weapons, namely the plasma gun, crossbow and energy sword.  Mods add some variety, but the only one that really stands out is the silencer.

 

Augmentation Management:  The augmentations in this game are quite useful, but every single one consumes energy, and every single one must be toggled on and off manually.  This quickly becomes a pain, and even Invisible War has better management if only thanks to a few passive mods in that game.

 

Graphics:  The game hasn't aged well.  A lot of things look downright ugly.

 

 

Deus Ex Invisible War:  The much maligned Invisible War isn't a bad game, it just falls far short of the high standards of the Deus Ex series.  It is easily the worst of the four, though.

 

Pros:

 

The Endings:  If their is one thing Invisible War gets right, it is giving the player a satisfying conclusion, something that the rest of the series seems to struggle with for some reason.  The endings to Invisible War are varied, interesting and impactful.

 

Silent Running Mod:  This is kind of damning with faint praise, but making the silent running mod passive was an excellent idea.  Even with low power consumption, you are constantly alerting enemies in the other games because you forgot to toggle the mod or didn't realize you were close enough that you needed to enable it.  Or alternatively, you just walk around everywhere crouched and forget you even have the thing.  Making this mod passive meant you were using it all the time.

 

Bot Domination Mod:  Not particularly useful, but super fun.  Tag a robot, no security terminal required, and then you get to pilot the bot from a first person perspective for 30-60 seconds causing mayhem until the bot shorts out.  Its a shame it never made a return in this format.

 

Cons:

 

Tiny Levels:  Levels are a fraction of the size they are in the original despite this being a more recent release,  and level design gets worse as the game progresses, as if the game got rushed out toward the end.  It falls far short of any of the other games in this department.

 

Story:  The story is largely forgettable and the factions that are supposedly controlling the world behind the scenes are a shadow of their former self.  Need to take out the Illuminati leaders, there is a small tent over there protected by two guards.  Don't even get me started on the Knights Templar!

 

Character Customization:  This games scraps the skill system from the first and severely cuts down on the number of mods and the number of mods you can fit.  Easily the shallowest character customization of the four games.

 

 

Deus Ex Human Revolution:  Almost as good as the original and a welcome surprise after Invisible War, this game kept the high standards of the original and brought them into the modern gaming era.

 

Pros:

 

Graphics:  Perhaps obvious given its recent release, but this game is downright gorgeous.

 

Music:  The music is similarly amazing.

 

Weapons:  Its promising to see that the game does something to excel over the original in the gameplay department, and the weapons are definitely it.  The game is field with nonstandard weapons such as the PEPS, crossbow, laser and plasma gun while unique mods such as exploding rounds for the revolver, armor piercing rounds for the pistol and guided rounds for the SMG make even the standard weapons stand out from each other.  More conventional mods such as silencers and laser sights add further weapon customization.  You will want to play through this game just to try out different weapons and weapon combinations, and each weapon feels truly unique.

 

Augmentation Management:  As most augmentations are context sensitive, it is far easier to manage them than the augs in the old games.

 

The Tutorial:  As mentioned above, the tutorial was excellent.

 

Cons:

 

The Bosses:  The bosses are an exercise in frustration because they are the antithesis of what Deus Ex gameplay is built around, which is a variety of choices and approaches to each situation.  But there is only one choice against the bosses: direct combat.  No stealth, no talking your way out, no hacking, no nonlethal attacks.  If you constructed character that wasn't built for direct combat, prepare to be pulling your hair out trying to beat the first boss, who has the added immunity to melee attacks.

 

The Hacking:  Easily the worst part of this game.  While the hacking in this game is far more elaborate than its predecessors, that does not make it better.  It breaks the games limited resource approach by not only being free to attempt an unlimited number of times, but by returning experience and often other resources.  The trade off is that it waste a massive amount of the players time in an uninteresting minigame with poorly optimized controls that will have the player constantly selecting the wrong actions.  It will sadly return in the sequel, but at least there the controls have largely been fixed.

 

The Ending:  The ending the Human Revolution is the worst of the series, and in the running for the worst ending of any video game every.  Simply put, it doesn't have one.  You simply push a button and listen to a monologue barely related to your decision while stock footage plays.  Did somebody loose the budget for the ending or something, because this ending defies explanation.

 

The Story:  The story honestly felt kind of week in this game.  A lot of it revolves around the kidnapping of Megan and the highly uninteresting group of mercenaries who kidnapped her.  The more important story, that involving Darrow's madness inducing chip, sits largely in the background, making this story feel lower stakes than it should.  The stakes feel higher in the sequel, even though they aren't, because the story is more focused on the important events leading to the climax.

 

No Melee Weapons:  The pre-rendered takedowns are simply no substitute for proper melee weapons.

 

 

Deus Ex Mankind Divided:  The direct sequel to Human Revolution has received several gameplay refinements and probably has some of the best gameplay in the series, but in hampered by a lack of content.

 

Pros:

 

The Augmentations:  Refining the existing augmentations in Human Revolutions and adding some new augmentations which are fun, useful and interesting, this game has the best set of augmentations in the series.

 

The Stealth System:  The stealth system in this game is the most transparent and the easiest to understand, making in clearly apparent how to hide from or distract enemies.

 

Hub World:  Having a large single hub gives the game a freeform and open world feel.  

 

Boss Battle:  While the original did bosses the best, this easily does the actual boss battle the best.  The battle at the climax is in a huge arena where the player is free to used hacked robots, stealth, thrown objects, grenades, mines and anything else he can think of in a protracted engagement against the boss.  It is easily worth the three crap battles of frustration found in Human Revolution.

 

Cons:

 

Lack of Content:  While there is plenty to do in Prague to occupy the players time, there seems to be a lack of serious, challenging content and most of the games side missions are trivially easy.  And is there any reason the two Jensen's stories that came with the game couldn't be included as part of the main plot?  The ability to only do the Palisade Bank mission or the Machine Cult mission didn't help matters.

 

Microtransactions:  While the game was thankfully balanced without their presence, the temptation will be their to cripple the players progress in future sequels to encourage them to buy some of the "optional" character upgrades.  This could doom the series if Square Enix gets too greedy.

 

No Melee Weapons:  I still want my melee weapons dog gone it!

Edited by Twilight Dirac
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