[Liberator]

I know I'm a bit late with this, but I picked this up during the Summer Sale I just finished it.

What to say?  I saw a couple of reviews complaining about the graphics, but aside from the uninteresting skyboxes and some stiff facial animation, it looks great.  It's very depressing, with no really "good" ending, Sarif's I guess, but I guess that was the point.  I enjoyed the characterizations, except for Jensen's continual "batman voice".  It's very message heavy, without ever really beating you over the head with any one point of view.

On the whole, I'd give 4.5 out of 5 or 8 out of 10 or whatever.  It's probably the most complete realization of a concept with very few hiccups that I've seen in a while.

[Alex Heartnet]

Yeah, while it's arguably not quite as good as the first Deus Ex, it is still a great game that can easily stand alongside its predecessor.  Its biggest flaw is the boss battles which don't offer any real choices - but at least the developers actually addressed that problem with the DLC.

The game's subject matter...well...a great deal could be said about it, and different people may have different interpretations of the events.  The fact that it doesn't provide the answers to the questions it asks is downright brilliant.

Having beat the game on the highest difficulty setting - on my first playthrough, no less - I can say that carefully picking your battles and considering your options matters more then twitch skills.  I started out the game using non-lethal weapons only, but later on I had to switch to lethal weapons just so I could survive.

[Fineus]

I'd say Alex Heartnets opinion reflects my own quite well.

Especially where boss battles are concerned - that was a silly thing to put in there that could've been done differently but the idea that you have to adopt completely new approaches to enemies that you could otherwise take down with the equipment you have normally was a bad move. A lot of people on forums seem to have felt frustrated about that one.

I really enjoyed the storyline, some nice bits I didn't see coming in there that kept me interested. Audio was good - lots of nice dialogue in there although Jensens prevalence towards Batman-speak was a bit OTT at times.

I did like the graphics. Quite a polished engine and a nice look overall - but it might have benefited from just a touch of realism. I remember a lot of the crates you move around etc. looking a little too pre-fabricated and not at all weathered by time (something that could be said for quite a lot of the scenery). It would've been good to have a layer of grime on things a little more.

Overall though? Fun game play, nice story, played it through to the end and am glad I did. I'd rate it 8/10 as well.

[Liberator]

Oh, I forgot to mention that Malik is freaking hot!

[Akalabeth Angel]

I played it last week as well, best game I've played in a while.
I didn't mind the endings, it was a bit . . . ham-fisted but the one I chose was sort of a happy ending. Though the whole final act was a bit lame, particularly in terms of enemies and so forth. (I thought I'd have to be infiltrating a robot-guarded facility).

I didn't care for a lot of the acting though, it was all very samey "Oh Jensen's going to cross his arms again try and look tough", though the voice acting was okay and there was a lot of interaction so I can overlook that.

The boss fights were a bit frustrating at first, but I got past them even on hard (and in one case handicapped by a certain "twist" that I saw coming)


The only thing I didn't like was the energy bar. It was pretty dumb that I could buy batteries, and buy recharge rate but I would only ever recharge one battery. I had to eat a granola bar to get more than one. That was . . . stupid quite frankly, and I almost never ran with more than one battery (unless I needed to cloak for a longer period of time).

[Fury]

I never invested into additional batteries, only energy recharge rate. I never bothered to carry around energy bars for eating either. I do just fine and not counting bosses, I can do a full stealth playthrough.

[headdie]

Literally finished my first play though last night on the middle difficulty, overall very good and makes a nice change of pace from the CoD inspired just keep shooting it will be all ok in the end play style and story, nice to see there is still some respect for the classic brain over brawn franchises.

biggest issue was the afore mentioned boss issue, especially the first one with the player suddenly going from popping off mooks with a single shot from a non lethal weapon or melee strike to suddenly most weapons in your inventory are damn near useless and no melee.  then the last boss anded up the near opposite in difficulty

Spoiler:

had several restarts involving run few tactical shots and run again, ended up cover shooting him with my laser sighted 10mm in the head for most of a 16 round clip and he died.

The new way they did the significant conversations was also nice, and the xp bonus for non lethal kills was a massive plus for me.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The new way they did the significant conversations was also nice, and the xp bonus for non lethal kills was a massive plus for me.

Well, the only problem as total biscuit said in his video is that, the XP distribution seems favoured to certain types of play. I played the stealthy, non-lethal most of the time type of guy too and had most of my augs activated at the end. But if you use a door code rather than hack it, you don't get extra XP for example (except for exploration bonuses).  So, I don't know if some people got screwed playing more run and gun.

I started doing more killing after a certain event in the third act compelled me to.

"non lethal kills" is a bit of an oxymoron btw hahaha. "takedowns" would be more appropriate but whatever. Everyone gets it haha

[headdie]

"non lethal kills" is a bit of an oxymoron btw hahaha. "takedowns" would be more appropriate but whatever. Everyone gets it haha

doh

to be honest I think all the Deuce EX games tend to favour stealth/system hack play with the exception of Project Snowblind, but that explored a pure military aspect of the themes involved

[The E]

Snowblind is not a Deus Ex game.

[MatthTheGeek]

I think he meant DX-ish games. Snowblind does share the whole augmentation theme with DX, although it barely shares anything gameplay-wise.

[headdie]

Snowblind is not a Deus Ex game.

originally it was going to be the third game but it's development cycle had it releasing within a couple of years if IW and after the reception IW got the Deus EX got dropped, along with a few setting adjustments so while it is not part of the canon storyline.  While as commented the game play was more gun heavy you can still see the morality aspects involved, especially later into the game.

Project: Snowblind is a first-person shooter video game released for the Xbox, Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 2 on February 22, 2005. It was originally conceived as a multiplayer-focused third game in the Deus Ex series, Deus Ex: Clan Wars, but after the less than expected commercial performance of Deus Ex: Invisible War, it was decided to set the game in its own universe.[1] Nevertheless, it remains a spiritual sequel to Deus Ex and retains many visible and conceptual links to its progenitors.