Deus Ex 3. I shit you not.

[Vaiti]

Especially here in Finland. Good luck getting console titles anywhere else for a decent price.

[Tale]

Making your enemies stay down.

[Quinton]

Last night with vsync off, level load times were 30-35s.

Today with the new patch and vsync on, I just saw 16s.  That's not lightning fast, but wow is it an improvement.

[K9]

Oh wow this game is good.

[Zetor]

Anyone else having problems with the Shanghai Justice quest? there is nobody to talk to at the limb clinic.  I may have bugged it by going there for the two praxis points before i had the quest.

[Xilren's Twin]

I can tell already im going to have to play multiple times.  I had to force myself not to reload the end of mission 1 just b/c I didnt pull off the outcome i was trying for, but just rolling with it.  It was harder than i thought, so my next aug upgrade was the social enhancer. :)  Trying to go non lethel this first run through, but shot gunning people is just too much fun.  Breaking into random apartments for fun and profit.  You never know what you'll find. Let's see, we've got drug dealers, bad employees, weapons dealers, gang turf.. Detroit is a fun place.  Advancing the main plot is a secondary thing.  Then again, I wonder exactly how much crime can i pull off when actually inside a Police Station...

As someone else said, Deus Ex, I've missed you.

[kildorn]

So end result: very good game.

Minor gripe: the last level and endings? Phoned the fuck in. Also, you have to sit through the entire credits to figure out what the shit happened to a major plot point they left hanging.

But everything else? Awesome, even if I am the least stealthy ninja on the planet. I mean, I think I silenced my pistol and rifle just for laughs more than anything. And as unstealthy as is it, I cannot help but turn every robot and turret I find into a friend. In one level I converted a turret and just carried it around, opened a door and dropped it through the other side, waited a bit for the gunfire to stop and continued on to the next room.

[Zetor]

Question: does killing the dudes in the prologue count against the pacifist achievement? (I'm getting near the end, and if that causes me to fail the pacifist runthrough, I will be sad) Is there a way to avoid 'em? I seem to remember at least one of them sitting in the doorway, which would be instant death if you tried to just sprint past him (no takedowns / nonlethal weapons / invisibility aug at that point).

I assume killing dudes by proxy (robots, turrets) is the same as killing them yourself as far as that achievement is concerned..

[tgr]

The only two things I can really complain about after the 2-3 hours of play yesterday, is that I'm not 100% comfortable with the cover system yet (it's partially clunky), and I feel the mouse response is a bit laggy. It's by no means a huge problem, but it feels less crisp than it could've been (and no, I don't have vsync on). The rest is just fine, and I wish I didn't have to work a few hours on saturday.

As for the playthrough itself, I'm currently playing through it violently, except the first "boss". I expect I'll have to do at least one more playthrough to do the silent mcsneaky bit.

[Quinton]

I'm going for a sort of John McClane / Die Hard approach -- basically "good" (all hostages survived the first mission) but willing to pick the bad guys off one by one rather than try to incapacitate them.  So far I've been able to mostly get away with that.  It leads to the occasional firefight when you run into a room full of enemies, and I'm not sure if it'll scale as the game progresses, but we shall see.

It took me a while to get a hang of the cover system, but after maybe 5-6 hours I'm feeling pretty comfortable with it and mostly can reasonably lurk around behind walls and things, pop up and take shots at people with reasonably competence, etc.

I like the hacking minigame.

I was surprised that so few people (1.1% according to the achievement stats) chose to .

I'm liking the game a lot.  With the new patch load times are in the 10-15s range, which combined with my better grasp on the cover system and dying less often, makes for reasonable playability.

[Fabricated]

I actually think the cover movement system in Splinter Cell Conviction is the best one I've ever used in a game and I wish Deus Ex had it. It's not terrible though.

Also the stun gun is better than just cqc'ing everybody because you don't have to burn up your augmentation batteries with the stungun, and wait for the last one to recharge between every knockout. If two people are together you can punch one, zap another.

[Yoru]

But then you don't get the awesome spittle spray when you punch a motherfucker's lights out.

I have the reflex enhancer. If two people are together, they're both meeting Mr. Fist. 

[Threash]

Question: does killing the dudes in the prologue count against the pacifist achievement? (I'm getting near the end, and if that causes me to fail the pacifist runthrough, I will be sad) Is there a way to avoid 'em? I seem to remember at least one of them sitting in the doorway, which would be instant death if you tried to just sprint past him (no takedowns / nonlethal weapons / invisibility aug at that point).

I assume killing dudes by proxy (robots, turrets) is the same as killing them yourself as far as that achievement is concerned..

They do count, sorry.  You can stealth past all of them.

[Vaiti]

The speed in which the patch was released, and how drastically it changed the loading times, is a great sign for future attention to detail for this game. I am so not disappointed.

[tgr]

Annoyingly they fixed it before I got to check if it was CPU or disk-bound, or if it was just a case of an extraneous sleep().

[Quinton]

The fact that turning off vsync helped makes me suspect they were doing a chunk of level load work on each frame, and failing to use the entire 16.66ms minus drawtime for that work.  Though perhaps there were other entertainingly non-optimal things going on as well.

[jakonovski]

How do I bind keys so that I can leap from cover to cover? The prompts just come up as "undefined" and there's nothing in the options. Tempted to break out the gamepad here.

edit: it's the jump button. How weird.

[tgr]

How do I bind keys so that I can leap from cover to cover? The prompts just come up as "undefined" and there's nothing in the options. Tempted to break out the gamepad here.

edit: it's the jump button. How weird.

That's what I found a bit clunky. Thankfully, it's not a superfastpaced game so it's not a huge deal, but I have latched on to the wrong wall more than once.

[Njal]

Anyone else find the Boss battles really a complete switch on the rest of the game? Here I am sneaking around and then I have to fight this dude who can shrug off 3 sniper rifle rounds to the head? Bah! Love the rest of the game though.

[kildorn]

Anyone else find the Boss battles really a complete switch on the rest of the game? Here I am sneaking around and then I have to fight this dude who can shrug off 3 sniper rifle rounds to the head? Bah! Love the rest of the game though.

I find them completely silly in the context of the rest of the game (hostile doesn't obey the game rules? Check. Jensen strangely just walks into every boss room completely unaware of his surroundings while he's equipped with enemy sniffing radar? Check. Bosses all have something they by all plot logic should not have? Check. You can put 20 rounds into one of the bosses in the first level and deal no damage? Check.), but thankfully you can cheese every single one of them if you buy typhoon early. Fully upgraded it will two shot every hulking tank of a boss while they can't do anything about it.

[Sky]

hitting cloak and eating about 15 candy bars while running through a wide open area.

What a horrible gameplay mechanic.

Our nation's most advanced warrior runs on fucking snickers bars. And is saddled with single digits of ammo.

Really sounding like an amazing game.

[Rasix]

Your loss.  GOTY to this point (stiff competition upcoming) by a very wide margin.  I haven't had a game keep me up 3 nights in a row past my bedtime in a while. 

[Quinton]

Some of the mechanics are a little silly, but overall the experience works for me.  The suspension of disbelief is no worse than a blockbuster action movie in most places. ^^

The character and facial animation is weak, but the voice acting is generally decent.  The lower quality/resolution prerendered cutscenes annoy me a little bit, but the overall experience is suitably entertaining. 

[Rokal]

hitting cloak and eating about 15 candy bars while running through a wide open area.

What a horrible gameplay mechanic.

Our nation's most advanced warrior runs on fucking snickers bars. And is saddled with single digits of ammo.

Really sounding like an amazing game.

There was actually an e-book in-game that explained why these nutrient bars work. I bought it.

For what it's worth, I've never had any problems with ammo and I'm close to the end playing on normal.

[Lantyssa]

Anyone else find the Boss battles really a complete switch on the rest of the game? Here I am sneaking around and then I have to fight this dude who can shrug off 3 sniper rifle rounds to the head? Bah! Love the rest of the game though.

I've only had one boss fight so far.  After coming close, but not doing so well, I tried grenades.  One Concussion, one EMP, a full combat rifle clip after each, and it was over.

[Kitsune]

Those remote detonation packs do a dandy job, I found.

I was mildly irked that it seems you can never regenerate more than a single energy cell, no matter how high you boost your recharge or capacity.  I'd been sort of hoping that you could recharge at least half of your total capacity, but nope.

[Sky]

Your loss.  

I know, I'm always so serious.

Actually it's on my list, just not a full-price buy (almost nothing is right now). I'm definitely grabbing it when it hits a good sale, and I should have new pc guts by then, too.

Just sounds kinda silly reading through the thread.

[Rasix]

.

Just sounds kinda silly reading through the thread.

So would a thread here in 2000 talking about the original.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as was the case with the original.

This one improves the game in some facets while making odd design decisions that didn't pan out in others.  

[Morfiend]

and I feel the mouse response is a bit laggy.

Turn off V-Synch and this will go away. I have it too, and on my 60mhz monitor, I get quite a bit of screen tearing with out it. But its better than the mouse lag.

[calapine]

I apologise for being the one with the inane questions, but, which difficulty level are those of you reporting overly sparse ammunition and bullet sponge bosses using?

[kildorn]

I apologise for being the one with the inane questions, but, which difficulty level are those of you reporting overly sparse ammunition and bullet sponge bosses using?

I have it on the medium one.

They're just bullet sponges. For an example, a level 2 typhoon will kill a boxguard in 1 activation. The last tank-esque boss requires 2. I believe that's the highest damage attack in the game as well. So if you're trying to just shoot him in the head, it's going to take a while. But typhoons solve everything, and I don't get why people think it has hard to find ammo, I ended the game with 17 typhoon charges.

[Quinton]

I'm playing on Normal.  I don't find ammo to be lacking, but they certainly don't throw it at you.  I explore like crazy and search anyone I kill and that has kept me topped off on ammo.  If you're going the non-lethal, non-seen route I could see there being a bit less ammo to go around, but what do you need it for?

I was amused that I was provided with only 20 bullets after agreeing with my boss that I'd be using deadly force and being told that there could be dozens of terrorists in the facility.  But afterwards, the terrorists were dead, the hostages were freed, and I had ammo to spare.  So I guess the system works!

[kildorn]

I've been playing lethal, my main complaint is the lack of 10mm ammo after a certain point in the game. Hostiles stop carrying it, so you're reliant on ammo boxes, and the game basically decides it wants to give you only combat rifle ammo and up from there on.

Ammo is a bitch in the beginning if you try for non lethal without avoiding everyone, or if you actually try and use the machine pistol. Combat rifle ammo starts scarce and gets better, the LMG ammo just sits around in boxes everywhere. I just find it funny that dudes only carry like, 4 rounds for it.

If anything, I find more shotgun ammo everywhere, but damned if I've ever even fired one of them. My 10mm and my revolver are how things get DONE in this world.

[tgr]

and I feel the mouse response is a bit laggy.

Turn off V-Synch and this will go away. I have it too, and on my 60mhz monitor, I get quite a bit of screen tearing with out it. But its better than the mouse lag.

Not to be an ass, but I did specify in the same post that I did have vsync off.

It's not bad, it's just that it feels less crisp than I expect. This is something I tend to feel whenever I'm playing a game running a non-id engine. It got better the more stuff I switched off, so I'm not even going to contemplate turning vsync on.

[schild]

I will never enjoy half the items in the game, because I have yet to kill anyone.

I don't know if that's a net loss or gain on the experience.