DX3 reviews?

[DDL]

They do at least have a perfectly good reason for not letting you swim: Jensen almost certainly has very very negative buoyancy.

"Hey, welcome back, Adam! Looking pretty hot! Oh, by the way, you lost like 30lbs of subcutaneous fat when we cut all you limbs off. Don't worry though, we replaced them with METAL"

[that guy]

The metals only very thin. Its a complete vacuum inside. That's why he can jump so high.

[EER]

I thought that was because of the rocket boots?

[paladin181]

My biggest problem with HR was pretty much my biggest problem with the original DX: Level design.

-The city hubs in both games really challenge your suspension of disbelief. Very few places were there realistically set up city hubs despite having the tools to do so. Example:

In both Detroit and Hell's Kitchen, the boundaries are buildings. Streets that literally run to nowhere except within the defined grid. There are a few "Tunnels" out of Hell's Kitchen that are blocked with pulldown doors. What? There were better ways to do this. Detroit has you either running through a L train station or some back tunnels to get to either part of the map. Really? There are no ROADS that go there, even if they were BLOCKED? In both cases here, the developers would have done well to take an aerial shot (even use google maps for the more recent game) of major cities, not even the one they were necessarily in, and building their maps from a small portion of those, rather than the cobbled together feeling the city hubs have at the current time.

-Also, security is far too easy to bypass in DX games. I mean, where are the infrared motion sensors and wide angle cameras? These things are commonplace today in security. Is it feasible to assume that security gets so much drastically WORSE in the near and even distant future?

-Enemies in crowded areas automagically know your footsteps from their compadres'. Because one military boot sounds DRASTICALLY different than the next. This mechanic needs work as well, and has since early stealth games in general.

-The inability of JC or Jensen to disguise themselves. If I were a stealth operative, the first thing I'd do is research my enemies (whom they already know) and dress like them. Infiltrating an enemy base would be 20 times easier if they couldn't look at you and instantly say "hey, you don't belong here".

-Not to mention the inconsistencies. Why are Jensen's augs so generally useful while most of JC Denton's are generally not worth the time to install them? I thought Nanoaugs were supposed to be SUPERIOR to Mechanical augs. Helecopters in 2027 don't use rotary blades (at least the BEE doesn't) where as in 2052 they do.

Overall, the DX games are very enjoyable. I love the way they play. But in the end, all the Deus Ex games fall a little short of expectations. I'd really love to see a few more options from the next (if there is one) DX.

I really think as far as games in the stealth/choose-your-path genre go, the Hitman series hit the nail on the head. Detailed environments that feel like the boundaries are mostly natural, with multiple routes and methods of reaching your targets. Want to walk right in and gun everyone down? Possible, even if not likely to be successful. Want to sneak in dressed as the butler? Sure. Want to go in through the tunnel under the palazzo? Great. Snipe your target from half a mile away? If you've got the skills. The story, while good, is not nearly as good as Deus Ex though.

[DDL]

-The city hubs in both games really challenge your suspension of disbelief....In both cases here, the developers would have done well to take an aerial shot

The problem with this is that virtually all cities are designed to be cities, not game levels. Realistic cities do not make good game levels, and enjoyable game levels do not make good cities. More to the point, realistic cities would tend to place vastly more demand on the game engine: if you look at hengsha, it's largely designed so that you can't look across the entire map at any point, and even when you reach the rooftops you can't see down into the streets (plus big inexplicable billboards facing brick walls, etc etc). Making a nice open-plan municipal area designed for ease of civilian use..would generally produce a barely-playable and generally shitty map for a DX game.

-Also, security is far too easy to bypass in DX games. I mean, where are the infrared motion sensors and wide angle cameras? These things are commonplace today in security. Is it feasible to assume that security gets so much drastically WORSE in the near and even distant future?

In other words, you'd prefer a realistic system that makes stealth next to impossible? Hell, why not also make everyone use 8 digit keycodes that also require a swipe card, and while we're at it, make every password 'strong'.

"Hey mike, I'm heading home: if you need to access the server room it's 6ynHU8sVY&5mn98JHhgf293471 to get in"

-_-

There are generally going to be concessions that realism has to make, otherwise you get a game that's unplayable.

-Enemies in crowded areas automagically know your footsteps from their compadres'. Because one military boot sounds DRASTICALLY different than the next. This mechanic needs work as well, and has since early stealth games in general.

This is...hell, I imagine this would be a lovely feature to do, if AI coding was 20 years ahead of its current state. As it is, the sheer quantity of situational code that this would need ("footsteps! Are they coming from an odd direction? Are they likely to come from a room that a friend shouldn't be in? How sure are you of that? Are they behind you? When you last checked was your friend also behind you? Could it be another friend? How many allies are on this map at this time? How many allies are on this map at the start? Do we need to calibrate for allies we've seen as 'taken out'? yes!")...it would be insane. So for this one I'm just thinking...dude: no. No game will ever do this, because by the time we can get AI good enough for this to be workable, that AI will be doing far more fun things than footstep discrimination.

-The inability of JC or Jensen to disguise themselves. If I were a stealth operative, the first thing I'd do is research my enemies (whom they already know) and dress like them. Infiltrating an enemy base would be 20 times easier if they couldn't look at you and instantly say "hey, you don't belong here".

Jensen has metal arms and legs and two sunglass-ports built into his head. JC can be an albino. Neither trait lends itself well to 'disguise'. Plus the general trend the DX games aim for is either "sneak in" or "blast in". The "saunter in wearing a false moustache" method is if anything stupider than either of those two. I would tend more to think that Hitman's disguise method makes less sense in context than JC/Jensens' lack of disguise method. I mean, dude: he's a big bald white dude with a barcode on his neck. O wait he's dressed as a triad member so he must be a triad member. SUBTLE.

-Not to mention the inconsistencies. Why are Jensen's augs so generally useful while most of JC Denton's are generally not worth the time to install them? I thought Nanoaugs were supposed to be SUPERIOR to Mechanical augs. Helecopters in 2027 don't use rotary blades (at least the BEE doesn't) where as in 2052 they do.

This is A)a gameplay issue: DX tended to favour "choice" over overt "utility", DX3 went for "you can have everything", mostly because games nowadays shy away from making anything ostensibly useless, because modern gamers are whiney whiney little bitches. You would never see a PS20 in DX3.

And more in keeping with the fiction: B) Jensen's augs necessitated loss of all limbs, most of torso, large amounts of head. He will never, ever look normal. He probably only needs 200 calories a day.
He has all the powers of a big destructive robot because he essentially IS a big destructive robot.
JC on the other hand can more or less pass as a baseline human. If you're going for a slightly less 'overt' operative, or more importantly, technology that you can mass-implement without widespread invasive surgery, then nano-aug is the way to go. Remember that the whole point of nanotech was so page could rule the planet, not to make a better field operative.

Overall, the DX games are very enjoyable. I love the way they play. But in the end, all the Deus Ex games fall a little short of expectations. I'd really love to see a few more options from the next (if there is one) DX.

Translation: "I have unrealistic expectations".

Like you say, the hitman series gives you a lot of choice (disguise system caveats as above), but ultimately you're still basically "killing a guy". If you set your objectives to be so damn one-dimensional, you're inevitably going to have more options to play with. The DX games tend to have slightly more varied objectives (and indeed rarely have a 'kill this guy' mission), thus have to cater for slightly more utility, thus are more limited in the "variety of options per mission".

So there's that.

From the sounds of things, your complaints are really summed up by saying "I'm not really a fan of the kinda gameplay DX excels at". Which is fair enough. I just don't think it's fair to criticise a game for not being something it wasn't trying to be anyway.

[Jonas]

In both Detroit and Hell's Kitchen, the boundaries are buildings. Streets that literally run to nowhere except within the defined grid. There are a few "Tunnels" out of Hell's Kitchen that are blocked with pulldown doors. What? There were better ways to do this. Detroit has you either running through a L train station or some back tunnels to get to either part of the map. Really? There are no ROADS that go there, even if they were BLOCKED? In both cases here, the developers would have done well to take an aerial shot (even use google maps for the more recent game) of major cities, not even the one they were necessarily in, and building their maps from a small portion of those, rather than the cobbled together feeling the city hubs have at the current time.

I respectfully disagree. Yeah it's unnatural for an area of a city to be confined like that, but the alternative is shitty gameplay. The primary priority for a Deus Ex level should be a high content density, engaging exploration, and facilitating multiple paths corresponding to the different tools available to the player. I happen to have first-hand experience that strongly suggests real-world city layouts do not make for fun Deus Ex gameplay - did you play TNM? Did you see our pretty menu map? That was supposed to be the corporate district, but it was designed to make sense, not to be fun to play. And lo and behold, the gameplay was crap.

By the way, Detroit in DXHR? Plenty of tunnels and roads going out of the area, but each of them blocked by toll booths, barricades, or broken trucks. Don't know what more you'd ask for, to be honest. You know, the first time I came to that crawlspace that took me to the other part of the city that I'd normally go through the train station to reach, I had a similar reaction: wait, what? This is a major connecting passageway? But look, if you've seen one road you've seen them all. By switching them up with the occasional subway tunnel or crawlspace, they've added more variation to the routes you take through the city, and they've made it easier to chunk the city layout so you can understand it and memorise it faster.

Suspension of disbelief isn't the only thing to worry about in level design.

Also, security is far too easy to bypass in DX games. I mean, where are the infrared motion sensors and wide angle cameras? These things are commonplace today in security. Is it feasible to assume that security gets so much drastically WORSE in the near and even distant future?

Yeah funny how real security systems aren't designed with convenient loop-holes in them. It's almost like you're supposed to be able to break into places in DXHR.

Enemies in crowded areas automagically know your footsteps from their compadres'. Because one military boot sounds DRASTICALLY different than the next. This mechanic needs work as well, and has since early stealth games in general.

I'll give you this one. But again, it probably makes for better gameplay in most situations. What DDL said.

The inability of JC or Jensen to disguise themselves. If I were a stealth operative, the first thing I'd do is research my enemies (whom they already know) and dress like them. Infiltrating an enemy base would be 20 times easier if they couldn't look at you and instantly say "hey, you don't belong here".

May I suggest you go play Hitman instead? Maybe that sounds overly harsh, but seriously: there are legitimate complaints, and then there's entitled bullshit. Disguises are aesthetically a completely different sort of stealth from line-of-sight stuff - Deus Ex was clearly trying to invoke a sort of commando/police raid aesthetic. You can say that implementing disguises would've made it more of a spy game, but I guess that's not the sort of experience they were going for. And if you actually play a Hitman game, it should be abundantly clear that implementing disguises is actually a shitload of work.

Not to mention the inconsistencies. Why are Jensen's augs so generally useful while most of JC Denton's are generally not worth the time to install them? I thought Nanoaugs were supposed to be SUPERIOR to Mechanical augs. Helecopters in 2027 don't use rotary blades (at least the BEE doesn't) where as in 2052 they do.

BEE-800 isn't a helicopter, it's a VTOL - presumably it's a lot less stealthy. VTOLs exist now and they will probably be even better in 2027, but they're essentially planes, not helicopters, and sometimes you need a helicopter instead of a plane.

As for the disparity between Jensens augs and JCs, well... clearly the augmentations in DXHR are just better game design? Would you have preferred if Eidos Montreal went "oh well since about half of JC's augmentations are largely useless in Deus Ex 1, Jensens augs in DX3 should be even more useless!" If you really want an in-world explanation, there are simple ways to get there. For example, JCs augs were prototypes, he was the second person in the world to get that type of augs. By the time Jensen gets mutilated, mechanical augmentations have been used and field-tested on special forces soldiers for a while already, so they're easier to get right. Perhaps more importantly, JCs augs aren't meant to be more powerful than mech augs, they're just meant to be more discrete - the whole idea is you can't tell JC from a normal human being (unless you look him deep in the eye, hence the shades). Adam on the other hand is half metal, and it shows (though it doesn't show quite as much as you'd expect, granted).

I really think as far as games in the stealth/choose-your-path genre go, the Hitman series hit the nail on the head. Detailed environments that feel like the boundaries are mostly natural, with multiple routes and methods of reaching your targets. Want to walk right in and gun everyone down? Possible, even if not likely to be successful. Want to sneak in dressed as the butler? Sure. Want to go in through the tunnel under the palazzo? Great. Snipe your target from half a mile away? If you've got the skills. The story, while good, is not nearly as good as Deus Ex though.

Make no mistake, Hitman: Blood Money is one of my favourite games. But it's prescripted. Every single thing you can do in the game, every trap you can set and every kill you can make is meticulously set up for you in advance. Every place you can hide a body, every way you can gain entrance to a place, and every weapon you can smuggle past security was deliberately set up that way for you by the game designers. The Deus Ex series is about emergence, as opposed to pre-scripting. It's about giving you tools that are broadly applicable and letting you loose in a dynamic world designed bottom-up to adapt as well as possible to whatever unexpected thing you think to throw at it. It's a subtle difference, but it's important in the end. And I think it makes the Deus Ex series more viable in the long run, because games like Hitman take ridiculous ass-loads of resources to make, with all its special-case scripting and context-sensitive animation, even compared to Deus Ex.

[Edit] ...

Fuck you DDL.

[DDL]

Yours was better. Plus you actually had an answer for the helicopter question.

[TheUnbeholden]

In other words, you'd prefer a realistic system that makes stealth next to impossible? Hell, why not also make everyone use 8 digit keycodes that also require a swipe card, and while we're at it, make every password 'strong'.

"Hey mike, I'm heading home: if you need to access the server room it's 6ynHU8sVY&5mn98JHhgf293471 to get in"

-_-

There are generally going to be concessions that realism has to make, otherwise you get a game that's unplayable.

em no. The passcodes are realistic as they are at the moment. Just a short number code.
Though it does seem weird that you can't pick up swipe cards from dead enemies. I think this could have been a small but good addition to the game. Of course security keeps track of where swipe cards are used, and if a guy is in a area hes not scheduled to be it could be suspicious. I think the game could have accommodated this.

But lack of wide view cameras ... and no infrared beams seems a little weird. I'm not talking about retinal scanners for Christ sake...

This is...hell, I imagine this would be a lovely feature to do, if AI coding was 20 years ahead of its current state. As it is, the sheer quantity of situational code that this would need ("footsteps! Are they coming from an odd direction? Are they likely to come from a room that a friend shouldn't be in? How sure are you of that? Are they behind you? When you last checked was your friend also behind you? Could it be another friend? How many allies are on this map at this time? How many allies are on this map at the start? Do we need to calibrate for allies we've seen as 'taken out'? yes!")...it would be insane. So for this one I'm just thinking...dude: no. No game will ever do this, because by the time we can get AI good enough for this to be workable, that AI will be doing far more fun things than footstep discrimination.

Actually I would say the game is realistic. AI should be able to easily discriminate the footstep sounds of someone running, and from someone walking. Because you shouldn't hear a persons 'walking' footsteps or only barely hear them. If someone runs then naturally a guard would get suspicious. The game is absolutely fine so I think you're response was totally unnecessary.

Jensen has metal arms and legs and two sunglass-ports built into his head. JC can be an albino. Neither trait lends itself well to 'disguise'. Plus the general trend the DX games aim for is either "sneak in" or "blast in". The "saunter in wearing a false moustache" method is if anything stupider than either of those two. I would tend more to think that Hitman's disguise method makes less sense in context than JC/Jensens' lack of disguise method. I mean, dude: he's a big bald white dude with a barcode on his neck. O wait he's dressed as a triad member so he must be a triad member. SUBTLE.

First of all the barcode is on the back of his head... not his neck. A cap or any hat hides it easily.

second of all... you do realize that in Hitman Blood Money, its pretty much stated in the beginning of the game that no one actually knows how Agent 47 looks like. Its assumed (that in the previous games) agent 47 is a Silent Assassin, meaning leaving no witnesses alive, no evidence. In the storyline the only one who knows his identity is the one who found the video tapes of when Agent 47 went to kill the one who genetically engineered him. Thats how good he is.
When you play the game, you have the choice of going in leaving witness, and massacring everyone, or just playing badly, and building your notoriety. But Agent 47 is not notorious in the beginning of the latest game.

third of all, if you dress as a triad member they will see through it very easily if you get close enough because of you're non-asian eyes (you ever play the old hitman game where your in a place with lots of asian gang members? you couldn't even get close to them, the disguise only worked from afar).

so in other words you're full of it.

fourth of all agent 47 (in Hitman Blood money) couldn't use a disguise that belongs to the gang of black guys for obvious reasons....

But I agree that it's unlikely a mechanical augmented agent could use disguises when Adam has metal on his face (even if he could hide it on his hands with gloves).

-Not to mention the inconsistencies. Why are Jensen's augs so generally useful while most of JC Denton's are generally not worth the time to install them? I thought Nanoaugs were supposed to be SUPERIOR to Mechanical augs. Helecopters in 2027 don't use rotary blades (at least the BEE doesn't) where as in 2052 they do.

Minus the "Spybot" which should never have been a aug to begin with... You can imagine that Aqua lung in the original Deus Ex would have the same usefulness that it has in Deus Ex HR (it would allow you sprint for longer periods of time...rather then just for swimming.. its just they never implemented sprint into the original game) So I would say that Nano augs are just as useful if not more so then mechanical (I agree that the original game could have used more Nano augs though)

Also you have to assume that there is no health regen aug in Deus Ex HR (the game never mentions a health regeneration aug, its just a gameplay feature...there is no in game explanation as to why you can regenerate health) so thats one big advantage towards Nano augmentation, microscopic robots that can do cellular repair.
I hope theres a 'realism' mod that comes out that disables the health regeneration soon.

So lets look at the advantages:

+They have minimal surgery, with no replacement of body parts.
+They require no maintenance (mechanical augs require constant maintenance that can be expensive also)
+Can pass as a normal human being.
+They provide unique abilities that mechanical augs can't (like health regeneration)
+I would also imagine it would be cheaper when it became publicly available.
-You have less natural resistance to bullets and other harmful projectiles because you're body is not made of metal (you would need the ballistic protection aug specially to counter this problem, a separate one for chemicals/radiation & another for plasma/fire/electricity)

But, both Nano augs and Mechanical require energy to keep it operational. So I guess they are even there.

[Jonas]

I can't check right now, but I do believe one of the augs you start with in DXHR is a health regeneration augmentation (fully upgraded).

Also most of 47's disguises leave his barcode fully visible, so DDL's point mostly stands.

[DDL]

TheUnbeholden: I genuinely can't decide whether you're doing this deliberately or by mistake, but you appear to be responding both to me and to paladin181, but attributing it all to me.

So my "actual opinions" and your "idea of what my opinions are" may vary considerably.

My comment regarding passwords was exactly THAT. Realistic passwords and keypad systems would be awful, awful gameplay. Even if they kept the fucking "oops I done left my login details on the floor behind a vending machine again" elements in (which in themselves are a massive concession to favouring gameplay over realism), having to physically enter gYHnsk78dnc52n2 is so fucking tedious that nobody would bother. Keeping things like "8967" and "VincentM" as keycodes and passwords makes it actually playable.

As for infrared beams and wide angle static cameras: christ did you even read what I said? Or what Jonas said? If the game featured genuinely well-designed security systems IT WOULD BE SHIT. The whole point is not to make a security system of unbeatable excellence, it's to make a security system that can be bypassed by any player employing at least half a brain. Invisible infrared beams would make a lot of sense in the real world, sure. In the game it would just result in "OH THAT IS BULLSHIT" and lots of rage.

You might as well argue that a camera that can magically spot you (as opposed to all the other people in the room) and then remain focussed on you, and indeed set the alarm off itself, demonstrating that it has heuristic AI capabilities... yet is still for some reason assigned to pan back and forth like a moron..is incredibly unrealistic. And indeed you'd be RIGHT. But again, GAMEPLAY fffffs.

As for footsteps: they don't just detect running, they detect walking. Essentially: crouch=no sound, otherwise=sound. And they only react to your footsteps, not all the other footsteps. That was paladin181's point. And I agree: it IS stupid. But as I noted, it's incredibly difficult to make a realistic alternative.

And finally. Oh god I've annoyed the Hitman fanclub.

On the off chance you're having trouble seeing the point past the standard DDL-inflated hyberbole (it's a weakness, I admit), my argument was that disguises are generally incredibly silly from a realism perspective. Seriously. I mean, christ: you just put on a different suit and that works? No, no it doesn't. Even if they code for it not working up close (which is definitely clever), it's still bullshit. It's a gameplay concession.
I work at a relatively large research building, several hundred people, and I can tell you for a fact that not one of them looks anything like a tall bald man with a barcode on the back of the head (also, are you seriously calling me on 'back of the head vs back of the neck? That's both hilarious AND awesome ). People don't need a detailed description of agent 47 to be nevertheless capable of spotting that TALL BALD MAN is somewhat unusual-looking. He looks cool, yes, but (outside of fiction) the general best trait for anyone in a stealthy surveillance/spying/infiltration/hitman type occupation is to be as nondescript as possible. "Utterly utterly unmemorable" is the ideal, not 'badassery'.

So: while disguises are a nice touch, and indeed impressively implemented, even with the clever aspects to them that you pointed out, they are still bullshit from a realism perspective.

And finally...all your aug stuff seems to be directed at paladin181? The health regen is described in several datacubes and the like as being more like 'damage repair': similar to some of the self-healing screens and fabrics in development now, it's like a sandwiched layer of gluey stuff: break it or punch a hole through and the glue leaks out, sets, and plugs the hole. Able thus to repair low-level non-sustained damage, but still suceptible to concerted attack. It's....pseudoscience, but it's not bad pseudoscience.

[AEmer]

47 isn't actually caucasian (spoilers for hitman 1 ahead so uh, you've been warned). He's a genetically modified merger of men of disparate races - in fact, all the top bosses you kill in Hitman 1 are in 47's dna. That's a russian gangster, an asian triad mobster, and a latin-american drug lord, and an austrian terrorist, and a romanian doctor...so he doesn't look quite like any one race:

http://www.wallpaper23.com/data/games/h ... ame_47.jpg

He's probably too pale to pass for a latin american unless he gets a fake or real sun-tan, but with a bit of makeup, he could pass for someone (of mixed heritage) from any of those places.

Of course, he could never pass for being of indian, african or arabian decent.

Also, I'm seriously doubtful if the HR Vtol would _ever_ be inferior to the DX Chopper. The DX chopper appears to have absolutely extraordinary range and speed as it is. These are the world records for helicopters:

Maximum overland speed: 400.87 km/h
Maximum distance flown without landing: 3,561.55 km
Maximum Speed for round-the-world flight: 136.7 km/h (record set in 2008)

And there's between 11012 and 16000 km from New York to Hong Kong, depending on how far north you'd dare go. Even supposing refueling stations in the arctic, only 2 stops, and a significantly faster overland speed than the current world record, and the optimal route, you're still looking at 30 hours worth of traveling time. Since the people at versalife are still working, and since it's night in both places (therefore it's not too late), and since JC must've spent at least 5 hours during the first new-york part of the game, it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to argue that JC arrives with Jock in Hong Kong 2 days after his kill switch was activated....which really messes that part of the game up.

By contrast, a Harriers combat range is 500 km, and I haven't been able to find a ferry range - but supposing it's ferry range is extended a similar amount as that of an A10 warthogs ferry range compared to combat range, it can probably ferry around 2-4k km.

The speed of the harrier is up to 1k km/h - though presumably that would burn fuel really fast.

Anyway, I do think it's fair to criticise the use of a helicopter in the original Deus Ex...but I'll be damned if it isn't a stupid point of contention. You're not supposed to think too deeply about this as you play, and I will bet you that I'm the first person to point out the logistical issues with using a helicopter for the things its used for in the game.

For the rest of the things Paladin 181 said:

Dude, when you're playing, you're sitting at a computer, using a mouse and a keyboard to control the body and orientation of a dude in a virtual world. That's incredibly limiting and makes everything incredibly unrealistic right there. The computers processing power is very limited, so the world simulation will be very coarse... The response loop is perhaps every worse, requirering that everything be displayed on a screen about everything in the world, through mainly a weird manifest system. And the input methods are incomprehensibly banale. If you begin to dive into these problems and don't suspend your disbelief, here's what happens:

You can't wriggle JC's ears, because there's no wriggle ear button - which means JC can't wriggle his ears. Or toes. Or even fingers. In fact, it appears JC is wearing a neckbrace, since your head is always looking straight forward. You also never appear to blink. Maybe JC's vision is augmented, but I'm pretty sure automated eye watering wasn't part of the things I saw on the aug list. And come to think of it, never once does JC Pee in the game. He must have an inexhaustable bladder as part of his augmentations, because I've filled him with about 20 bottles of booze and at least 50 soda's throughout the game. That's gotta be painful. Oh and he never brushes his teeth! Or bathes! well, he _can_ bathe, but it's with his clothes on...which probably means mercedes raunchy comments were made to JC were a mix of pity and spite, because he's a smelly, bad-breathed bum, his clothes are full of bullet holes and coagulated blood and smell of seawater and sewage, and he's apparently completely unable to either blink or look to his sides so he's probably also got some unfortunate mental illness. He also insists on moonwalking as he sidesteps, but hey, that's part of a recent fad and everybody's doing it, so whatever floats his boat.

My point is, from the very moment that you sit down to play a game, such as they are now, realism is fucking gone. Its a dirty word and should never be mentioned unless you literally mean the art-movement "realism". The mechanics of the game aren't and never were meant to be realistic. The mechanics were meant to evoke a feeling of authenticity - a feeling of, "oh yeah, (fake, ingame) fire extinguishers can put out (fake ingame) fires, just like it would work out in real life!", that gives meaning to a lot of actions, and compose a meaningful narrative which you influence as it unfolds.

Most of your criticisms fall into the same category as my above (admittedly ridiculous) ones. They fixate on small trivialities and inconsistencies and limits when the game is full to the point of brimming, as all games are, with ridiculous little flaws, absenses, and inconsistencies. That's because you're running a simulation of a fake world with fake rules and very limited detail.

Jonas and DDL have both gone into the nitty-gritty details (I suspect it keeps their game-connoseur minds sharp to pick such things apart, and they do it for the excercise), but dude, the overarching problem here is that you're delusional when it comes to what you can expect a game to do; expecting realism out of _nearly anything_ in _any_ game will leave you bitterly dissapointed.

Excuse me if the language of that last part was harsh. I don't mean it in a bad way. I get what it's like to be filled with wonder and imagination about what a game can do, and be frustrated when it doesn't. Being able to feel like you're there is intrinsic to all gaming, and being able to let the wonderful fictional world flow over you and be absorbed is incredibly compelling.

But the fact is, it's all an illusion, and any idea that the illusion should live up to arbitrary (to the game world) rules merely because it would be more "realistic" (rather than more fun) is flat out wrong. Fun is the goal, the end-all be-all of gaming, and if you consider that before you suggest a list of changes to a game, I'm sure DDL and Jonas won't find nearly as much to disagree with you about

[miguel]

You can't wriggle JC's ears, because there's no wriggle ear button - which means JC can't wriggle his ears. Or toes. Or even fingers. In fact, it appears JC is wearing a neckbrace, since your head is always looking straight forward. You also never appear to blink. Maybe JC's vision is augmented, but I'm pretty sure automated eye watering wasn't part of the things I saw on the aug list. And come to think of it, never once does JC Pee in the game. He must have an inexhaustable bladder as part of his augmentations, because I've filled him with about 20 bottles of booze and at least 50 soda's throughout the game. That's gotta be painful. Oh and he never brushes his teeth! Or bathes! well, he _can_ bathe, but it's with his clothes on...which probably means mercedes raunchy comments were made to JC were a mix of pity and spite, because he's a smelly, bad-breathed bum, his clothes are full of bullet holes and coagulated blood and smell of seawater and sewage, and he's apparently completely unable to either blink or look to his sides so he's probably also got some unfortunate mental illness. He also insists on moonwalking as he sidesteps, but hey, that's part of a recent fad and everybody's doing it, so whatever floats his boat.

ROLF

Now it's my turn:
Just imagine that when you want to reload your gun, and it is not completely empty, all of the bullets left inside the clip will be droped along with it and those bullets will not automatically apear in your inventory. To get them back, you will need to pick up the clip and load it with more bullets if you want to use it again and not use an infinite amount of clips and magazines automatically loaded by the game just because you where afraid to go with a half emptyed weapon. This leads to inventory capacity. most of the games uses an unrealistic inventory system which can meke the game more fun. Take for example "Fallout 3" wheight system or "Resident evil" inventory slots that takes the same amount of space even for little tings like keys that you could easyly could carry in your pocket. That makes sence in a game.

[paladin181]

You guys mistake me. My nitpicks are just that: nitpicks. The fact that I LOVE DX as it is (and HR isn't far behind) may have been overshadowed by the nitpicks. I was kind of tired and writing, I left out all the positives I love about the games. Yeah, I like Hitman. And MG/S. Why not? The games are fundamentally similar to DX in gameplay. At least at the base level. Stealth is the best option (in MG/S it's pretty much the ONLY option) but there are several paths to achieve your goal. You can do what you want in the world. As far as cities making poor levels, maybe Syphon Filter was an example I left off there. I'd have been much more OK with a barricade or even a collapsed building from a bombing that blocked off the street connecting one half of the Detroit neighborhood from the other. My major nitpick here was there was no way across for motorists. Starting with a city design and breaking it down from there wouldn't necessitate poor gameplay, if they built it correctly.. But I'm not a designer by default. I dabble in it on my free time, making mods for games like Oblivion (horrible rendering engine) and Fallout3/NV.

As for the footsteps, yeah, I know it's an unrealistic goal. However, detection could be lessened in many cases especially when the environment is noisy or there are alot of people present. After all, if I'm in a boiler/chiller plant and the chillers are blasting or the Generator has fired off, I'm not going to hear GUNFIRE, much less the footsteps of a guy walking on the other side of the chiller tank or Generator walknig around.

Security systems... No, I don't want them to be un-beatable. I want them to be more difficult than sneaking under a camera and disabling a numberpad and a hand press plate. If that's too much, give us the tools to get around it. Motion sensors, audio sensors, tremor plates, and infrared sensors are but a few security measures that make security worth having. Guards carry radios and check in every 15 minutes or so as well. That wasn't just in the military, but even on civilian security forces. I guess working around security systems kind of spoils me a little.

On another note, I've always found it weird when two guys are patrolling a walkway, and when their backs are turned one of them suddenly disappears, and the other, as he turns around to find his friend missing isn't even the slightest bit alarmed. Again, little nitpicks that aren't big deals.

Over all the game plays very smooth, (HR) and I like the transitions. Hengsha was one of my favorite environments in any game ever. The way it was built was generally pretty good.

I mean, I wouldn't keep playing DX and all the mods if I didn't love it, because it certainly isn't pretty or anything, but it's still a great lot of fun.

<snip>
But the fact is, it's all an illusion, and any idea that the illusion should live up to arbitrary (to the game world) rules merely because it would be more "realistic" (rather than more fun) is flat out wrong. Fun is the goal, the end-all be-all of gaming, and if you consider that before you suggest a list of changes to a game, I'm sure DDL and Jonas won't find nearly as much to disagree with you about

True enough. However, what I find immersive and fun and what you find immersive and fun could be two different ideas. They could be two completely different beasts. Heck, they might not even be in the same galaxy. I'm not complaining because it's not completely realistic, I was merely pointing out some of the things that break the environments for me. In the end, it's not game breaking. Not even close. It's a sign of how good these games are that I have to find such small things to pick at. But they do more often than not pull me out of my reverie.

Everyone plays games for different reasons but with the same goal. No matter why you play, the ultimate goal is entertainment. I am entertained by an environment that allows me to suspend my disbelief. Because of my personal assortment of experiences, certain things set off the "that doesn't seem right at all" buzzer in my brain. It goes off for you, too. Don't get me wrong. there's just a whole different set of criteria to set it off for you.

Perhaps that's why older people game less and less. They are unable to get the same feeling of doing something because there are details that strike them as wrong due to life experience.

[Jonas]

You guys mistake me. My nitpicks are just that: nitpicks. The fact that I LOVE DX as it is (and HR isn't far behind) may have been overshadowed by the nitpicks. I was kind of tired and writing, I left out all the positives I love about the games.

Again, sorry if we were a little harsh. It was fun to address your points though. I have a little more discussion of your elaborations.

Security systems... No, I don't want them to be un-beatable. I want them to be more difficult than sneaking under a camera and disabling a numberpad and a hand press plate. If that's too much, give us the tools to get around it. Motion sensors, audio sensors, tremor plates, and infrared sensors are but a few security measures that make security worth having. Guards carry radios and check in every 15 minutes or so as well. That wasn't just in the military, but even on civilian security forces. I guess working around security systems kind of spoils me a little.

DXHR (and DX1) definitely could've had more variety in the types of security system available. Taking a page out of Splinter Cell's book (note that it came out after DX1, but obviously way before DXHR) I believe that game had invisible lasers and motion censors, and probably more stuff that I don't remember because I haven't played it in ages and the last couple of games in the series were completely different from the first ones. It's a problem of communicating what's going on. Invisible lasers only work in Splinter Cell because you know the player will always have IR vision, in which the lasers appear. And if I'm not mistaken, there is a radio message warning you about the presence of invisible lasers every damn time they appear (which isn't that much throughout the game). That's because it would seem tremendously unfair to walk into an invisible laser, because the visual cue afforded by the tiny, discrete laser emitter in the wall just isn't enough of a fair warning. Imagine what a bitch the TYM server room in DXHR would've been to break into if the lasers weren't visible and couldn't be made visible because you didn't take the vision enhancement augmentation.

And jeez man, 15 minute radio checks? Can you imagine how that would fuck up stealth in this game? You're supposed to be able to feel like a badass by knocking out guards and hiding their bodies, how much fun it would it be if the alarm is always activated 10 minutes later anyway, when some guy you knocked out way back on the other side of the level failed to make his radio check?

Finally, remember that sneaking into places is just one of the ways you can play Deus Ex, and any resources spent on adding more interesting security systems for that part of the game will take resources away from combat, hacking, conversation, or whatever. AI behaviour is a relatively expensive resource in game development, and the behaviour needed for stealth is pretty much completely different from the behaviour needed for combat. Deus Ex had (in my opinion) markedly better stealth than it had combat, but DXHR evened it out pretty well. I don't mean to imply that you're not allowed to suggest any changes or additions to the game just because you don't know about the budgetary and scheduling limitations the project was subject to, but it's always nice to remember that development resources aren't infinite, and more features in one part of the game typically means less attention paid to something else

On another note, I've always found it weird when two guys are patrolling a walkway, and when their backs are turned one of them suddenly disappears, and the other, as he turns around to find his friend missing isn't even the slightest bit alarmed. Again, little nitpicks that aren't big deals.

Yeah, that's a bit weird, but again it'd just be a hell of a lot of work, and it'd make it even harder to make sure the game remains stealthable. I think most players find the stealth in DXHR to be pretty hard, harder than the combat even. Presumably that's the motivation for implementing greater XP rewards for stealth (it was still a shitty decision, but whatever). Everything you're suggesting would make the stealth even harder

Everyone plays games for different reasons but with the same goal. No matter why you play, the ultimate goal is entertainment. I am entertained by an environment that allows me to suspend my disbelief. Because of my personal assortment of experiences, certain things set off the "that doesn't seem right at all" buzzer in my brain. It goes off for you, too. Don't get me wrong. there's just a whole different set of criteria to set it off for you.

Perhaps that's why older people game less and less. They are unable to get the same feeling of doing something because there are details that strike them as wrong due to life experience.

DDL should probably weigh in on that one. He's a doctor of biochemistry, and when he was playing DXHR he kept spamming me with ridicule of all the things DXHR got wrong about biology or chemistry. In the end, I still got the impression that DDL enjoyed the game a lot.

I think older people game less and less because they start a family, and raising a kid takes up a ridiculous amount of time. Just you wait until the first generation of gamers start to retire and their children move out. I bet they'll be fucking glued to the monitor

[miguel]

There are invisible lasers that moves in Metal Gear Solid and it was way before Splinter cell. And if you dont find the IR vision googles you can use the smoke of cigarettes to know where the lasers are.
When i first played DX I thought the cigarettes had the same use lol. Even the original Metal Gear had invisible lasers.
You could grab the attention of the soldiers by hitting walls. In DX it was improved by thowing stuff. also the predator like stealt camo that is very popular today, the cover/shoot system used in third person shooters was a prototype in MGS. It was almost fully developed in a Nintendo 64 game called Winback then Resident Evil 4 perfected it and killed survival horror in the process.
The alert timer in DXHR is straight from MG. Don't forget the EMP grenades to temporaly disable the cameras and robots and hidyng the bodies was an idea that was not posible in MGS.It was implemented in MGS2, You still can hide the knoked out soldiers in MGS. The idea of hiding bodies belongs to MG not Splynter cell.

I still think that metal gear had the biggest infuence on stealt games.