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March 28, 2024, 03:09:41 PM

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FPS NIGHTMARES

Started by Lemming, November 17, 2019, 12:23:16 PM

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St_Eddie

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on April 28, 2021, 06:23:27 PM
Isn't there a patch (one of many that have tried to fix Daikatana, but only succeeded in making it slightly less broken) that at least makes them invincible, so you only have to worry about their inability to navigate their way down anything more complicated than an open corridor, and not about keeping them alive and managing their health and weapon pickups?

I think Lemming has previously mentioned his/her intent to play through the games as originally intended and not to apply fan created patches.

madhair60

It's a menu option in every contemporary release of the game, I believe.

popcorn

[ ] Disable John Romero's Artistic Vision

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 28, 2021, 07:04:59 PM
I think Lemming has previously mentioned his/her intent to play through the games as originally intended and not to apply fan created patches.
Sort of gone out the window, after playing Perfect Dark with inauthentic, non-crap controls.

Quote from: Lemming on April 27, 2021, 03:09:49 AM
It's tough to rate, because ultimately I think what I want in a game and what Perfect Dark offers are often at odds.
I recall feeling a bit like this at the time. I think what I wanted was for it to be more like Metal Gear Solid. Verbose guff though it was, MGS did at least have a strong sense of style to it and set pieces that were memorable in a way Perfect Dark never really managed. The sniper bit you mentioned sounds cool, but (if memory serves) the slight change in gameplay barely has time to register before you're back to running around, shooting bastards as normal. The end boss fight made me wonder why there wasn't more like that throughout the game - the helicopter that shoots at you on your way out of Datadyne could have made for a cracking set piece, but instead it's just.. there. And, despite the impressive amount of speech for an N64 game, Perfect Dark's story was a rather half arsed affair.

To be fair, it was technically pretty swanky in its day (slowdown aside) and had some neat little touches - e.g. when the lights go out during your escape from the Datadyne building, you can switch them back on and blind the baddies for a moment. The weapons were as fun as they were numerous (I particularly remember the x-ray sniper rifle, the laptop gun that turned into an automated turret and the hand grenade with the alt-fire mode that made it ping around like a bouncyball) and it was another nice touch that each faction's arsenal had a distinct look and feel.

Also, while it was superior in pretty much every way, it was always kind of overshadowed by Goldeneye 64. I remember having one of those pretentious "I'm so old, even though I'm only in my early 20s" conversations to that effect. Speaking of which: all your talk about Soldier of Fortune having different animations, depending on where you shoot the baddies, had me thinking that Goldeneye did that (minus the gory amputations) back in 1997.

Bazooka

I'm sorry but you didn't the PD multiplayer, which is sensational, and the best multiplayer on the console.

madhair60

Slight tangent, does anyone ever watch Civvie11 on YouTube? One of my favourite producers of Gaming Content. Mostly talks about classic FPS games too. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21uZkfXpT8rPY-gPgMiCwA/videos

Bazooka

Yes been subscribed for a while.

elliszeroed

Will you be doing the Command & Conker FPS, Renegade?

I think I enjoyed it, when I was a child. But I was easily jollied back then.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteNow the fun part. The game stands up well on purely mechanical and design-based merits, but what makes this game really fun is that it's all fucking insane! John Mullins is a real guy, and apparently this game is based off some of his real-life escapades. I can only assume he lied through his fucking teeth, because before you know it, Soldier of Fortune has you fighting Yakuza ninjas with microwave guns that cause people to explode after being shot - not to mention the main villain has some kind of cyborg exoskeleton.

Genuine belly laugh

Lemming

Can't find the option to disable John Romero's artistic vision, but I feel like for review purposes I should leave companions enabled anyway. Having friendly NPCs follow you through the whole game still seems like a big selling point in this era, even if the implementation is a disaster.

Quote from: elliszeroed on April 29, 2021, 07:24:17 PM
Will you be doing the Command & Conker FPS, Renegade?

I think I enjoyed it, when I was a child. But I was easily jollied back then.

Yes! I have fond memories of it too despite it being pretty terrible in parts. There's a lot of novelty value in just running around in first person in the C&C universe.

Video Game Fan 2000

#1180
The thing that Daikatana ad controversy always makes me remember is exactly how certain some ad/pr companies of the time seemed be that 'smack talk' was going to be the cultural touchstone that was going to make pc videogames the new rock'n'roll. So many ads and gaming press things were pushing the angle that trash-talking people was a big part of the experience, wanting to believe that kids would be using 'smack talk' to their friends in real life, and that they had to get out in front of the 'smack talk' phenomenon unless they wanted to be out of touch and laaaaame. I half remember there being an ad for a space sim (Wing Commander Prophecy or Star Crusader or whatever) that was advised as being the game that would push your smack talk to the limit. Like, buy this fucking frustrating unfinished mess of a game and play it online - the controls are effed up you'll be calling everyone a cunt within minutes.

It really wasn't just Romero, and I kinda believe him that the ad was meant ironically at first and then he was pushed to put it out seriously. So many of the ads at the time were worse versions of the same thing and the only difference is having someone use their real name. The thing is, Quake Deathmatch humour at the time was very arch, very 90s ironic and detached - all that 'suck it down' and 'accept my shaft' stuff was nerdy weird kids in their insular world, and the player culture wasn't nearly the 'straight white jock' image that the revisionist history of videogames sometimes makes it out to be. I always think there was a world of difference between the irony and exploitation movie feel of iD games and then millenial stuff like Fallout 2 that had South Park jokes literally just pasted into it. It felt different at the time. There weren't any self-identified gamers. Halo bros, Counterstrike  and teabagging were all years away - shooters were still weird. The "Bitch" ad still looks like an ad man's irony and context-free version of a joke he didn't get. Esp in comparison to how Derek Smart was having Battlecruiser advertised.

Obv not going to defend the whole of it or Romero in general but it seemed very convenient to me in the 00s when people starting singling out stuff like the Daikatana ad campaign as examples of how gross and macho and straight and male games used to be - as opposed to the macho cess pit of Xbox and Steam gaming of the 00s? Its the perfect alibi: look how far we've come since then. I don't remember it like that at all. iD were a genuine subculture crossover moment. even Daikatana is an attempt to make a FPS version of Chrono Trigger, as shit (and racist) as it is its still a weird fucking thing that only could have been willed into existence by someone who was an outsider at some point. There's plenty of genuinely gross stuff around the 90s shooter moment, like the Killcreek stuff, so its weird that the legendary low point is something as manufactured as the Daikatana ads.

The gameboy verison was good?

popcorn


Jerzy Bondov

There was a Daikatana ad where it was a guy's muscley chest with the logo cut into it. It made me feel all funny. I would have been about 14 I guess. I wanted to lie down on that guy's chest. That's the ad I remember, not the bitch one.


PlanktonSideburns

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on April 30, 2021, 08:38:46 PM
Those were the days.

Oh man, I would love to have one of those in my music studio, joystick and Buttons as midi controllers

I could probably set that up couldn't I? Would that have been USB?

falafel

Is that thing crafted from the front left leg and partial breast of an actual panther?

Video Game Fan 2000

The best part of the Madness of King George is when Sir Humphrey insists trackballs are used with the left hand that WASD should be assigned to leaf switch joystick, and then makes the entire court have a LAN party where only that control scheme is allowed, under penalty of execution. After three hours and no frags in Q1DM5 with full weapons and infinite ammo, news comes that Virginia has been lost and the colonies have all but secured independence.

Lemming

Think I'm near the end of Daikatana now, in Mishima's Lab. There's a big elevator thing that I've got working, but to proceed I need Mikiko to get onto it, because "I can't leave without Mikiko".

What should be a simple task has evolved into a 15+ minute farce in which, no matter how quick I am on the follow/stay commands, Mikiko will always find a way to get off the fucking lift before it starts moving. "I'LL STAY RIGHT HERE!" she says, before running off the fucking thing at speeds previously unfathomable. At this point she's not even playing a walking animation half the time, she's just sliding motionlessly and horizontally at great speed off the elevator about a nanosecond before it moves.

One time I managed to get her to the upper floor as intended, but she somehow ran off a catwalk and plummeted to the lower levels, with the elevator for some reason no longer functional.

Feels as though this is the point at which John Romero has categorically made me his bitch. I'm sucking it down.

Lemming



Look how she fucking moves! What the fuck? She sometimes rockets into the air for no reason as well and lands back up on this platform.

Wonderful Butternut

"Ambitious, but rubbish."
- Jeremy Clarkson, game reviewer.

Lemming

Daikatana (2000)



Look! Prizes to be won! I hope it's just $40k in copies of Daikatana.



RELEASE DATE: 22nd May, 2000

STORY: The Daikatana is a sword with time-travel capabilities. When the villainous Kage Mishima uses it to travel to the past and change history to ensure his place as a tyrannical dictator in the future, it falls to local man Hiro Miyamoto to pursue Kage across time and space in a desperate chase to correct the timeline.

MUSIC: Can't say anything stood out.

SUCK IT DOWN: I think a big problem Daikatana has is that it seriously gets off on the wrong foot with a crap first episode, set in future Japan. The level design here is about on par with something like Klingon Honour Guard, except the combat is vastly worse, thanks to easily the most boring weapons and shittiest enemies of the whole game. Why they chose to start off with this is a mystery.

In case you've never played Daikatana, the basic premise of the game is that you travel through four time periods over the course of the adventure. Each one features a different location with totally different weapons, enemies and, sort of, gameplay. Because Daikatana is therefore essentially four games in one, it's best to look at each episode individually, since they're so different in design and style. So:

Japan, 2254 AD: Extremely boring opening episode that turns you against the game right from the start. Most of the weapons are rendered unfun to use through bizarre design decisions, and the mild spongey-ness of the robot/mech enemies means that you end up just using that weird explosive rifle thing the whole time anyway. The art direction is horrible, really looks like shit, and level design is basically on par with something like Klingon Honor Guard. Oh, and there's mosquitos, small flying enemies that swarm you and have small hitboxes. Really cool! Everyone's favourite thing in an FPS game! FPS legend John Romero is firing on all cylinders!

Greece, 1200 AD: Better than Japan by far. The new weapon set is a relief in that there are finally guns that a) actually work and b) don't hurt you as much as they hurt enemies (every other gun in Japan was explosive). You also get Xena Warrior Princess's disc throw thing, which is cool. Inexplicably, the game decides to turn into Hexen 2 towards the end, making you run back and forth between different maps to look for several runes to open a final gate. Not a fan of backtracking to start with, but it's made much worse by the fact that you must wait for Mikiko to reach each level transition point before you can move ahead. Graphically looks fine, with cool art direction.

Medieval Norway, 560 AD: Having flirted with just straight-up turning into Hexen 2, the game decides to go all-in and become a naff Hexen 2 knockoff. Running around a snowy village that essentially is a Hexen 2 map, you're forced to backtrack between a number of maps (but not without your buddies Superfly and Mikiko, of course!) to find various keys and such. Weapons are at least fun to use, if overpowered - the Silverclaw destroys everything in sight and the Bolter is fucking mental. Later, thankfully becomes more linear, with several comically shit boss fights against elemental wizards. Again, graphically nice.

San Francisco, 2030 AD: The game managed to pull itself back up a little with this one. The guns are all fun to use (even if a glock that gibs people after three hits is insane), the level design mercifully ditches the Hexen-y shit - except for the stupid prison escape at the start - and gives you some good old linear levels, and the game wisely has Superfly and Mikiko fuck off repeatedly to let you go around on your own for a while. Looks like shit graphically.

By the way, does this sound familiar? Yeah, there's the Hexen 2 comparison, but this progression really strongly resembles CHASM: The Rift! Right down to the "start in the future, go to ancient times, then go to sad medieval europe" journey.

Anyway, a big problem with the game is that it's just too easy after the first episode. The first episode is actually tough at times, but Greece is a breeze, Medieval Norway is only a little bit harder than Greece, and San Francisco is a laughing stock where you have to actually try to get killed. I mean, San Francisco literally opens with you shooting unarmed prisoners and doesn't get much harder from there.

On paper, there are a lot of different enemies to fight, but in practice it doesn't matter in any way whatsoever because they all have shitty AI and just glitch out and slide around while you open fire on them with whatever the obviously-best weapon of the time period you're in is. Everyone is reduced to gibs within seconds, and you simply don't have the time or motivation to care about the variety of people, animals and robots trying to kill you.

The companion feature really doesn't work. Your buddies Superfly and Mikiko are fucking idiots who won't shoot enemies (unless there's a chance of you being caught in crossfire, they seem to suddenly become very enthusiastic when that hapens), won't follow you in a straight line, will get lost and glitched on everything, etc. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for two big game-busting problems they bring to the table. Firstly, you can't leave most maps without them, meaning that unless they miraculously managed to follow you to the end, you'll have to go back and un-stick them from whatever they're caught on. The other problem is that they take damage, and you'll need to babysit them. As mentioned, the game is very easy for the most part, but these clowns manage to die on the reg. Most game overs I got were from one or both of these two morons getting killed.

I get why the devs attempted this, since Mikiko and Superfly play a big role in the plot and getting them to actually move through the levels with you should, in theory, create a greater emotional bond between the player and the characters. But it's just a mess. It would have been honestly easier if they'd just showed up in cutscenes, or occasionally "helped" you in levels by playing heavily scripted events, as Hawk does in Soldier of Fortune for example.

The game also has a level up feature, another odd similarity to Hexen 2. I don't really understand the point behind it at all. You can occasionally choose to invest in stats like POWER, ATTACK and SPEED, for no real tangible difference in gameplay, as far as I could tell. I pumped everything into ATTACK and POWER, maybe that's why the game started to get very easy, but the game is hardly stingy with skill points, so I don't see how anyone wouldn't end up with similar stats by the end. In fact, I routinely missed about half the kills and secrets on any given map, so presumably other players had even greater stats than me.

As for the story, I really liked it, it's not deep and gives you nothing to think about, but as an action-adventure story for an FPS game it's perfect. The heroes are likeable, the plot isn't afraid to be as ridiculous as it wants, you're constantly given some context for what you're doing. The ending is great, too, with
Spoiler alert
Hiro doing some time-fuckery to avert his friends' fates and give everyone a happy ending. Though Mikiko was a terrible final boss, she should have been way tougher, she goes down in like two fucking hits.
[close]

Having said all that, the game isn't bad or anything, other than in the first episode. It's just all been done before. Datedness is evident pretty much everywhere - visually, the game can't stand up to the likes of the soon-to-be-reviewed No One Lives Forever or even Soldier of Fortune. Design-wise, Daikatana embodies a lot of things that have been left behind at this point for pretty good reasons, like the Hexen switch/key hunts. Combat-wise, Daikatana staunchly rejects innovations like locational damage, leaning around corners, anything like that. Shooting someone in the foot does the same damage as shooting them in the head, and you're expected to charge headfirst rather than use any kind of cover or tactics. That's not inherently a bad thing, of course, but combat just feels so shallow and boring when there's absolutely nothing to shake it up.

But it does offer a completely serviceable FPS experience, with a few stylish moments thanks to the strangeness of the story and the locales you visit. There are enemies to kill, weapons to collect, platforming obstacles to traverse, STUPID FUCKING keycards to collect, all that. If it had come out three years earlier, it would have stood alongside most of the other early-3D releases of the era. I mean, look at the full 3D releases of 1997 - Quake 2, Turok, Hexen 2, CHASM: The Rift, Jedi Knight... it matches and even surpasses most of them. It's just been released three years too late.

Of course, I'm playing this in 2021 as part of a project, not as a new release 2000, and so the games of 1997 aren't three long years ago from my perspective - I played through them last year. So, disregarding the historical context of Daikatana and the fact it's clearly out of date, and just looking at it as it's own game... it's alright, around average. I'd probably put it on similar footing to CHASM: The Rift, which is a game it has a lot in common with anyway.

FINAL RATING: Is it the unmitigated disaster it's famed for being? Not even close, it's fine. But it's definitely a step behind its competitors, and it feels stuck firmly in 1997. Even taken on its own merits, it's a very average game. A fun story and the constant feeling of progress granted by the setting and arsenal changes make the game hard to dislike, but consistently mediocre design (after the first episode at least, which is shit) and very weak combat make it hard to love. 3 Great Ad Campaigns out of 5.



However you slice it, the people who claim that it's one of the worst games ever made are being totally melodramatic. It's not even close!

THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A PEEP SHOW QUOTE:


Join me next time as we wisely invest all our skill points in Swimming in Deus Ex!

popcorn

Glad to see you and Mr Romero have resolved your differences regarding who has been made whose bitch.

The fun fact I love to repeat about Daikatana is that "Daikatana" is weird fake Japanese, a mispronunciation of the kanji on the cover. 大 means big and 刀 means sword; if you look up those kanji individually they're pronounced "dai" and "katana", but when you put them together they're pronounced "ta" and "chi". It's the equivalent of nonsensical Engrish like "all your base" etc.

madhair60

I find Daikatana enormous fun and I'm only a little bit sorry for that. Tons of idiosyncracies, a frisson of genuinely shit decisions, but it's still got lovely, proper old-school FPS level design with tons of well-hidden fun-to-find secrets.

Cannot believe this came out after Half-Life.

Lemming

Deus Ex (2000)





RELEASE DATE: 22nd June, 2000

STORY: In the future, a cyborg law-enforcement agent quickly finds himself disillusioned with the governmental organisation he works for, and his decision to defect causes him to be swept up in a global conspiracy that holds the world together.

MUSIC: Unbelievably good. No surprise, since it's by the same people who made the Unreal Tournament soundtrack. Highlights have to be UNATCO (I have this on every other day while I'm reading forums), Hong Kong Streets (best thing ever), VersaLife, and DuClare Chateau.

FASCIST!: It's a little bit tough to review Deus Ex in any kind of objective way.. The combat is an awkward mess that's one of many botched attempts to blend stat-based RPG combat with reflex-based FPS combat, and the stealth is like if Thief was absolutely gutted and had most of its features removed. The thing is that shaky core mechanics somehow end up not mattering, because the game gives you so many ways to use and exploit those mechanics that you're too busy being dizzied by the sheer range of options available to you to care about how laughable the stealth and shooting is.

Let's briefly describe the game mechanics, and then get into what makes Deus Ex work so well. Basically, combat is standard FPS combat, albeit with poor enemy AI and an integrated stats system which determines how steady your aim is - better invest in Pistols if you want to be able to fire a 9mm pistol at someone stood directly in front of you. Stealth is similarly basic - if you crouch, you're silent and can move around as you wish. If you walk into an enemy's line of sight, they'll freeze and say something stupid. If you move away quickly, the enemy will decide the adult man visibly crouching in front of them for nearly ten seconds was "just my imagination" and go back to their patrol. If you don't move away quick enough, they'll start shooting, and everyone nearby will telepathically know your location and pile in on you.

Luckily, the level design is (almost) consistently top-tier, which makes the fairly basic combat and stealth systems work in interesting ways. Every level in the game has side-passages, locked doors, turrets to hack, vents to crawl through, etc which allow you to make the game mechanics work for you in the ways that you want.

This is the game's major strength - you can play it however you want, pretty much all the time. You can ghost your way through the whole game, never being detected by anyone (there is literally only one mandatory combat encounter in the whole game, and you can bypass it with dialogue if you have uncovered the correct information), or you can play it as a standard FPS, blasting the shit out of everyone, or you can play as anything in between. And it's always up to you to make your own route through every level, whether you use sewers to circumvent enemies, pick the locks on hatches and vents to make your way through, or just fucking blow doors apart to bulldoze your way to the next map.

While I have my reservations about the attempt to blend RPG mechanics with FPS combat, the skill system does work in forcing the player to make careful choices. Skill points are fairly limited, and so you'll have to make decisions about what to invest in - Electronics will let you fuck about with security systems, Computers will increase the speed at which you can hack computer systems, and Lockpick will allow you to crack conventional locks. Investing in any one of these naturally means neglecting the others - not to mention your combat skills, which are funded through the same pool of skillpoints - and so Deus Ex inherits some of the depth of good RPGs, forcing you to build a character and play to its strengths.

The same goes for item management - lockpicks, multitools, and EMP grenades are all critical for opening new paths through levels, and you'll have to ration them carefully and decide when it's appropriate to take the risk of using them up.

And you'll want to explore, because the story and setting are so much fun, and you'll want to see everything you can in the world. And that's why Deus Ex is as beloved as it is. The story is just straightforward great fun from beginning to end, shamelessly indulging in pulpy comic book nonsense while still managing to occasionally hit some genuinely thought-provoking notes. Here's a video showcasing some of the game's standout moments, if you'll excuse the stupid title. The modern Deus Ex games, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, just totally fail to hit the same tone, IMO, and that's why they're weaker games despite often getting the level design down brilliantly.

JC is one of the best protagonists in any game ever. He's such a fucking dickhead, it's great, and he manages to lose almost every argument he has with everyone during the whole game. Here's another video of JC going around threatening people, saying stupid shit, and generally getting in everyone's way.

It's become cliched at this point to say "hurr hurr Deus Ex predicted everything!!!", but... the game is about a global pandemic, the fallout of which starts to show the deep cracks in global capitalism, as wealth inequality reaches devastating levels. There's also an internet-connected AI that collects personal data of everyone on Earth. Tech giants, who trade in cybernetic augmentations, have incredible influence over politicians, and the American government has its tendrils in just about everything. It's all stock cyberpunk/sci-fi tropes, and they're all used in a rather knowing way, but it's still always fun to see how many of the game's themes have become more or less relevant over the course of the 21 years since its release.

So, as for criticisms... one criticism I will throw at the game is that the "reactivity" that it's often credited with displaying isn't really as prevalent as it should be. The earliest levels are great, with your decisions constantly being commented on and having material repercussions - mostly whether or not you choose to use lethal force or not. But after JC defects from UNATCO, the game essentially stops caring whether or not you shoot everyone you meet. The peak of the reactivity stuff is probably the part at which you're forced to choose between executing Lebedev, leaving the room, or attacking Anna Navarre. It's a fantastic moment... but the game doesn't really care what you do, and, beyond a few people acknowledging your decision (and Anna potentially not showing up later), everything continues the exact same almost straight away, bar one line from Gunther much later on in the game.

In fact, the violence/non-violence stuff could be a lot more in depth than it is. I really like the fact that non-violence is fucking difficult - performing a baton or prod knockout is awkwardly hard to do, tranq darts don't knock people out instantly and can get you in massive trouble, gas grenades are a fucking mess, and prod ammo is scarce. Unlike in other more recent games (have to single out Dishonored here), the choice between lethal and non-lethal force isn't just cosmetic, or some "press Q to knock out, press E to kill" bullshit. It's actually a tangible gameplay difference, and non-lethality is suitably far more difficult.

But the game doesn't really care which approach you use, and stops commenting on it fairly early on. It's even stranger because the plot only makes sense if you choose to avoid violence at first - JC's defection, which you're railroaded into with no choice, literally does not make sense if you've been eagerly killing the NSF and fellating UNATCO up until that point.

Another criticism is that the level design quality starts to slip towards the end, IMO. I mean, Ocean Lab, fuck off. The Chinese tanker around the mid-game is just a load of crap as well, especially if you're trying to play stealth.

But in the end, the criticisms fade into the background as you play, because the game is so successful at engaging you and encouraging you to play around with mechanics, play with systems, tailor the experience to yourself. It's one of many games from around the turn of the millennium which feels like it's poking at the limits of what a videogame can be, combining many different genres of gameplay and seeing how they can work together, offering a vision of what the medium is capable of. The reigns are handed over to the player, who is expected to use the game's tool kit to forge his or her own experience.

For what it's worth, I think a stealth playthrough is a lot more fun than a combat playthrough, because the story is more interesting that way, the maps are best experienced by skulking about and avoiding encounters, and there's the unavoidable fact that the combat does just kind of suck. As soon as you get the Dragon's Tooth, combat becomes a joke where all you have to do is bunny-hop over to people, thwack them, and bunny hop away. During this particular playthrough, I got pissed off right around the Chinese tanker and started shooting, but in previous playthroughs I've completed the game before only killing Anna. Take your best shot, Flatlander Woman. Even managed to carry Maggie Chow's unconscious body out of the exploding reactor room! How's that for dedication.

FINAL RATING: Been saying it since the first 5/5 rating for 1994's System Shock -  5/5 doesn't mean objectively perfect, it just means it's so much fun overall that the drawbacks don't matter. So, 5 BOMBS out of 5.



THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A PEEP SHOW QUOTE:


Alright, the debate is on. Which ending is the best? Anyone who picks Tracer Tong is out of their mind, so it's between merging with HELIOS and reinstating the Illuminati. No way to win, but I reluctantly go for Illuminati every time. No one should be a machine-god, surely? Especially not JC, he's a knobhead.

Anyway, join me next time for KISS: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child! Whatever the fuck that is.

Polymorphia

Deus Ex was one of the few games that properly lived up to the acclaim I heard around it. You don't usually go into an old game called "the greatest of all time" and expect to come out agreeing, times have moved on, designs have moved on, video games are a you g medium... Even with Doom, when you play it you recognise its faults in its mazelike level design, but with Deus Ex I was enraptured through-and-through, to an extent beyond any game I've ever played. I find it difficult to fault any part of the game because of how brilliant the game seemed, to me, in every second. I don't even mind the fact that starting off, JC Denton can't hit the broadside of a barn, because it encourages stealthier and more non-violent approaches from the start (
Spoiler alert
the point of the game when you escape UNATCO is when you finally feel your skill points make you a powerful gunman, and the feeling is almost unparalleled, it's basically worth the frustration, in my view.
[close]
)

I remember, quite a few years ago, (at least 5 years, I'm sure), when I was still a teen playing this, and I got frustrated over the tutorial and the first level (which can be brutal if you have no idea what you're doing) thanks to the internet sapping my attention span. But once you've got a grip on the controls, and the basic method of stealth (which, as you said, is much harder non-lethal than lethal - Deus Ex HR is basically "takedowns are lethal or not depending on how long you hold the button" and you get energy losses, but Deus Ex with its genuine skulking around to be stealthy is genuinely difficult and exciting) you're immersed in a world and video game environment that I think has very few games equal, even today (and I've played Dishonoured). The stress of, while you're soaking in the atmosphere of Paris,
Spoiler alert
staying in cover as you wait for MS-12 troops to patrol the street so you can get to the café a friend is waiting at, because you'd be shot on sight otherwise
[close]
is genuinely scary, and shows how strong the forces against you are. And even earlier levels - trying to stealth the Mole tunnels while avoiding the guards, or knocking them out with your baton, is a genuinely exciting experience if you're not just trying to gun them down.

I've been waiting for this review basically since I first saw your FPS reviews in Feb 2020, and I'm almost proud that you rated it a 5/5. Even given its jankiness, it's pure fun through and through. I genuinely think it's the best game I've ever played, full stop. I even found the story riveting and all, even if it was just one conspiracy after another, how it's written, and how the characters are written around it, makes the player care.

It did shock me to learn that Tom Hall, who made the Doom Bible before he was fired from id, voiced Walton Simons (and other characters), he puts in a very good performance and makes quite a memorable character. And frankly I was surprised that JC and Paul were done by the same actor, but that's acting, innit.

Oh, and as for best ending:
Spoiler alert
Helios, surely! Better a benevolent computer dictator than back to medieval times
[close]
. Ok, that ending is easier to get, but shush

Video Game Fan 2000

I wanted ORANGE and it gave LEMON LIME.

AllisonSays

I did the Tong ending every time! I guess I see the problems with it but it seemed like the best way to generate actual change. Great game and a great review, thanks.

popcorn

WELL IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS HALF-LIFE 2 IS IT??

I played and loved DX when it came out. And as it happens I replayed it for the first time in almost 20 years a few months ago. I didn't love it this time, I found it very dated and uneven - actually I got bored in the sea lab at the end and just didn't finish it. But there are still many things I think it does better than any game I've played since.

I think the environments are marvellous. They're not pretty, but this means they can be much larger and denser than levels in other games. More than any game I can think of, it's worth ransacking every room. Unexplored ducts, alleys and hatches are always intriguing, and never feel like a side quest chore. There's a persistent tension between the place you're "allowed" to be in - the street, the bar, the apartment - and the bit you're already hatching a plan to get inside - the door behind the mirror, the hidden basement, the secret lab. And there's always something to reward you once you're in. Something you actually want, I mean, not just some shotgun shells - something that will make you agonise over what to drop from your inventory.

Busting out of jail and eventually realising you're in Unatco HQ was fucking magical. As was dodging the mega-robots to get all your shit back. (Has there been a more intimidating FPS enemy than those mega-robots? You feel them before you see them.)

For me it's a game of experimentation and trial and error. You're faced with a problem, and a few different ways of solving it, and then it's about hatching a plan, executing it, and then quickloading until you get a result you like. It feels like a weird, hacky way to play, and possibly not in keeping with the developers' intentions, but it is engrossing.

I recall it being monstrously ugly even at the time, but at least it's unpretentious and functional. I was surprised at how little the graphics bothered me in 2021.

I don't think I realised how powerful the Dragon Tooth is on previous playthroughs. I spent the second half of the game swashbuckling my way through legions of men in black.

The "I now have full access to all your systems" line caused child me to absolutely shit himself.

Naturally, per the argument I've rehashed 400 times already, 1) I like the fact that the plot doesn't branch and I think that 2) if it had meaningfully branched it would probably have resulted in a plot and characters everyone likes much less, because of the impact on development resources. I still find some of the open-ended design a bit irritating in that I occasionally missed stuff I fully intended to get to but it turns out it's too late, or I entered via the wrong entrance and triggered the wrong thing to happen, that kind of thing - I know a lot of people go along the spirit of just rolling with stuff like that but it does bug me a bit when it's like "this is not the outcome I wanted and I had no way of preventing it".

Zetetic

It's not a game where extensive branching before the end would support the overall plot, but that's a bit different from people responding to you differently in encounters along the way.

popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on May 09, 2021, 10:52:20 AM
It's not a game where extensive branching before the end would support the overall plot, but that's a bit different from people responding to you differently in encounters along the way.

Some people - including Warren Spector - think you should have been able to stay with Unatco.