Aquinas

It's an artificial limit in that they have made to conscious choice to fix it, but its hardly arbitrary. When they develop a model with animations, they need to ensure that the model looks good and smooth while its moving - making a model and rendering engine than can ensure it looks smooth at 60 FPS is twice as much effort as doing the same at 30 FPS. So I'm guessing what they do is optimise: a game is on console and PC, and not all PC gamers will have machines capable of 60 FPS. So if they target 30 FPS and lock it at that, they can reduce their development costs while ensuring quality for say 90% of their target market. The minority might not get the best that their machines are capable of, but thats a cost-benefit trade off. I have a PC easily capable of 60 and above, but except for rare action games where absolute fluidity matters (say a competitive FPS) I don't really care if its 30. And a lot of what I play are 2D games anyway where, even if 60 FPS would be nice, I can understand that with 2D thats a huge amount of extra work.

Yep, the kill phrases. A feature (correct term?) they brought back in mankind divided

In the original all the bosses, including Federova, could only be beaten by being shot down. That upstairs area you are talking about was explicitly added in the directors cut. I was pretty impressed with how much they added to each boss fight in terms of additional areas etc; but then they did face quite a significant backlash. Somewhat unjustified since, if memory serves, you couldn't really avoid fights with Anna Navarra or Walter Simons in the classic game (though of course you could ambush them).

Ha, haven't seen that in years Those quake videos in-engine were great. I have heard of a lot of people who hate the takedown moves in DX HR and MD - the Zero Punctuation review of Mankind Divided pointed them out in particular and said they break immersion. In contrast I really enjoyed them and think they ADD to the immersion; sure they take away control briefly, but they do something that would be impossible for you to do in first person and help reinforce the characterisation of Jensen as super soldier. To again risk the wrath of the DX purists, sneaking around all the time and dying in one or two shots jars a bit with everyone fearing you as the next stage in human evolution, but watching Jensen just DESTROY two people in a few moments is pretty awesome.

If you didn't even notice that the intro snippet looks nothing like Deus Ex, it means that you basically didn't play it (beyond Liberty Island, maybe). And you still consider yourself entitled to bash on this game's dialogues? That's harsh. I have played the original through to completion more than a half dozen times. I'd say if I didn't notice that snippet wasn't in the game that REINFORCES my point: it looked so much like so much of the dialog in DX that I didn't notice it wasn't.

Well, now I do, cheers

I guess I meant on an active mission where they are surrounded by enemies and moments from dying, but thanks for the insight! I am not a terrorist nor have I served in any military, so it just seemed odd and out of place to me, but I am happy to adjust my expectations Ross's videos ARE great usually because they offer a different take on things than the 'conventional' view. I guess I always took the augmentations storyline at face value in HR, but it IS a little ridiculous when you step back from it. I really liked HR, and as a huge fan of the original I was pretty happy with HR bearing the DX name, but it was a first title in this series by the new developer, and I like that they improved on the problems in Mankind Divided.

Great review! Mankind Divided did address a number of his concerns - the tinting is gone, largely, and the issue with augmentations is over the killings, not transhumanism. Some problems: This. Its also a factor in MD, to a degree. Also, critiquing the unbelievability of dialog in HR when comparing it to the original is nostalgia glasses to the max. I love the original, but the review even started with a snippet of dialogue that is more insane than anything in human revolution - and that snippet is not rare. Really the only people who make sense in DX are the main characters - terrorists in the midst of a mission do not discuss philosophy with each other like they're around a water cooler. Finally I would say that like the original, HR is designed to be played stealthy. It looked like from the video that shooting up the place is where narratively it fell apart; I wouldn't know because like DX Classic, it never occurred to me to do it any way but stealthy. But, apart from the critiques of his critique, a number of things were spot on: - The tint obviously. I didn't mind it, and appreciate the designers trying to go for a given look that emphasises their theme, but its still out of place. - Some of the tech, like Hengsha the dual city, is pretty far fetched. In general having the prequel be more high tech than the sequel is fine, given when they were built, but having a city like that be built in the next two decades is unrealistic. - The ending (the very ending) was silly: human computers when they have AIs as complex as Eliza Cassan? Why? And the 'ending machine' was dumb. - Pritchard the IT guy was annoying, though he gets better.

If that bit about Eidos Montreal getting treated poorly is true, thats pretty sad. I think they have done a great job of getting the feel of Deus Ex right - not perfect, but a damn sight better than the original developers did with Invisible War - and I would love to see them continue the Jensen story. If Squeenix is that bad at managing their money, and is desperate to get it back, then thinking like a mercenary its probably best to buy and enjoy the game, but not pay for the micro transactions right? The game is profitable or at least shows a dedicated fan base, so publishers will keep funding sequels, but micro transactions within it earn no money, so the publishers need to find another means to make cash and/or solve their spending problems. The problem I have is that not buying a game due to its micro transactions looks like to the publisher a lot like not buying the game because it isn't good and/or isn't popular, things which are not true.

You also need like 8 endurance - I never managed it since endurance isn't all that useful a stat in F2. However I've done a hand-to-hand only run with lots of strength, allowing me to become a heavyweight boxer in Reno. That helped with some of the gangs if I remember, and of course also opens doors down in San Fran with their martial arts tournament

I do think Arroyo (the first area in F2) is not the greatest - but then it largely serves as a tutorial area - and while Klamath is okay, its not too interesting. But once past that and you get to the Den I think that location embodies the sort of sleazy wasteland survival - drugs, sex and crime - that permeates so much of F2's world. A good few story lines and characters there and if you pick up Sulik in Klamath then the Den can end with a nice bloody massacre of slavers, should you be so inclined (you can also join said slavers, if that's what does it for you). That's probably where the game 'got' me, but then I was a huge fan of F1 so I was already biased.

Retro punk is also called atom punk or fifties punk. Its a genre where the view of the future during the atom age is the one that actually comes to pass: a mix of traditional values, scientific exceptionalism and jingoism. The juxtaposition of the ludicrous nature of so much of this with the game world represent the logical consequence of such views is where the humour and horror, and indeed the social commentary comes from. And to give you some examples: Fallout 1 (and 3/4) have the Brotherhood of Steel, a faction that came from an army group that discovered their government was conducting horrible experiments and so elected to abandon their posts, moments before the apocalypse hit. Subsequently they evolved to a quasi religious order that attempts to seize all technology in order to protect the people from themselves. In F2 you have the NCR, who believe in resurrecting old world ideals and will spread democracy by the sword if necessary. They stand in contrast to the Followers of the Apocalypse, who are simularly altruistic but don't believe central government is the answer. Or you have vault city (which you mentioned before) who are so convinced of their superiority that they will pay slavers and raiders in order to preserve their position (largely against the attentions of NCR and those they consider infirior). Or the enclave, the remnants of the US government who seek to reestablish the borderline fascist US state that existed prior to the war, considering all others invalid 'occupiers' they are happy to purge. Locations in F2 are hardly just 'quest hubs'. New Reno alone, one of the larger settlements, has a full on gang war between different factions, all tied up with drugs, the enclave, secret deals etc. And unlike Torment where the factions are very interesting but largely static, in F2 you can join one or all of these gangs, undermine them or support them as you see fit, and ultimately determine who will define the future of New Reno. And that's just New Reno - the story lines in NCR, San Fran, Vault City and even the earlier locations like Redding and the Den have living stories within them that you, as a player can both discover and influence. But it sounds like you are turned off by the theme, which might make these stories hard to appreciate since I think they are all pretty much tied up in it. Did you ever play Wasteland or its recent re-quel? It has a similar theme and mix of tones, and serves as the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout series.

I think Fallout 1 and 2 are great, some of my most favourite games (and I also loved Torment). I played them again recently (like a year ago) prior to the release of Fallout 4, and still think they hold up. If I was to describe why I like them? Well, the core premise in all the Fallout games (with the possible partial exception of New Vegas) is to explore how civilization adapts and mutates in the aftermath of an apocalypse. They are sort of frontier simulators - the humour in them and the contrast you don't like is possibly because to the residents of the world, its not depressing: they're in the only world they have ever known, fighting to survive. Its also very much a retro-punk game, and should be treated as such. Its not supposed to be realistic, but rather a very particular genre of dystopian roleplay. It sounds like this theme just isn't for you, as opposed to the game actually being bad. For example, while Torment has one of the most extensive and arguably superior story and writing of games in this era (and possibly since), as a game and a world to explore many if not most would argue its less polished, and possibly inferior to Fallout 1&2 - it certainly has a smaller scope than F2. Though the infinity engine does make for more beautiful backgrounds.

Not buying a game because the publisher decided to add some peripheral DLC / microtransactions to it doesn't help stop 'developers working an egregious amount of hours with little to no pay' - quite the opposite. A developer like Eidos Montreal will go bankrupt and Squeenix will happily move on to the next developer. And moreover, my problem with this is that in such a situation its completely unfair to the developers: THEY made a great game, and its getting blasted for political reasons (giving DX MD a 0 review on metacritic or steam because its its Microtransactions is pretty much unforgivable). I like great games, and I want the developers who make them to keep making them - they need support both monetarily and through public approval. They should not be treated like baby murderers by the vocal minority for something they don't even control, and which, again, has no effect on the game whatsoever.

For my two cents on this: I thought it was a great game; Human Revolution, but with the raw edges polished and the core world building much improved. I go into games to enter the world, as immersively as possible, and DX MD achieved this for me. RE micro transactions: the key thing with micro transactions is that if you don't want to support them, don't buy them. The core game of DX MD never alluded to the micro transactions, and you could easily finish the game (with praxis to spare) without them. If you don't like their inclusion on principle, well, the advantage of micro transactions from a publisher perspective is that they get real time metrics on who buys them and in what quantity. Buying the core game but not spending anything on these transactions sends a clearer message to the publisher than not buying the game at all, IMO. As far as game length, I spent 35-ish hours in it, which is what I expected (longer than in HR, to be honest, even when doing both in a ghost play through). It actually felt quite a bit like a DragonAge 2 sort of game to me - an experiment on having a more intimate story within a single location. It also felt like an Empire Strikes Back - setting up a conclusion to the trilogy. Will have to see.