I've played a little of this, and it's generally cool. It's got a Robocop vibe with a smattering of Blade Runner (and apparently there are some fairly overt references to the former in the game). It certainly has a lot of Deus Ex trappings: sombre cutscenes and growly monotonous voice-acting; nice art design that is let down a little by certain tech issues; the option of stealth or shooting, without either being top-notch mechanically; secondary objectives but a sense of missing out on them due to crappy maps and notes (this time there is a full, auto-updating level map - hooray! - but it doesn't help you with secondary objectives and it controls really badly).
There's a cover-system now, but it's too underpowered to be very useful for stealth or shooting.
I'm only on the first level, which feels relatively linear, so I expect the game will open up a bit soon and also let me start augmenting to help the gameplay along.
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I'm in Detroit now and it's opened up into a proper sprawling level now, which is cool. There are still the usual Deus Ex problems (which may be common to RPGs, I dunno), like feeling obliged to do a ton of rather dull secondary missions in order to rank up a bit, and being given tons of clues and information that I can never wrangle into a clear strategy.
Honestly, what I'd like is a map with labels on it, possibly labels I can make myself when I find a point of interest, and a list of pertinent info I've found out from conversations, emails etc, ideally with each bit of info having a hyperlink to a map location if it mentions it (or let me create a hyperlink to one of my own POIs so it feels more like I'm putting the pieces together). It may be a little hand-holdy but I'd prefer it to having to scan through dozens of emails every time I want to remind myself of something, or having a pen and paper ready to note down the vague directions NPCs give me. I found a map of secret entrances and stuff in a detective's office that I snuck into, and I really wish Jensen's UI had scanned that and applied it to my overall map because I just could not contextualise it.
It's one of those things that would be easy enough IRL but the disconnect of video games renders difficult. Another Deus Ex example is when they say "yeah, this dude lives on X street in the Y complex on the 4th floor", and irl you would be able to follow those instructions using prior world knowledge, shorthand notes, maps, street signs, GPS, asking strangers for directions, etc, but the relative low-fidelity of a game's visuals and world detail plus the level design often being geared towards aesthetics over function and clarity makes what is an ostensibly simple task quite daunting.
The cyborg trappings make this all the more galling, as putting all the hyperlinks, overlays and such in would absolutely fit with the UI and story. At least in Thief it's justified that you probably would only have a crappy bit of paper with some scrawlings on it (although I'm sure some creative UI design could minimise the dissonance).
The story and setting isn't half as interesting as Invisible War so far...
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I've got to the next city hub now, and have levelled up a bit. Because of my new augs and weaponry, the game is starting to feel more enjoyable - the firefights are more manageable and the cover-system is actually quite cool if you make sure to get yourself in a good position and use health regen and cover a lot. Some of the quests are okay, some are either dull or confusing. For one I'm on at the moment, I'm supposed to use a non-lethal takedown, but I can't actually figure out how to do one of those. Firstly, both my takedown modes are lethal, and secondly the option doesn't pop up when I sneak up behind him [EDIT: ah ha, ok, I think the issue was I didn't have enough battery power left for a takedown after cloaking into his apartment. Also apparently one of the takedowns is non-lethal, I'll have to take another look at that]. For another, it required me to hack a terminal in a place where I was guaranteed to get swarmed by enemies but acted as if I'd be sauntering out of the place. I'm going to finish off the secondary quests I've got open, then I think I'll stick to the story quests for a while. This is a problem I find with RPGs, or RPG elements - the best strategy is to push through all the boring secondary stuff at the start to get yourself powered up enough to enjoy the main game. It even leaks through to games like Psychonauts or Rage. This game regularly has rooms full of boxes (be they lockers, sleeping pods or whatever) for you to laboriously go through looking for money (which you have to because some quests require you to pay up thousands of creds).
The story is still pretty dull. I'm kind of waiting for a huge revelation to blow my mind, rather than the various strata of corporate espionage I'm working through now. The setting is kind of cool and detailed, but aside from the future-renaissance fashion and black/gold colour scheme it's the usual cyberpunk stuff. I'm getting pretty sick of clubs and brothels and strip-clubs. At least have a male pole-dancer or something if you're going to stick with the Duke Nukem settings!
I think I'm enjoying the game overall? It has the classic Deus Ex problem of playing as a cool dude superhuman but never really feeling in control of the situation.
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I got around 70-80% through the game and, as per usual, this is the point of the game where I'm starting to feel like a super-agent. I've got a laser-gun so I can finally take down the armoured enemies with relative ease, I can hack bots and turrets to kill enemies and I can fall long distances. I still can't sprint for more than 4 seconds, and if I run out of candy bars all my cloaking and take-down powers are useless, but I'm getting there.
And then they pull the classic 'take away all your stuff' move. Suddenly I'm on a very linear level on a ship full of crates with no powers and having to save-scum through the exact stealth and platforming route laid out by the devs, kill by kill. All the weapons and augs I'd spent the whole game gathering and balancing are gone. They give a few aug points back to you and all your weapons but no ammo, so you're forced back to basics. There's a hint that if I get to a LIMB clinic I'll be able to go back to exactly what I had before, so if they do that straight after this level it won't be too bad, but will that be the case and will they give me all my ammo back too? It's an infuriating thing for the devs to do as I approach the end stretch of the game.
I found out after a little research that this is in fact the poorly-received DLC that has been inserted into the middle of the Director's Cut. What a bone-headed decision. I probably wouldn't have minded if they'd given me all my stuff back - sure I'd be overpowered for this section, but it might have been a nice break in the game to just rip through a more Half-Life/Modern Warfare level without breaking a sweat. As it is I almost rage-uninstalled. If they don't get me back on track directly after this section, I still might.
I'm certainly not going out of my way to level up again. I'm getting through this level as quickly as possible and expecting to be returned to the aug level I was at. If these aug kits I'm picking up are temporary, that's fine. (I was considering levelling up all the stuff I didn't have before just in case I was allowed to keep them, but that would have made the level much harder and wasn't guaranteed to work.)
However they handle it, though, it's still a very bad design choice to depower the player almost completely at this stage of the game. Perhaps if they'd been more generous with early levelling up it would work better, but as it is I've spent most of the game frustrated at my lack of powers!
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Goddamn, this gets worse and worse. First I get sent to a guy for some weapons then it turns out he's going to charge me - the one thing I've been aiming to get out of this is a ton of cash I can spend in the game proper, so it grates that they took all my ammo away then made me buy more. Then I have to do a ton of backtracking across almost the entire level. This includes a large multi-level circular room which you have to go round half of, up some stairs, round half again, up some more stairs, round half of again (while avoiding bots and turrets) to get through, and TWO identical scanning points where you have to stand still for 30 seconds. So far:
Ammo guy to morgue - through most of the level including the round room and the scan points
Morgue back to ammo guy for a key - through most of the level including the round room and the scan points
Back to the morgue - through most of the level including the round room and the scan points
From the morgue to a lab - long-ass elevator ride
From the lab back to the ammo guy - long-ass elevator ride, through most of the level including the round room and the scan points
And I'm not even sure if I'm done yet! This is absolutely dreadful; if I'd purchased this as DLC I'd be annoyed enough; as I didn't purchase it and am still being forced to play through it to get the rest of my game, I'm fuming! (The only thing stopping me from giving up right now is that the level before this happened - Stowing Away - was very fun.) I don't think I've ever bought DLC, but if this is the general standard, no wonder Minerva's Den is regularly referred to as the best DLC ever.
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Well it made me swap my souped-up sniper rifle for a crappy vanilla one so I'm very annoyed. I think I got given it at the start of the DLC with no ammo, but then there were some different types of sniper rifle right at the end that for some reason used different ammo, and I may have got confused and swapped them over :(
Anyway, I'm past it now, and there was another good level where I got to use all my stuff, then a boss fight which was a little annoying but fine, then a ton of linear stuff. I'm pretty much onto the last level now, according to a walkthrough I glanced at. I also happened to see that I'll get a chance to buy some more augs and that the Typhoon aug will come in useful for the next boss fight, which will be the first time in the game. The Typhoon shoots out a bunch of bullets in a 360 spread to an 8m radius. The problem is, if you've let enemies get that close to you, you're already fucked - the combat is simply not designed for you to get in those situations. They really should have made it shoot off a few homing rockets or something.
I tried the typhoon on one boss (the woman) and it was useless, so I've been sticking to the heavy rifle. Even the laser rifle didn't seem to do anything in the most recent boss fight...
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Aaand I'm done. The last level was not only linear but also an attempt at a zombie shooter - crowds of 28 Days Later-style NPCs gone crazy due to the Illuminati mucking about with their implants, running at you screaming, and chain-gun ammo scattered about liberally. Then a final boss fight which entailed moving behind cover to push a few buttons, then a final moral choice between revealing the conspiracy to the world or, um, killing yourself and a couple of the conspirators. Really disappointing. I also missed the chance to speak to two main characters before wrapping the game up because the game didn't mark them as secondary objectives. Though frankly, if it had, I possibly would have skipped them anyway as the writing in this game is as dull and long-winded as the previous ones, but without aliens and shit to pep it up.
I enjoyed this game sporadically but it has a lot of flaws and really falls apart at the end.
(Addendum: I played a few hours of DXMD as there was a free weekend. It looks great - the leap forward in 5 years is huge. The UI has been revamped, some changes for better, some for worse. Story is just as boring as the last one! I couldn't really be bothered to scrabble round in the opening hours of another DX game just to uninstall when the freebie ran out, though, so I'm moving on.)
Rating: Orange
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