Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Page 2

So I haven't really played any yet... But I did unlock the game first thing this morning.

I was pretty impressed that the Stereoscopic 3d works well on AMD without a third-party driver. Most games I've seen work with Nvidia natively, and need the third-party driver for AMD, so when I enabled the option and it just worked, I was surprised.

I don't think I'll be playing the whole game in Stereoscopic, but it did add a good sense of depth. I literally only let it load up to the first room though.

I was also a little surprised that FXAA and MLAA in the game work on any hardware. FXAA has been all Nvidia in the past, and MLAA all AMD, so I guess I have to do a little research into which one gives the best image quality.

Speaking of graphics though, I was completely unimpressed. Again, I didn't load it up for more than a minute, but what I saw there didn't seem any better than what I got in Half-Life 2 and that was nearly a decade ago.

I'm sure the gameplay is worth it, but I was hoping for better in the graphics department.

And then lastly, I'm not sure I've ever seen a game take so long to load on my PC. I've got it installed to a fast SSD, with a Q6600 and 8GB RAM, and I wasn't timing but it took over a minute to load. Most PC games I've played have been drastically faster (usually no more than 10 seconds).

Obviously these are only nitpicks at this point because I haven't experienced any of the gameplay, but just saying.

Gametrailers video review of this title does, indeed, make the game appear to be a real throwback in the video department....looking more like Mass Effect or an open world RPG than a modern shooter. Its certainly more Xbox than Xbox 360, thats for sure, with the lighting models and animations I was seeing......in fact I was kind of shocked that I Noticed the graphics in the review......normally I go "looks good". this time It was "Something looks wrong here...oh yeah, the game looks....old". Guess I wasn't the only person who noticed this.

bought the PC version from GameStop as they are offering an exclusive single player level called 'Tong's Rescue' possibly dealing with Tracer Tong from the original Deus Ex

Heh! No sh*t? That's... awesome.

Dunno what the deal is with the graphics (haven't played it yet but have seen various vids). The game was shaping up to look gorgeous.... 3 years ago. Further justifying my attitude towards games and their hype these days but I digress. The graphics engine was most recently used for the Tomb Raider games so ... take that as you will.

sucks that certain retailers are offering exclusive pre-order content though...should be available for everybody and not just those buying from certain stores

judging from online reviews the gameplay is the real star of the game with the freedom to play using many different styles (stealth, combat, hacking etc)...each method being equally rewarding...the game is apparently very good and worthy of the 'Deus Ex' name

Agreed.

Can't wait to play it later.

Played a bit of it tonight. Awesome game that looks awesome and runs awesome on my Tri-Fire 6950 setup. Totally immersive world too. Amazing what they managed to pull off here while games like Diablo 3 have been in development for much, much longer.

Just played the first 30min of it but the game is awesome and really gives me that feeling I had when I played the 1st one back in 2000.

Yeah, the game is definitely awesome, but I still don't think it looks all that impressive. The city looks much better than the buildings you're in for the first few hours, but still I've seen better from games that are considered pretty dated at this point. And LA Noire on the 360 has apparently spoiled me, I look at the character models and just laugh at times. And I'm not sure what they were thinking with the main voice actor, he's pretty bad. But the game is still really fun, which is what matters most.

I tried playing for about an hour with stereoscopic 3d on last night as well, and the effect is pretty nice, but there seems to be some lag on the reticule, I'll move it and when I let go, it continues past the time I let go of it. I'm assuming that this is most likely due to it needing to run at 24Hz for 3D due to HDMI limitations.

So while it's neat in 3D, I won't be actually using it too much (as expected).

I really like some of the little touches though, like the random office-worker with their password written next to their PC.

Finally got a chance to sit down and play this for more than a few minutes late last night. I think I played for at least 2hrs. Was really getting worried about the gameplay during the whole openning. It's very linear and it felt like everything was stripped out. Obviously, this was intentional and it is how most games are at the very beginning. Had a few issues getting used to the control system (with the cover and all that) at first but warmed up pretty quick. Pretty soon I was thinking how I would when I played the original and now that I am a few hours in I can say that I really get that feel playing this. That's good! The orginal Deus Ex is one of my favorite games of all time. This has been enjoyable ... so far.

As for the graphics. Wow. Awful. I've got everything maxed out and have FXAA on 'high', even. I turned on V-sync and triple buffer though cuz I have the fps to spare and there was a lot of screen tearing for me. Runs pretty well though. There are moments when characters and the environments actually look pretty good. Most of the time, this looks like a high res texture pack for the first game. Definitely not modern looking, imo. Could fool someone that it was a 4-5 year old game. Thankfully the art direction is decent so I can get past this. The gameplay is pretty good. I'm having fun so far and want to play more when I get home.

Audio seems to be pretty bad technology-wise as well. I mean, it's either you hear someone talking, or you don't, from what I've seen. The voice doesn't trail off as you get further away, just abruptly switches off.

I'm just using my HDMI out for 5.1 sound, not sure if that would have an effect, but it just seems crappy. It's a good thing the game itself is so good though.

Edit: Playing now, it seems like this on or off thing is only with NPCs when you're not talking to them, but eavesdropping on conversations. Not as bad as I initially thought, but still annoying.

It looks much better on my 6950 (at least to my eyes) using MSAA. I have everything maxed out and it runs fine. MSAA does give everything a bit of an odd surreal look though.

will start it up later tonight...I have a GTX 580 so I'm hoping to max it out at 1920 x 1200

So far I have only one serious complaint about this game. It's how the energy system works. You have a battery system that powers augmentations and such but you also use this energy to do 'takedowns'. For those that are not aware, the takedowns are pretty much your barehanded melee system showing a cool animated lethal or non-lethal takedown. You may or may not use these depending on how you play.

Anyway, the energy is depicted as these small batteries. You start with one or two and can upgrade them for more capacity and recharge rate over the course of the game. The thing is that you use an entire battery doing a take down. The only one that will actually recharge is the first battery. If you have any additional ones, they will not recharge if you used the whole battery and doing multiple takedowns will make sure you go thru several within seconds. The only way in the game to recharge whole battery is to consume a candy bar. I think this is pretty dumb. You will need to stockpile candy bars in your inventory if you plan on using these takedowns or have any intention on using augmentations that consume energy. For instance, if you want a cloaking ability, the first level of that consumes a whole battery within 4 seconds. If you use something like that short enough that it doesn't use the whole battery, it will recharge. If you use the battery, it will not recharge unless it was your last battery. Otherwise, you'll need to carry an energy bar.

Anyway, just something I've been dealing with that I was call a major gameplay mechanic that needs to be patched up or redone, imo.

while I agree I think its in place so your not playing splinter cell again and makes you do/choose a different way of taking down enemies

there's even an achievement for beating the game and killing noone!

I don't see the problem. I have Snickers bars jammed into the battery compartments of all my game controllers, and it's worked fine for years.

I agree with the battery stuff Scott, its pretty dumb and gets me out of the mood whern I think about it, other than that, it rocks!

The battery mechanic is a problem. You want to feel badass, rollin through levels taking people down and using your augs. But wait ... while I eat this candy bar? I think I'd be happy if they at least included an aug that would fully recharge all your batteries over time. Or an aug that removed the battery usage from takedowns. Also, you can only stack 5 candy bars in a slot. I'd like to see that be 10.

But this has been a minor problem for me. Overall, I'm really enjoying the game. The world they created is very impressive. From the meticulously crafted settings, to the thorough characterization. And the art direction is great. But what were they thinking on those cutscenes? It looks like they were rendered on a 360. And then compressed within an inch of their lives. It just makes the transition from cutscene to gameplay so jarring.

Like I said though, really enjoying my time with DXHR(this acronym is all the rage in the Eidos forums ).

The most annoying part of the game for me is how guns turn to ammo if you already have the same one in your inv when you pick another up.. OCD takes over and I must sell guns constantly.

Hahha. Yeah. I want to sell all the guns I pick up but the ammo is nice. I'm wearing out my stun gun.

The battery situation is my only real annoyance so far with the game (unless you count the awful 'pre-rendered' cutscenes and long load times). I don't see why it must work the way it does. I can see why you wouldn't want someone to spam the takedowns but that would be balanced out just by having the batteries take time to recharge just as the first battery does. As I have my aug configured at the moment, it takes about 20 seconds or more to recharge to full (a single battery). The more you have the more time it would take. I had upgraded to a third battery very early on before I noticed how the mechanic worked. So if it worked the way I mention, it would take a full minute of hiding around a corner before I could pounce again at full strength. Seems fairly balanced to me. If my health can drop to 1 and just hide and let it recharge to full 100% health, I should be able to do the same with the batteries, I dunno but that just makes sense to me. I haven't got the aug for it yet but for those of you that like to use the cloak aug... wow, I feel bad for you guys.

In the meantime, I'll keep a healthy stock of Beefcake 2000 powerbars on me.

I noticed that there was an achievement for a playthrough with no kills. I'm not going to get that but I do try non-lethal action whenever possible. In fact, I haven't done a lethal takedown ...yet. My stun gun is getting a lot of use though.

And another thing.... the damn vending machines DO NOT FUNCTION. Wtf?! They worked in the first game. You 'use' one and out pops a soda or candy bar or something and it would charge you for it with your ingame credits. Why did they leave this out? I'd buy candybars like crazy.

In the Steam forums I read that some people were improving their load times by turning off V-Sync. Which made me think "No way. They're totally unrelated". I tired it anyways. And even though I don't know why it works, I do know the difference between 30+ secs and 10. So it did help noticeably.

And the mouse was just feeling off. But Nixxes has said there is no mouse smoothing in use. Changing "Maximum Pre-rendered frames" to 1 in the Nvidia Global Settings improved the feel a lot.

Turning off Vsync in GTA4 made it incredibly playable with no real noticeable tearing on my G73 so for that game, I keep it off. In DXHR, I got horrific screen tearing so I keep vsync on. The loading time are long but I found the tearing so bad that I'd rather have the long load times over the tearing. Heheh, that IS pretty odd that it would have an affect at all though.

I've seen that there was one, maybe two very small updates for DXHR in the past two days. I wonder if that fixed the mouse or something because it felt awful when I first played the game but not it seems normal. Maybe I just got used to it already.

Haven't loaded it yet (my internet is down, and with the gaming PC being wired, can't easily get it over a neighbor's connection), but the newest patch today says:

There's definitely something up with mouse control which may or may not be related to vsync and FOV- I noticed immediately that it was odd and then after turning off vsync and setting FOV to 90 (16:9 screen), it does feel much better. I can't prove anything here so maybe I'm crazy. Overall, the game isn't insanely resource intensive from what I can see. At the same time while the graphics are certainly acceptable, they aren't earth shattering in any way. I'm having a hard time figuring out where to go. I'll get some input about going to XYZ and setting that as my active quest but getting there is starting to be a PITA. Oh and btw, I am not seeing much tearing even with vsync off - I pretty much ALWAYS go vsync for the smoothness but this isn't bad at all.
-Trouble

I usually don't use vsync either unless there is really bad tearing and in the case of DXHR, (at least for me) it needs it.

Looks like they worked out some the mouse related stuff. Darn. I was getting used to getting around so quickly running diagonally. Now they just need to make the vending machines work and this will be instant GOTY for me.

I finally got the update just now, and it really does help load times drastically. Really it's gone from over a minute to more like 15 seconds.

Just got the update too and the load times are faster. Cool!

Heh. On my Seagate Momentus everything loads fast. I don't even have time to read the transition pages.

I gave up on being stealthy on my first time through. Now I'm just killing everyone who gets in my way. My 2nd time through I will play it stealthy.