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Sorry GAF, but Deus Ex (original) sucks in this day and age.

E

Exclamation-One

Member
After completing Human Revolution, I tried getting into the first of the series. It's ambitious, and I love the agency it gives the player. But far too many design decisions hold the experience back.

Let me count the ways:

Automatically Taking Items from Bodies
I can't search and decide what to loot myself? No, says the game, I have to pick up everything, access my inventory, and then throw what I don't want away.

Poor Stealth
No meter to determine how hidden I am in the shadows? Sound effects are LOUD - I shoot an NSF agent point blank in the head. His partner, wandering around no more than 20 yards away, continues his patrol, completely oblivious.

Piss-poor Tutorials
"Crouch to get under these pipes." What's the key for crouch? Oh, I have to look that up in the manual.

Piss-poor Tutorials, Part 2
Oops! Your legs got blown off by that security bot trying to cross the river? Too bad. Crawl around aimlessly for a bit, or restart the entire thing all over again!

Single-use Equipment
Night vision goggles? Awesome! Only they last for 30 seconds, and then they are unusable thereafter. Hazmat suits only worn and used once. WTF?

Lack of Proper Player Feedback
Battery Park - I hacked into a security system, only to get repeatedly shocked(?) and killed for no apparent reason.

Buggy as all Fuck
Key-bindings do not work in certain scenarios. I can't switch from my pistol (1) to my crowbar (5). I press the middle mouse button, it throws my pistol away, but I'm still carrying it? WTFx2.

Half-baked Freedom of Choice
I can decide to launch 3 high-powered rockets at my brother, but he doesn't flinch. I go at him with a knife, and then he decides to gun me down. I decide to hack my boss's computer right in front of him. No real consequences. "Stop screwing around, better move it soldier!"

Automatic Note-Taking = FAIL
Okay, so this passcode, "smashthestate" is important enough to be kept in my Notes section, but the ATM account # and password are not? How does the game determine what's important enough to be stored and what isn't?
---

I apologize to anyone I've offended, but I just can't get into the game in light of all of these things. Deus Ex: HR was a much more cohesive experience in comparison.
 
J

JWong

Banned
A friend couldn't play Witcher because he said he had to do too much travelling.

New games really spoil us.
 
C

Castor Krieg

Banned
Exclamation-One said:
Piss-poor Tutorials
"Crouch to get under these pipes." What's the key for crouch? Oh, I have to look that up in the manual.

Piss-poor Tutorials, Part 2
Oops! Your legs got blown off by that security bot trying to cross the river? Too bad. Crawl around aimlessly for a bit, or restart the entire thing all over again!
Click to expand...

Ad1. Fuck yeah, you have to check the damn key bindings. I'm sure this can take a better part of your day.

Ad2. Damn, I just launched it a day ago, I noticed there's a datacube near the barrels - looking EXACTLY like the one in the tutorial. What's that? A CODE TO CROSS THE BRIDGE. Damn, where do I put this? Oh, in that KEYPAD right next to the DAMN RAMP! Pretty sure there's a LAM there as well, and you can swim in specific place - after all the game TELLS you there are different ways to accomplish that training scenario.

TL:DR: You suck at gaming.
 
Auto_aim1

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
What were you expecting anyway? Still, just go with the flow and try to finish the game. You'll enjoy it a lot more that way.
 
E

ezekial45

Banned
I'm sorta inclined to agree. I really want to play it, and it has all the features of a game that i would love, but it's soooooooo outdated.

Though playing DE:HR is making me want to give it another chance.
 
E

Exclamation-One

Member
Castor Krieg said:
Ad1. Fuck yeah, you have to check the damn key bindings. I'm sure this can take a better part of your day.

Ad2. Damn, I just launched it a day ago, I noticed there's a datacube near the barrels - looking EXACTLY like the one in the tutorial. What's that? A CODE TO CROSS THE BRIDGE. Damn, where do I put this? Oh, in that KEYPAD right next to the DAMN RAMP!
Click to expand...
Found the keycode, but my legs were still blown off.
 
S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
I say these are valid complaints but people decided not to notice it because Deus Ex offered unique experience at the time.

Also this thread will be DX1 vs DXHR thread. People will argue that Deus Ex gave you more freedom but I say that this freedom was janky by its nature and came from unbalanced augmentations and not playtested gameplay situations. Still it had its charm and was a part of Deus Ex appeal.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
OP is going to make enemies, but there is some truth to what he's saying.

DX1 gameplay is horrendously outdated, graphics are horrendously bad (and were bad even when it first came out), the voice acting is mostly atrocious for all but a few of the NPCs and the only reason it's still playable in any way is that the level design still shines as some of the best in the industry.
 
D

DidntKnowJack

Member
No, it's simply been surpassed technically by modern games in some respects, which is only natural due to the passage of time and the implementation of refined game design. Deus Ex is the forerunner of open ended non-linear game experiences, a pioneer in many respects. To even suggest it sucks is, at the very least, hyperbolic nonsense.
 
E

Exclamation-One

Member
If there are mods that improve usability, I'm all for them. The control scheme of HR with the 360 controller (minus certain things like aiming) was far superior in my limited experience.
 
J

jtb

Banned
subversus said:
I say these are valid complaints but people decided not to notice it because Deus Ex offered unique experience at the time.

Also this thread will be DX1 vs DXHR thread. People will argue that Deus Ex gave you more freedom but I say that this freedom was janky by its nature and came from unbalanced augmentations and not playtested gameplay situations. Still it had its charm and was a part of Deus Ex appeal.
Click to expand...

Balance is tough when you have larger numbers of ways to approach a scenario - for obvious reasons, I think. It's a lot easier to test and polish a corridor shooter where there is one and only one way to progress in the level. The fact that the game allows you to take different approaches, it allows you to try the impossible multiple times (and if you succeed, the game will acknowledge that), and it even allows you to fail, is what makes its level design, if not its gameplay mechanics, stand the test of time.

And Deus Ex is charming as fuck. The shitty graphics and horrid voice acting only add to the fun, IMO.
 
B

buhdeh

Member
Exclamation-One said:
Piss-poor Tutorials, Part 2
Oops! Your legs got blown off by that security bot trying to cross the river? Too bad. Crawl around aimlessly for a bit, or restart the entire thing all over again!
Click to expand...

LOL I remember this.
 
C

Card Boy

Banned
So basically you want an 11 year old game game to hand hold you and play like a 2011 game?

The only point i agree with is the single use items like Ballistic armour.
 
E

Exclamation-One

Member
the walrus said:
And Deus Ex is charming as fuck. The shitty graphics and horrid voice acting only add to the fun, IMO.
Click to expand...
Have absolutely no problem with the graphics or voice acting. It's the design decisions / interface that make it completely convoluted and inaccessible.

To think, this was a mere year before MGS2, Jak & Daxter, or Ico.
 
W

wwm0nkey

Member
Do not read if you havent beat Human Revolution

The After credits ending made me think we will see a HD remake of the original Deus Ex
 
S

Shalashaska161

Member
It's definitely is hard to get into these days. I've certainly never been able to really do it after picking it up a few months ago. I've played the first level multiple times, but I always seem to get stuck and never actually go anywhere with it due to a lot of the problems you listed. Time hasn't been too kind to it unfortunately.

JWong said:
A friend couldn't play Witcher because he said he had to do too much travelling.

New games really spoil us.
Click to expand...
To be fair everything is really fucking far apart in the Witcher and you do have to run between places 1000 times. It probably is the most annoying thing about that game.
 
Riposte

Riposte

Member
Deus Ex has certainly "aged", as people put it. Probably a lot of issues with shooting too, if you don't like it being so stat driven. However the OP's list of complaints mostly range from utterly inane complaints about tiny things to pampered whining(moreover, about things pre-teens were handling just fine "back in the day"). Assuming this isn't a lazy PC-master-race joke mocking the "new generation of gaming", the only really tasteful recourse is completely dismissing the OP. I guess it is a funny post either way, if you look at it like a joke anyway.
 
O

Orayn

Member
JWong said:
I'd like to see someone try to play Dwarf Fortress with this mentality.
Click to expand...
DF is a game that will either drive you away immediately, or shatter all your per-conceived notions of how certain aspects of a game have to be done. Personally, I think more people need to experience the latter. When I hear people say things like "All games must have quick-saving in this day and age. There is no excuse." I shake my head. Usability is one thing, but mechanics are the paint on a game's canvas. Saying that specific elements need to be present in good games is like saying that all good paintings have to include the color green.
 
S

Suairyu

Banned
While everyone honest would agree the stealth is a twitchy, janky mess (it was even back then), wanting a meter to show how hidden you are is a terrible idea.
 
M

markot

Banned
Yeah, its much better to just have to use the environment and judge by the reactions of thine foes imo >.<

Although I do hate games where you squat in a shadowy part of a room and the dude walks 2 feet from you without noticing, and he is looking in your direction, and you are peeing!

But as said, this game is old, so of course its abit more janky than modern games. OOT is janky, but still a great game, same goes for half life. I dont think it makes them bad, it just makes it harder to get into them now then it did when they were newer.

Great cars from the past may not drive as brilliantly as new ones, but some people can still appreciate and prefer them to the modern cars with their fangled seat belts and what nots.
 
E

Exclamation-One

Member
Orayn said:
DF is a game that will either drive you away immediately, or shatter all your per-conceived notions of how certain aspects of a game have to be done. Personally, I think more people need to experience the latter. When I hear people say things like "All games must have quick-saving in this day and age. There is no excuse." I shake my head. Usability is one thing, but mechanics are the paint on a game's canvas. Saying that specific elements need to be present in good games is like saying that all good paintings have to include the color green.
Click to expand...
Damn straight. Human Revolution was amazing in this regard, and retains (as far as I can tell) almost all of the complexity of the original.
 
L

L00P

Member
I miss the mirror. I like looking at it and doing comical jumps

Yeah, Deus Ex haven't aged well
 
C

chessnut

Member
What great timing for this thread....I decided an hour ago that I'm not going to continue playing this after the 2nd mission.

I bought this game with my $5 GMG credit this week, and I have to agree. With HR out now, I was looking to get into these series for the first time and decided to give this a go. I 'get' the game and understand why it gets praise, but it's so flawed playing it in this age that I don't want to finish playing it. I get what the game is trying to do and how it incorporates rpg elements and how groundbreaking that was back then, but there are a lot of inconveniences playing it now. Stealth is a bitch, default controls are really stupid, waiting 3 seconds to use a gun after I choose to equip it, and having to memorize atm codes and accounts (i'm too lazy to write it down) is bullshit. I guess I'll just read up on the story before I start DX:HR
 
F

faceless007

Member
Everyone got their legs blown off in the training mission. Think of the rest of the game as separate.

Things you read in Datacubes are saved in Notes, things you read in books are not.

Don't know about you but I always look to see what keybindings are before starting a game.
 
R

RocketDarkness

Member
Played the game for the first time last week. Loved it. I thought it was hilarious the game was willing to take my legs away in the tutorial to teach me a valuable lesson about not being an idiot. And if the first thing you did after booting the game up wasn't checking and remapping your controls, I don't know what to tell you.
 
N

Necromanti

Member
I played and completed Deus Ex for the first time a month or so ago, and I was absolutely blown away by it, so I would disagree that it sucks. The amount of choices and consequences within the game made many modern games feel behind the times. I have yet to play HR, but there are many things within DE that I haven't seen done anywhere else. It sounds like you need to spend more time with the game and get a feel for it. The only complaints I can agree with are the 2nd and last ones, but they are minor and didn't impact my enjoyment one bit.
 
J

jtb

Banned
Exclamation-One said:
Have absolutely no problem with the graphics or voice acting. It's the design decisions / interface that make it completely convoluted and inaccessible.

To think, this was a mere year before MGS2, Jak & Daxter, or Ico.
Click to expand...

I know. I get that - the gameplay has aged considerably, the shooting is really loose, the "melee" combat is a joke, and the whole UI is clunky as hell. But, it's a 2000 game. I would love for someone to remake the game with modern mechanics and preserve that sacred level design.

But the level design - gotta disagree three. That freedom. It's unforgiving at first, Liberty Island, and, to a lesser extent, Battery Park are a bit of a bitch to navigate, especially without a minimap - but once you get the hang of it, the game really hits its stride. There are flaws, and there's certainly a learning curve, but that learning curve is exactly what makes it so rewarding in the end, I think.
 
N

NBtoaster

Member
Never played passed the first level. Games back then really did a bad job of explaining game mechanics.

People who played and loved it 10 years ago are not good judges of whether it has aged well.
 
K

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
2j0b4ew.jpg
 
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