I remember first trying the original when I was like 11 or something.
At the time, I didn’t really understand much beyond “shooty shooty” when it came to games with guns (it would be shortly after this that I’d find stealth games and have that passion ignited), so I was given guns, used them how I usually did at the time and proceeded to get obliterated in the first level and gave up.
A few years later, after I’d gotten into stealth games, my love affair with immersive sims began.
Along with playing the Thief series, I went back to give Deus Ex a try and it all just clicked. I think it and Thief II were instrumental in cementing my love for the genre.
After playing and enjoying the first one, I played them all over the next few years and Mankind Divided is probably my second favourite after the original. Loved every moment.
Then fucking Square Enix does their bullshit, and then fucking Embracer ruined it for good.
All in all, I love Deus Ex and I’m super glad I found myself getting into stealth games and immersive sims, otherwise I would have missed out on it so many other of my favourite gaming experiences, Deus Ex being one of them.
What’s weird is that it’s like the only Looking Glass/Ion Storm/Eidos Montréal immersive sim franchise that doesn’t have a clear spiritual successor. For System Shock we got not only BioShock, but Prey (2017) as well. For Thief, we got Dishonored. For Ultima, we got Arx Fatalis/Libertatis (and early Elder Scrolls to a very lesser extent).
But for Deus Ex, we’ve got… I don’t know, Cyberpunk 2077, maybe? But the whole open world thing doesn’t really fit in with the usual gameplay loop of Deus Ex. There are a fair amount of great cyberpunk games, but none seem to really scratch that immersive sim itch. I guess Prey is pretty close as well (in addition to its System Shock influences), if you consider some of the body/power upgrades, but it’s not all that similar thematically.
I’d love for someone to come around and pull a Thanos by just going, “fine, I’ll do it myself”. If the franchise is dead, maybe now there’s more motivation for that, since, before a few months ago, we were still clinging to what little hope remained for the third Adam Jensen game. Or maybe someone already has and I’ve missed it.
Still Pokemon Red. I’m beginning to regret my choices. The choice to include Blue-exclusives, and trade evolutions, because PKHex makes it so easy to do. The choice to try to keep a selection of various typings caught up in level, so I’d have some decent coverage versus brute forcing.
Having the trio of starters. I think I’ve grown to hate Bulbasaur, at this point. Every time I go to drop him into my party, all I can remember is “Not very effective”, over and over again. Well into the 20s, still taking 2-3 Vine Whips to take out a level 6 Kakuna.
I have only four more objectives to finish the season journey in Diablo 4: Season 4. Right now I'm balancing between running through nightmare dungeons to level up my glyphs and taking on Helltides.
I finished the main story line for Mad Max and only have to clean up the rest of the map. But I won't do that now, will probably just pop in every few days to do stuff.
Still Wakes The Deep came out recently, and I didn't know much about it other than it takes place on an ocean oil rig near Scotland and is Lovecraftian in nature. I was really looking forward to it, because usually Lovecraftian games center around a detective MC, so this taking place on an oil rig seemed like a refreshing concept, but I ended up extremely disappointed. It started off like Amnesia meets The Thing meets Alien Isolation, but unlike Amnesia, there's not any puzzles. And unlike Alien Isolation, there's not any combat or action. Just go here, pull lever, sneak there, have a little chase, flail through awful QTEs (and jesus, there were a lot of them). It made for a very boring ride with bland and shallow story where nothing is explained. The accents were fun though.
I picked up Subnautica again. I'm determined to actually finish it this time. I think my issue in my previous attempts was spending too much time working on building a massive base, so my plan is to just build necessities this round. I think it's working so far? Right now all I have is a moonpool with some storage, a fabricator, and a med station. I'm not sure how long to "story" is, but I feel like I'm making good progress.
I really want to like them. They are everything I want in a game. Open levels you are free to approach however you like, a possible stealth approach, nice attention to detail and one of the later games even had native Linux support. But I never could get hooked to the story like other people seem to be.
I came to the conclusion (based on other games and media as well) that I just don’t like cyberpunk dystopias. Maybe because we’re in one, Miss Turner.
You know, you bring up a really good point, honestly.
My friend had a similar complaint about Baldurs Gate III.
“Why so much body horror and gore? When I was growing up and playing DnD, we were never exploring that kind of stuff. DnD can be so much more than just body horror and gore.” Not verbatim, but you get the idea.
As much as I love BG3, I don’t actually disagree with his sentiment at all.
There should be an opportunity for people to play similar style of games that aren’t so gory or depressing or both. Not every stealth game needs to be cyberpunk and depressing.
I only played the original. I didn’t really like it at first, thinking that the augmentation and mod stuff was needlessly complicated for this kind of game. Also the graphics weren’t all that great in comparison to other games using the same engine. There were a lot of attention to details in comparison to other games so I gave it a chance. The turning point came after completing the first part of the story and getting hooked. The story really carried the game and touches on some interesting topics.
A game with a similar feel would be Omikron: The Nomad Soul. It was released the year before Deus Ex, has worse controls and graphics, but the story and setting is somewhat similar.
Finally managed to kick my current World of Warcraft addiction, or at least massively cut my time with the Remix mode. I did level a new character yesterday, just to get them to max level, but that was pretty much it. There are a few more I plan to level, but I’ll take my time with those, maybe one a week. XP needed for max level is supposed to be slashed soon, because of the new expansion, so the already short level time should be even shorter.
I’m also done with the Diablo 4 season. I didn’t enjoy playing Minion Necromancer at all, and couldn’t be bothered to grind for a different build. Just like the last few times, I finished the Season Journey, and killed one of the new giga versions of the bosses (Tormented Duriel), although I needed help with that. The next season is supposed to start soon-ish (4-5 weeks or something), so I’ll take a break until then and hopefully choose something I enjoy more.
Went back to Dave the Diver, did just one dive, but didn’t really feel it. My extended break with the game really killed my enthusiasm. I might try again here or there, but who knows. There are so many other games I want to try, this might just be it for Dave.
Started Crab Champions, a roguelike shooter, based on the Crab Rave song (I guess). It’s in Early Access, fun for a couple of hours, but lacks variety, so it can get boring relatively quickly. I’ll wait for some more updates or the full release. This game also has multiplayer, so I gotta convince some of my friends to get it, since that’s always more fun.
I just replayed the entire series over the last couple of months. The first one is the highlight of the series and laid the groundwork not only for the sequels, but pretty much founded the genre of immersive sims all by itself. This type of game is the rare lightning in a bottle that many have failed to capture since and it really hasn’t aged much since it came out over 20 years ago. Sure, the voice lines are cheesy, the AI is outdated and there are some pretty wacky characters in this otherwise serious game, but it all fits together extremely well and has a certain charm to it.
I don’t think there are any “bad” Deus Ex games, but the sequel Invisible War is definitely the weakest installment. It leans too much into the whole B-Movie theme and, with the exception of the last chapter, suffers from lackluster writing and forgettable characters. The gameplay itself is still fun but overall severely limited due to the hardware constraints of the Original Xbox.
Human Revolution did well to separate itself from the first title while staying true to the core gameplay and I do love the aesthetics that they went for. The story is very solid and I’d say there are more ways to approach a mission than the first game had. Adam Jensen is also a well-written character and a worthy replacement for JC Denton. The only thing I didn’t really like was the new melee system.
Finally, Mankind Divided turned out to be the most “Deus Ex” we’ve gotten since the first game came out. It’s a brilliant game through and through and I can’t really think of even minor criticism. It’s basically what the first game was, just all grown up. Even the DLCs are among the best missions in the whole series.
It’s so sad to see the great path this series was on before it was ultimately cancelled again. I felt like they had finally perfected the formula. And now we’re most likely stuck with the open ending of Mankind Divided for the foreseeable future.
Top-tier writeup. The original will always hold a special place in my heart but Mankind Divided was an excellent modern interpretation of similar systems of gameplay.
Kind of overrated? I mean, it was cool to see a bit more of a palatable cinematic presentation in real time to go along with the late 90s PC jank, and that theme did kick ass, but it's less groundbreaking in context than I think people give it credit for. And it doesn't hold up nearly as well as System Shock 2, in my book.
System Shock 2 is begging for a remake with actually functioning netcode for multiplayer way more than the original.
Bioshock would eventually iterate on this, but the RPG systems of System Shock 2 are so, so deep, and I always appreciated that you could still get attacked by enemies while trying to hack machines. It made doing things like hacking feel very dangerous. Bioshock literally pauses time for you it’s so weak by comparison.
I'm not of the opinion that more simulation and more "realism" are always better, but I would absolutely take a System Shock 2 remake, especially after the System Shock one (1 one?) turned out great.
I only played the two “new” ones. They were both good, fairly interesting, but not amazing. It’s hard to say, but it just felt like something was missing from them. Maybe it was a lack of things to do between missions beyond finding my way into a few random apartments for no real reason?
It’s worth noting that I’m generally not into stealth games, I get impatient and just want blood, or think I can sprint past a few guards without being seen. (I think I fucked up in the police station in HR, and the entire interior of the building was just corpses)
Out of the two human revolution was a bit better but there wasn’t much between them.
I did like the aesthetics and general mood of the games though, and cyberware will always be cool.
I still would have played the next one if it hadn’t been cancelled sadly.
I would suggest against GMDX for a first time playthrough, it changes A LOT. From the aesthetics, to the gameplay, to the sounds, the mood, the feel of the game, and the viable approaches in each level, there’s so much that’s changed it just isn’t the same game anymore.
You’re much better off with the Vanilla Fixer tool, Transcended, or Zero Rando (I’m the dev). You could also use Revision and toggle every setting to vanilla, but make sure you also disable the HDTP models, and disable Shifter and Biomod too, and definitely set the maps to vanilla.
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