JUST like the Godfather! ;-)

Deus Ex is also my favorite game. I played it through 5 times, taking time to track down every email, book, datacube, and newspaper I could find. I also was highly active on the Planet Deus Ex boards from 2000 to 2002.

While DX:HR is not the equal of DX, it is, in my opinion, a worthy successor is a way that IW was definitely not. It had good atmosphere, a story with a pleasing amount of complexity to it, little surprises hidden around the maps, maps that were not small and had a good amount of verticality to them, and interesting interactions with the characters. I even forgave them the cover system once I figured out how to use it to lean around corners.

I'm not going to try to convince you to play it. In fact, I don't think you should play it. But the one positive thing for me that came out of my profound disappointment with Invisible War was a sense of detachment. Not personal detachment, but detaching things from one another. IW doesn't make DX any less great. It didn't ruin the first game; it was just bad itself. So I played DXHR knowing that whatever happened, the DX would still be what it always has been.

WOW do I dig the attitude at the end, there. It's much like mine. Deus Ex: GOTY stands on its own regardless of anything else with a Deus Ex name that's put on the market.

For my part if a miracle happens and I can play HR in time I intend to. The playthrough I saw confirms the description above and it looks like it could be a giggle.

Let me preface this by saying, I have yet to play the orginal DE, am just about to install it. That being said, I am stateing why I find HR cool, and why, even with it being a "Series" game, I feel that everyone who likes the type of game it is should give it a go...

To me, HR had a nice, interesting story, and even with the choices, I always found myself playing my style of character... A inspector gadget/terminator/robocop mix... Sneak arround till I messed up, anilalte any and everyone, always get the bad guy. It offers a lot of choices, and points you to those choices as well, right from the "first" mission. The first true mission you go on, you ride a helecoptor to the site and your boss asks how you want to handle it. Depending on your awnser, you recive one of 4 wepons, a tranq rifle, a stun gun (slightly ranged tazer), a combat rifle, and a pistol. Then, as you near the entrance, one of the characters tells you that you may be able to avoid the crowd of people by the door by looking at the roof. Yes, the health regen is a little silly, but it doesn't heal you to "full" health, only 100 points, (out of 200). Latter, as you unlock augs, you can burst through walls, leap up to three feet, fall as far as you want... and with the way the game looks, It feels satasfying... especially the first time you punch through a wall and knock out someone standing on the other side... made even more special when you didn't know they were there... Or the nice fuzzy feeling you get when you sneak past the soilders, turrets, and bots, hack the console, turn the machines against the soilders, and walk out a ghost... It's a rediculous challange on give me dues ex mode (Three shots and your dead most of the time), and even has some funny dialouge (There's a robocop referance if you can catch it... Most people don't cuse it requires non-hostile police in the prisinct) plus, the dialouge challanges are intersting, because even if you blow them, the game continues...

And now, for something completely diffrent. The game does have some short-comings. Adam, your character, never modulates his voice. He always sounds gruff and angry. While this can be explained by his augs, it's still wrong. The ending boss fight isn't really explained in game, and the mechanics for it are a little confusing if you don't hack into and read every email, which, by this point, there's more than 200 unique emails in the game. The game gives you upgrades to your augs like candy, makeing it a little too easy at the endgame. The bosses up to the last two are rediculosly easy even on hard diffuculty once you realize they are not emp shielded, (Like you can be, another issue, that while cool, allows you to make a COD style char...)

All in all, if your afraid of hateing the game, or being let down by it, realize one thing. It's a game, that even though it has a link to the orginal DE in both title and set up/game play, It should stand on it's own. Yes, compareing games is a good thing, yes, sometimes games legitimatly suck on their own or when compared to others... (Rogue Warrior for me due to it crashing every 5 to 10 minutes, and no way to fix it, although BRINK is close up there... (Shoddy AI, Built arround co-op, objectives hard to complete... and yet, it sounded so nice... parkour/free running like assassin's creed, gunplay like COD, and classes like TF2...)) But this is a game that should be wieghed on it's own merits...

To me it always did feel like kind of a reboot, from the screens and videos I saw during its development. Everything looked so futuristic; the cities, the clothes, the early mechanical augmentations of HR that looked more advanced than the nano augmentations of DX. And this was supposed to be 2027?

Deus Ex, on the other hand, which is in 2052, is a far more reasonably realistic looking future, which is one of things I really loved about it. It didn't look like the Earth had had a total makeover. There were futuristic things of course, and it is in the future. But for 2027 to look more futuristic and technologically advanced than 2052, that bothered me a lot.

But then, it doesn't seem like the really cared about the original game. In fact, I remember the exact moment I realised I was never going to play this game. It was when someone from Eidos Montreal said they were treating the game as if it were a new IP. And so my worst fears were confirmed.

If they hadn't called it Deus Ex, I'm sure I'd have played and enjoyed it. But it's not Deus Ex to me.

I liked Deus Ex very musch and played it several times (however finished only once).

Now I am playing HR and found it enjoyable as well even it is somewhat easier than the original Deus Ex.

I also own Deus Ex IW. I played it only once and have not finished it because of constant errors (in Windows XP). In addition, the sneak system almost does not work (enemies can hear you through walls etc. So this ruined the game for me.

Any improvements in GOG version?

Gamers who were in their formative years when DE came out, or those that read what they write, spew on and on about how transcendent DE is because it's a particularly hardy meme. Of course, anyone that played a game when it was "current tech" is in no position to judge it in relation to newer games, due to their inherent bias.

Any rational modern gamer would scorn DE in favor of ether IW or HR. This, I am sure of.

I only finished my first playthrough of the original Deus Ex last week, and finished my first playthrough of Human Revolution today.

I find that Deus Ex and Human Revolution are about equal - both great games. I think that Invisible War is inferior to the original Deus Ex (and HR) overall, but does improve over DX in some areas.

So no, you're wrong when you say that 'any rational modern gamer would scorn DE in favor of either IW or HR'.

One person mentioned about how the first Deus Ex raised the bars to high for any of the sequels to compare to and IW is something that many people refuse to touch. Fine however in HR its a really great game with a breath of fresh air that adds more features and while not as revelation filled as DX1 the plot is still very intresting and draws me in and awards you more for stealth then brute force. Takedowns are a very nice touch, customizing what augmentations you want and new items are as well. HR shortcomings is that the plot has a few loopholes and there is a scene where you hear the triad talks about kidnapping augmented people and Ripping their augs off to sell them to the various black market clients but you never see that, now that would be a more emotional moving scene, hell the death of Malik moved me because there was nothing you could have done and also persuading the Creator of Augs what a hypocrate he is and what he has done and seeing the expression on his face, but the ending I feel was very lazy but not something that really pissed me off. Everybody on this forum know the greatness and flaws of DX1 so I wont go into detail into it although the setting of the world felt more punkish and dark as suicide clients are made legal and hade more plot twist that threw me off guard, and the creatures in the labs and area 51 were making you wonder WTH they are for and even seeing your own birth place... crazy shit. Overall HR is a very worthy game to carry on the Deux Ex tittle all of which led to the dark future of DX1.

But... you can save Malik.

Human Revolution was simply awesome - the only game I've ever paid full £30 for

I havn't played human revolution, but the first two were simply wonderful. the first in the series i beat, and have to say it was awsome all the way to the end. the second invisible war, i only played a little bit of it. it seemed very promising, and to be honest with you I will put up with a little bit of crap if the rest of the game delivers. some people, i get the impression that if a game is just a little bit crappy they give up on it. with all the great games out there this makes sense in some regard. me? i say give it a shot and stick with it, and you'll reap the rewards! besides, some games get better over time!

Now you're being pretentious and conceited. Some people may judge things off of bias, but many people do so off of wisdom. You'll understand that when you get older.

I can't speak for IW, but given that the general consensus seems to be unanimously against it I'll take everyone's word for it.

I have played HR from start to finish on the 360 and it is not a bad game but it pales in comparison to DE1. On its own it suffices, though I had no desire to play through it again (spent a week on it, returned it to GS for full purchase price :)

For one, while HR is stealth-centric, it does actively encourage - and at times outright force - lethal combat as a means to progress. While the game does do DE1's multiple means to an objective approach, the level design isn't all that good and never requires players to get very creative in their approach like DE1 does. Many players were put off by the purely lethal scripted action approach to rather shoe-horned boss fights which are pretty poorly done bosses in the first place. The stealth play suffices which is about as much as can be said for it. I've certainly suffered worse stealth games, but even though you can purely stealth and non-lethal everything the game doesn't out right require you to kill, the stealth serves to support the action gunplay. Whereas in DE1 stealth was practically required to succeed - at least early on.

HR also has a pretty weak story and narrative. It's your basic technology vs. the human condition plot filled with some of the usual tropes. In the end, even though your decisions can lead to multiple conclusions, each ending is really only a different slide show with a slightly different monologue from Adam that doesn't make any difference what-so-ever.

Adam Jensen also makes for a dull protagonist and his voice acting is irritating. I call it the "worst dirty-harry impression" that voice actors adopt for their brown haired grizzled white guy protags (Geralt the Witcher does this too though he's the only one who's ever managed to nail it.) There's no real reason to get invested in Jensen or care about his girlfriend who the writers dangle around as your classic damsel-in-distress/hero motivation again.

But the game plays well. As an RPG it's quite shallow. As a cover-based action shooter is performs better than almost any. As a stealth game it suffices (which is high praise coming from somebody who detests stealth games that don't have the word 'Arkham' in the title.)

Also the 'hub' areas of HR - while graphically brilliant - are sterile and lifeless and are even devoid of roaming NPCs. They just stand around like cardboard cutouts or store-bought mannequins triggering the same canned one-liners every time you move past them. DE1's aesthetic is lost on HR and HR's cyberpunk world doesn't feel lived in like DE1's did.

For me HR was fun while it lasted. Then I shelved it and never though much of it ever again after that.

For those hesitant to play DXHR, you should give it a shot. There's no guarantee you'll like it, but it's a fine game in its own right. And since it's a prequel, it won't mess up the characters you know and love. (Unlike a certain other game we all know and hate.) Think of it as a game inspired by DX rather than as a sequel to DX. I'll go into detail on its good and bad sides, if you don't mind spoilers.

So let's answer the OP's question.



***SPOILERS*** (all the way down)



DXIW

I hated DXIW. I've only finished it once, and I had to force myself to do it.

A lot of people say it would have been a decent game if it hadn't been branded as a DX sequel, so I recently tried to pick it up again and look at it with fresh eyes. I couldn't get through Seattle, which is the first area. Not because it was hard, but because I couldn't make myself fire up the game again when there are better things to play.

So while it's possible the game would have been decent on its own, it definitely hasn't stood the test of time.

Flaws

Others can go into specifics. I would sum up the flaws simply as: it doesn't feel satisfying.

DX's fun comes from choice and exploration. You can play however you like, and it is satisfying to play.

In DXIW we had some choice in how we played but none of the play styles felt particularly satisfying. I remember stealth being frustrating and combat was also frustrating. Exploration didn't really feel like exploration. It didn't help that the game area was small with tight corridors. None of the characters were likeable and none of the plots compelled me.

Now, if we were to look at DXIW as a standalone, and ignore the choice and exploration aspect, what are we left with? Would we play it for the stealth? Would we play it for the combat? Would we play it for the story? And that's precisely the problem.

The game did nothing well enough to be worth playing.



DXHR

The game has many flaws but it is fun. I've played it through a couple of times now, trying out various play styles. Player choices matter, the game areas are large with freedom of movement and there's a lot to explore or skip if you'd prefer.

We have a selection of play styles, although not as many as DX. We can play a cover-based fighter, or we can stealth or semi-stealth. We can try additional challenges like non-lethal, no weapons, no augs, no takedowns, or any combination thereof.

The characters are likeable. The plot is compelling. Our actions feel important.

They brought back the grid-based inventory, which is fun to use.

Flaws

I didn't like some of their design decisions. I felt like they hurt replayability.

Hacking mechanic
It felt out of place. Worse, it hampers replayability. Having to play the minigame every single time you hack becomes a nuisance that interferes with the flow of the game. It's worse if you want to play a hacker build because you need to gain a lot of experience to upgrade your hacking, which means you will need to do a lot of hacking to gain that experience. The hacking interface also has various issues, such as poor responsiveness.

Character builds
There is ultimately only one character build. Your character comes with all his augmentations pre-installed and you simply unlock them by gaining experience or buying kits. You'll have almost all of the augs unlocked by the end of the game. So choices only really matter early on because all builds converge anyway.

Skills
Your character starts off proficient in all weapons. There are no skills, so you don't get that second level of customisation or progression.

Boss battles
The boss battles are unskippable and largely require combat. I hear they have made a few modifications in the Director's Cut version, but that's a new purchase.

A lot of people were annoyed because the first boss battle caught them by surprise and they hadn't designed their characters to be combat ready. However, I don't see this as such a big problem because even in the original version it's possible to beat the first boss without any augs or weapons. And from that point on you're aware that there are boss battles and can prepare for them.

Stealthy non-lethal bias
The game is rigged towards the stealthy and non-lethal approaches. Melee takedowns are silent and instantaneous. The tranquiliser crossbow knocks enemies out almost instantly from a distance. It's actually quite satisfying to use, but it also means that non-lethal becomes the default choice with no real downsides. Unconscious enemies can be revived and crossbow ammo is scarce, but those aren't big hurdles. On the other hand, lethal kills make a lot of noise and fighting is riskier.

You also get more skill points for taking the stealthy and non-lethal approaches. You get exploration bonuses for using air ducts you would have used anyway when going stealthy. You get fewer skill points for killing enemies than for knocking them out. Combat kills your chances of getting stealth achievements, which come with skill point bonuses. In theory, you can backtrack and crawl through air ducts to scrounge for exploration bonuses when taking the non-stealthy route, but it's a hassle. Luckily, augs are unnecessary. However, the design bias is obvious, as certain play styles get more advantages.

Combat is cover-based only. You can fight without cover, but it's not going to go well. The tools simply don't exist in this game to allow non cover-based combat outside of the boss battles. As a result of the cover mechanic, combat is quite easy but you can make it more interesting by turning off your crosshairs in the options menu.

Final mission
The final level is unsatisfying. By this point you've got a decked out character and want to put his abilities to the test. Combat is entirely unsatisfying in the final level and you feel bad for shooting the zombies. Stealth is also straightforward and you'll hardly need to use all the tools at your disposal. It's quite disappointing reaching your character's peak and not being able to put all his abilities to the test.

Other thoughts

That's a long list of flaws, but don't let that put you off. I was able to make a long list because the game was so fun I put enough time into it to care about the flaws.

Is it as good as DX? Not quite. Is it still an excellent game? Yes.