As a fan of the Deus Ex series, I thought this game was very cool. Including side missions and exploration, I spent 40 hours on my first playthrough, so overall the game is not short. It is true that the main story is not as compelling as in previous titles, but I felt it was a complete game Gameplay is excellent, mechanics have been improved over HR, though MD is overall easier. Combat is a viable option now, and quite fun, especially towards the end with many combat-specific augs and weapon upgrades available. Weapons can be modified on the fly, kind of like in Crysis. I like how they implemented the new augs with a "overclock" mechanic, where you need to balance your energy to use the powerful new augs. Tho you can do a quest to unlock all of them, which will make you kind of OP Level design and art design are top-notch. Levels feature MANY ways to complete objectives and allow for different play styles. There is only one hub, however it is very dense, with lots to do and explore. The World is crafted with insane attention to detail. Exploration is rewarded Graphics are very good, but MD needs a fairly powerful PC, especially GPU. With a 2070S I got 80-150 FPS @ 1080p, depending on the area, with textures very high, shadows high and 2xMSAA, contact hardening shadows OFF As for the negatives: The game sometimes crashes, especially when taking the metro, so save before that (I was able to play multiple hours without crashes tho, so it's not especially bad, just stay out of the TF-29 shooting range, that will CTD for sure). Also, the beginning of the game has too many cut-scenes, takes a while till you are actually allowed to play the game. Another thing that bugged me, is that you can't seem to sneak over tiny platforms/steps, like in front of vents. You bump into them and need to jump. Overall a very cool Cyberpunk game, great gameplay, art direction, level design, graphics, side mission are very good, main story is mediocre to ok, some bugs, but not too bad
I love this game. The art style is quite unique, environments feel lived in with lots of detail. Gameplay-wise, the game wants you to be stealthy, but you can go in guns blazing. Shooting is harder than stealth tho, especially on max difficulty, you'll die after a few hits. There are different ways of how to approach each mission, exploration is rewarded with extra XP and additional side-quests. DX:HR uses a cover system where you switch from 1st to 3rd person upon taking cover. It's very fluent and works well. Unlike in the original Deus Ex, augmentations are now solely unlocked via XP-gain. No more aug canisters. DX:HR dropped skills too, but there are enough augs to choose from to cater to different play styles. Weapons can be upgraded with regular upgrades and one special upgrade that changes their functionality. Graphics still look great in most places, textures are very sharp. System requirements seem a bit low, my GTX 970 is at 100% utilization at max settings. The game has almost no bugs by now. There are two hubs in the game, plus rifleman bank station where the DLC takes place and a few one-time locations where missions happen. You can free-roam in the hubs, mission areas you can only leave after the mission is completed. There are different endings, which you determine with a choice at the final mission. Choices throughout the game sometime have consequences later, but I would say that mostly their effects are fairly immediate. Boss fights in the Directors Cut give you more options than the original release, but can still be rather hard, unless you invest in the Typhoon, which is basically a skip-boss-button. The soundtrack is fantastic, and together with the believable world and great art-style make this a very immersive game. I recommend this to all fans of Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk, especially since there aren't many Cyberpunk games out there.
This game is essentially a walking simulator with switch- and teleportation puzzles. Before I go any further: This game NEEDS an SSD. Without it, you will be driven mad by the loading screens in the second half of the game. With an SSD, the level usually loaded in within 10-20s for me. Graphics look beautiful, and apart from occasional minor stutters the game ran smoothly on my aging machine at 1080p on max settings (AMD FX-8350 @ 4,5GHz, gtx 970, 16GB RAM). The game's story is mostly told via written notes you find throughout the game world, though there are some audio/video elements too. Initially almost everything is locked down and your task is to get the place up and running again. There is one NPC who offers some vague guidance, but mostly you need to figure stuff out on your own. There are no quest or objection markers of any kind. No inventory either, you strictly manipulate objects in the game world. For the teleportation puzzles it's important to understand that the teleportation switches always swap an area around them with a similarly spaced area in another place. So you can use that to manipulate the environment, which means you need to be aware of what just swapped where, and how do you get the environment to be like you need it? You need some spacial awareness for this game. There's another type of teleportation that's more straightforward. Though even there it makes senses to note down on paper which exits connect together. There's also a complicated maze puzzle where you should sketch stuff before you start. Though the game has a functionality to take photos ingame and review them later. Without planing, you might have to take some rather long detours or endure many loading screens. The game world itself is well crafted, with much attention to detail. You get the feeling that some mysterious cataclysm happend not long ago, which drew me in. There is no combat at all though. Overall: Game is good, but not for the impatient or easily frustrated.
Now let me tell you, this game is frickin' awesome. Your actions have consequences in this world, What you do will resonate through your play-through. Almost every quest will have an interesting story attached to it. There are a few fetch quests, but these generally serve as an introduction to "build trust" with the quest giver. Once you complete the initial fetch-quest, you'll be tasked with the ACTUAL quest. In this game you are free to play as you want. You can ignore most of the quests and kill pretty much anyone, and the game will adapt. Player freedom is much better developed than in most other games, plus the story is actually interesting. This game is best enjoyed when taking it slow, savor the quests and explore the dialog options. There are some problems though: The technical state of the game is not good, you WILL need to use mods, in fact it will likely take you at least a whole day to get the game set up to a state where you enjoy playing it. It's totally worth the effort, but be aware that you need to invest some time into setting up the game, this is no plug and play experience. The gunplay is slightly better than FO3, but still not good, the erratic animations of Bethesda's engine still make it hard to hit anything outside of VATS. Graphics are rather ugly too (same as FO3, except it's now orange-brown instead of greenish-grey), though you can improve it rather a lot with ENBs (check out Jay's ENB). Still, in spite of these flaws, the RPG experience in this game in terms of player choice and immersion is amazing and FO:NV is highly replayable, since you got multiple factions with detailed backstories and diverging quests. Overall the game is highly recommended, but be aware that you'll need to put in some time and effort to get it to work properly.
On the pro side, this game has great atmosphere, great graphics and good story-telling. The mood is quite dark and foreboding, a bit like in the Stalker games. The negatives are mostly gameplay-related. The game is highly scripted and completely on rails. Often you follow invincible NPCs on a fixed path, or are playing short segments between cutscenes. Fighting other humans feels alright, here you can make use of stealth too. Fighting the mutants is however quite awkward and frustrating. Stealth won't help against them, their hit-boxes are wonky, they will always run up to you and be right in your face. They come in large groups too. The game has some interesting set-pieces and a strong narrative. So if you are looking for a story driven experience you might like the game. Be aware that combat is tough though, and there's no manual saving allowed. Prepare to play cerain sections over and over.. plus if you're too slow in the above-ground areas, you will run out of gas mask filters and be unable to progress. As an overall experience the game feels mediocre to me, though I can see why some people might enjoy it.
This is potentially a 5 star game, but in its present state I'm giving 4 stars due to various issues. I'm gonna describe some of those issues so that you have an idea as to the current state of the game. Game is in dev, so bugs and crashes are to be expected. The game (at current ver 0.9) is playable though and crashes are not that frequent. Points of interest: Graphics and text are well done and the design is consistent, gives a great retro feel. Atmosphere is great and sounds and music are very fitting. Interface is clunky and needs improvement, no scrolling with mouse wheel, when you can scroll with arrow keys you need to tap key for each line. Some gameplay elements are unclear/confusing/require you to read up on forums (e.g. how to drop cargo, what the SOS button does (it teleports you to a station and charges a hefty fee, instead of alerting nearby vessels like you would think)) Early game requires some grind, at start you have no jump-drive and no weapons, so for the first few hours you are essentially limited to trading in the starting system. Gives you an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the controls though. As others already stated there's great variety, but progress in-game is slow NPCs are quite verbose and dialogue cannot be skipped. Dialog is well done, but if the game crashes or you need to reload and have to go through it multiple times it can get taxing. No manual docking is possible. The autopilot sometimes fails to dock, so that you have to fly away from the station again, till you are far enough for the autopilot to lock on again. This game is not a simulation, the ships in the game do not really behave like a spaceship would, e.g. they have a max speed that you cannot go above, even if you keep firing the engine; ships keep momentum, but only forward; rotation stops as soon as rotary engines cut out, acceptable for gameplay purposes. The devs are active on their forum and are hard at work to fix crashes and bugs. Overall worth a buy
This game is extremely atmopheric and delivers the more oldschool flavor of a tactical shooter that is often missing in games today. On Master difficulty, both you and the enemies will die after a few shots even with good armor, and headshots always kill, so you need to take care not to get hit. The world is very immersive, NPCs go about there buisiness independently and the enemy AI is pretty good, with occasional hickups. It's not truly "open world" though, as there are loading screens between the different areas, those areas are fairly large though. STALKER SOC isn't really a game you can just install and play though. You'll need to invest some time into looking at different mods, editing configuration files, editing shortcuts, that sort of thing. Sure, the game is playable out of the box now, but you will not see it's full potential, neither grafically nor gameplay-wise. Fortunately, many things you may not like about the game can be tweaked by editing text files, or maybe someone already made a mod/fix for your paticular problem. If possible, I'd install this on a SSD, otherwise loading times may be very long.
I disagree with those who say this game hasn't aged well. It's true that environmental graphics (walls, floors, etc.) were bland even in 2005, the effects however still hold up. During intense firefights, bullets and explosives interact with basically everything, litering the area with debris and leaving clouds of dust in the air that make it difficult to see the enemy. And unlike in 2005, even medium range PCs will run this game completely smoothly nowadays. Effects are especially impressive during Slow-Mo, which you will be using a lot, since in real time the enemies will just shred you. The A.I. is still one of the best as far as shooters go. The Replica will work togeher as a squad, seek cover, flank you, retreat if you take some of them out, or try to rush you / flush you out with grenades if they have the numbers. The combat mostly takes places in tight spaces. Fortunately this game is one of the few shooters with a great shotgun! Overall weapons feel very satisfying and powerful. The player character is actually fairly fragile though. Slow-Mo gives you the ability to evade enemy fire, but if you are actually hit, you will die quickly. I'd still reccommend to set the difficulty to high though (it can be adjusted at any time). The combat feels kinda like a series of arena shootouts. Enemies will spawn once you cross a certain point, and then it's you with a squad of them in a series of offices, or a courtyard with adjacent multi-story offices with multiple routes to get around. The enemy will use these alternative routes, so watch your back. The main downside of the game really are the repetetive environments. It's mainly offices, industrial areas and abandondend buildings, but the action more than makes up for that.
Does this work properly on Windows 10? I actually own a DVD version of this game, but after some hours of play, it will become unplayably glitchy, with characters skipping about and long pauses in gameplay (even with patches and restored content mod). So, if this version doesn't have these issues, I would totally buy it. I give 5 stars because I have played the game and I know it is awesome, especially with the restored content mod!
With the latest unofficial patch this game is now remarkably stable. The gameplay reminds me quite a bit of the first Deus Ex. The story is complex, characters are mostly well fleshed out, there are often multiple ways of completing quests, each with different rewards and sometimes different consequences. Voice actors are mostly good and I actually wanna hear them narate their dialog instead of skipping through it. The graphics are holding up surprisingly well. This is the first iteration of the Source Engine, texture resolution and polygon count are a bit low, but lighting and sound are atmospheric and character's faces are well done. The game includes the basic unofficial patch. The plus patch can be downloaded here for instance: http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4647/7/ (you may have to open the download link in a new tab for it to work)
