Dx:iw, ng, hm:c

General Chatter
1

deus ex: invisible war
ninja gaiden
hitman contracts

i liked all three of those games, so i made this topic so we can talk about any or all of them. you can take these as reviews, but i just kinda meant for them to be little blurbs about the games (ok, they aren’t THAT little)

first off: deus ex. i really liked this one; the atmosphere, player directed gameplay (decide for yourself how you want to play through it), and immersive world just pulled me in and made me not want to stop. a lot of people who were fans of the first one hated invisible war because there are a few changes. one such change was the “biomod” system. in the first you obtained and upgrade a bunch of different skills and stats to craft the character to your liking. in invisible war they streamlined it a bit; you don’t spend as much time dishing out points in a menu, but there are less skills are they are more… to-the-point so you don’t get as much of a unique experience with your character. the first one was much more like an FPS (while still not really being one), it had somewhat more linear areas with obvious “enemies” set out to stop you. the second one seems more like morrowind i guess… the areas (with the exception of a few) are fully fleshed out buildings, this allows you to attack from any direction. you could go in the front doors, you could go in the back doors, you could get up on the roof and go in through the ventilation system, etc, etc, etc it all depends on how you want to play. and not all of the people inside will be “ENEMIES” there will be civilians who have nothing against you, people that don’t know that you’re not supposed to be there, and maybe even some friendlies.

next: ninja gaiden. this was a pretty cool game, not my favorite, but not too bad. it’s a hack and slash/beat 'em up with some decent challenge and more depth than you’d expect. there are several weapons in the game and each has move list similar to the move lists in the DOA series (you’ll even see some of hayabusa’s moves transfer over). a lot of babies complain about the impossible difficulty, but NG is never actually that hard as long as you’re willing to adapt to the situation and play in a more effective way (which is kind of the opposite of deus ex). the technical side of the graphics are great, though the game itself doesn’t have the greatest art direction…
though there are some really well designed locales and monstrosities. it’s just not otogi or shinobi style-wise. you can also unlock the old ninja gaidens.

finally: hitman contracts. i never played hitman 1, but i thought hitman 2 was ok. in all 3 you assume the role of “mr.47” a bald guy working for “the angency” who sends him out to whack people. you must make creative use of weaponry, human interactions, and/or items and use disguises you find (or take from bodies) to progress through the level. the storylines aren’t exactly hitman’s strong suit, though hitman contracts breaks with tradition and offers up a decently interesting one (i think the idea is based off of a movie). the ingame environments are pretty amazing, lots of great effects were used to punctuate the settings. there are soooooooooo many ways to complete each mission which vary in stealthiness. ideally you’re supposed to get in, assassinate only the target(s) and get out without being seen, but sometimes someone will stumble upon you right in the middle of an incriminating act and you’ll have to shoot your way out or escape and find a stealthier way to progress. in one level, the swat team was going to attack the ship that the target was on, i couldn’t get close for all the swat snipers would riddle me with their bullets. so first i took out a cop and put on his clothes, then i inconspicuously was able to enter the pre-assault staging area where all the swat were. there were several teams of 4 swat members all aound the harbour, i found one team and jump one of them as he went to get some more ammo out of the darkened armory. i then switched into his swat uniform and was able to hear the swat conversations on the radio. they were preparing to move, so i ran back to my (hehe) team and they all assumed i was the guy who went to the armory. the mission began and my team started to assault the boat, i followed them and took part in it with not a single person questioning me. i was getting closer to my target… i’ll let you find out what happens if and when you play it, but that is just one of many ways to go through the level :smiley:

note: you’ll have to be ok with dark humor, graphic violence, some indescribable messed up stuff, and a bit of erotic content to play this game. it really is rated mature for a reason.

2

I never played the first Deus Ex but this one is making me water my mouth.Just a little question : you consider it better than Ninja Gaiden?

3

Ugh… DX:IW is AWFUL. Just plain AWFUL.
The graphics are sub par, the frame rate suffers. The storyline is nowhere near as good as the first one, there is HUGE inconsistencies as well.
The biomods feel like power ups rather than rpg-ish skills, you never really NEED them and less than halfway through the game you have a ton of spare biomods, both normal and black market ones, that are good for nothing unless you wanna cancel a skill and start a new one. The AI is lacking, the level design is MAJORLY lacking, there’s vents to let you sneak unnoticed in practically EVERY SINGLE level! When I joined a new area I ended up not thinking “Ok, how to tackle this situation now?” but instead “Ok so where’s this vent then”.
The sniper rifle is useless cos levels are tiny. In fact, a LOT of the weapons are just useless too. The more powerful ones take TOO much ammo to be worth using cos of the stupid Unified Ammo “feature” (more like pos idea) and I found myself going through the whole game just using the first pistol with some weapon mods installed and the occasional EMP grenade. The physics are majorly unrealistic too. With the Strength biomod installed you can throw bodies and crates around like Superman and, when shot, bodies bounce around for no reason.
There is NO CONSEQUENCES to your actions, whenever you BACKSTAB one of the factions they still are all over you the next time saying something along the lines of “ok that was bad but we’ll forgive you if you do this next mission for us”. You can do this over and over too. No matter which faction you take sides with you end up doing the same exact missions for the most part. It’s also a VERY short game. Talk about “choices” eh?
Overall to me it’s one of the most dissappointing games ever, I was looking forward to it more than anything else and I couldn’t believe this was the game they were advertising when I finally got to play it.
And for the record I’ve never played the original Deus Ex, I’ve just read a few things about it, so no, I’m not just a dissappointed “fanboy”…
My hopes now lay with Half Life 2 for a REALLY good new game, I hope I won’t be dissappointed again…

I haven’t played NG, I hear it’s quite amazing though.

Hitman Contracts is an allright game, I wanted a stealth title but I find the controls too lacking to be able and actually finish missions without being spotted at all. And it’s WAY forgiving too. Way too easy to just go in guns blazing and kill everyone… Overall though it’s fun. I just wish they had gotten the choking a little easier, you have to go so close to the person now that everytime you try and choke them you are risking alerting them… Though you can use other things like silenced pistols but it doesn’t feel as satisfying to do this… The graphics could be better here too… But, like I said, it’s fun :slight_smile:

4

i do in some ways, gehn. but they are very very different games.

how are the graphics subpar, al3x? the frame rate is not a smooth 60- probably more around 30, but it was mostly consistent (unless you piled a bunch of bodies up in a corner) so it wasn’t an issue for me. (burning rangers ran at like 24 but it was consistent, so it didn’t hurt the gameplay).

something i forgot to say in my little blurb about it was that invisible war is much more side-quest oriented, which on the one hand adds to the immersion, but on the other hand it detracts from a storyline. i thought the story was a good continuation of first game, though it was in a different style.

i’ll agree that the biomods turned into power-ups, but their value depends on the difficulty setting. and you are given so many biomods (well if you hunt for them) because you will probably want to change your stuff around a bit throughout the game. you’d run out of ammo so fast on the realistic setting if you couldn’t use biomods to find ways to take guards out without using weapons.

the vents were hardly an alternate route through the levels that they were in, they just let you get the jump on a situation or pass by a disadvantageous situation. i didn’t think the levels were amazing, but i enjoyed seattle and trier and i didn’t have a problem with any of the others aside from antarctica (but that was more because the armored templars were stupid).

none of the weapons were very effective but i disagree about the sniper rifle being useless, it could get you an accurate 1 hit killing headshot from any distance and with a silencer it could do it stealthily (nothing else could do that). i more looked at it like a rifle with a minor zooming ability. i think they wanted you to figure out a good way to use their bad weapons rather than just get a good weapon and shoot everything up. heh, i thought the pistol was one of the most useless weapons :slight_smile: i mainly used a close combat weapon like the laser swords or baton mixed with the boltcaster or hellfire boltcaster (cause i’m sadistic).

you were supposed to have super human abilities when you upgraded the skills, i don’t see what’s so weird about that. did you notice how high you can jump? although i did find it funny/unrealistic that you could kill someone by throwing a shampoo bottle at them when your strength was maxxed :smiley:

there were many consequences for your actions especially later… it would determine rewards, how you go through the levels, the enemies you faced, and who you could deal with. but yes, the factions did seem to forgive very easily. however storylinewise, that can be explained by the fact that you are VERY IMPORTANT, none of the factions can really afford to have you working for a rival.

hitman contracts is actually hitman 3, so i don’t know if you were talking about the actual hitman 2 or if you meant 3?

5

I think Ninja Gaiden is a great game, with what time I have off from work and the real life I try to play it when I can. I am being real casual with it, I just like to hack away at things and make my combos better.

I have not played the other two.

6

Compare the graphics to Ninja Gaiden and you see how they are sub par. And the frame rate is horrible, maybe being steady it doesn’t make gameplay worse but it LOOKS horrible. And the quality of the graphics does not justify that low fps. Burning rangers was created more than 5 years ago…

Yes the character is VERY IMPORTAND but that doesn’t justify kissing his ass, it would justify always being hostile to him however and maybe even sending people to get him in areas this faction normally wouldn’t be.

I was playing on the hardest setting when I played through the game using the “useless” pistol you mention. I never meant the weapons should be very effective but why would I use a rocket launcher and lose half my ammo and kill one maybe two, hell maybe three people in that shot and not just use three to six shots from my silenced pistol, killing them, using up MUCH MUCH less ammo and not alerting anyone else… All it took was maybe two headshots for most enemies. And the Sniper rifle WAS useless, sure it HELPED in shots a little further away (in the FEW maps that zooming in made any kind of sense) but you could do it just as well by moving a little bit closer and using the pistol again…

Strength biomod making you stronger is fine but the distance you could throw things was insane… hell I didn’t use the strength biomod in my regular game save and I could still throw bodies quite far/up away…
The value of the biomods didn’t really change, hell not using them actually made the game better in some cases. I could still sneak around without the silent footsteps mod, and that actually made sneaking have some challenge and make you be cautious rather than use something like silent footsteps/invisibilty and make being stealthy a walk in the park…

And no, there aren’t real consequences when you can wipe out a faction and have them still kiss your ass every chance they get cos you are “importand”… About the biggest thing I noticed as “consequence” during gameplay was which part of the levels the different pilots dropped you off, which was again of no importance to me since the levels were so small that I explored them whole anyway so I still saw everything and dealed with everything…

And about the maps I should also mention that I got out of the map’s limits a lot of times (since as I said I wanted to explore everything) by jumping/mantling where I shouldn’t…

Yes, I meant Hitman Contracts, I edited my post.

7

ok, “Al3xand3r” :wink:

i play my saturn a lot so i guess my graphics scale might not be up to snuff. and i only brought up burning rangers to show how as long as the fps doesn’t effect the gameplay, i’m fine with it. i could have used ecco: dotf as an alternative.

actually i think the seekers did send assassins after you if you sided with the WTO, but i conceed, they were just wussy seekers.

i just thought the pistol was one of the lesser effective weapons. you seem to prefer it over the rifle, but was the pistol a one hit kill if it hit them in the head? i don’t think it was. i think a lot of my sniper rifle kills were unzoomed, for whatever that’s worth. but again, i mainly used close combat and the boltcasters. one reason you might choose to use the rocket launcher over the pistol is when fighting a large number of enemies with powerful weapons, perhaps amored templars, perhaps people with rocket launchers or flame throwers. in the secondary(?) fire you could pilot the missile (a little bit, it’s no redeemer) potentially flying it around corners to hit enemies without exposing yourself to their harsh flames and seering bullets. the SMG was pretty useless, but the widowmaker SMG fired spider grenades as it’s secondary fire and that is neato. then again, if you were low on ammo or health, maybe you’d want to use one of those useless biomods to get by.

i think you might be exagerrating how far you threw things… or maybe i’m just not easily impressed by such feats. while standing and looking straight forwards, i would estimate that you throw a body maybe 10 feet? you could throw them a pretty good distance if you raised your trajectory a bit, but i still don’t see how that makes the game bad… i mean throwing bodies didn’t really have anything to do with the gameplay, it was just fun to experiment with the ragdoll physics. getting that first seeker’s head stuc in the basketball hoop and watching him hang there warranted the feature in my eyes :smiley:

being an enemy of the templars AND the illuminati made certain areas kinda rough. and if you went through the story a certain way, you would have to fight some fairly powerful characters.

yes, i as well got out of the level many times :slight_smile: but never when i wasn’t intentionally screwing around and expecting that i was going to fall into oblivion.

the areas were liberally saturated with items, weapons, and money. it was a bit dopey when i would max out my inventory space with various grenades and basically be forced to go on a spider grenade rampage to make room for more items. but i think they had to do that to make the game playable for people who just wanted to run through it, not explore every inch. i had heard of some people never finding certain items that i was almost always over loaded with. so they had to put in all those biomods, weapons, items, etc even if it meant that the players that enjoy exploring it all get over loaded on them.

yes, contracts is fun :slight_smile: i agee that it is too easy to just shoot everything to heck, but perhaps that’s part of the challenge (i mean not playing that way). you also only unlock secret weapons by getting silent assassin on the levels, so that encourages stealthy play. i think the knife might be easier to silently kill with than the wire, but that’s only in certain levels. the character models could have been a little more polished, but i actually thought some the environment designs were pretty. the submarine level for instance; with the ice canyon and the blizzard effect… i thought it looked good. :slight_smile:

8

I just played Deus Ex 1 which was extremely good - although you could get all three endings by just saving at a certain point in the last level and it lacked some cutscenes. When you misguide a nuclear bomb to a site, I just want to see it explode, dammit. :slight_smile:

9

I must appologise that I havent fully read the large posts, im in a bit of a hurry now but I thought id pop in to post my displeasure with DX:IW.

Heres a list of why I didnt like the game(both plot and engine problems)
:

-Physics engine was messed up(without a strength biomod you could pick up a body and throw it onto a rooftop by jumping). Objects also behaved unrealistically, sometimes if they just touched each other one would fly off crazily. My main problem with this engine is that they claimed it was brilliant, it wasnt.

-The graphics were bad. This cant really be argued, look at some of the prerelease screenshots compared to the full game, they had to tone down their product to release it - there were definately some problems there. The textures were ugly and low quality and there werent any impressive graphical effects.

-The playability of the game was bad, the game was sluggish and unresponsive both ingame and the interface itself. Weapons made no sense, a point blank shot to the face should kill someone in this game it does not. The recticle aiming from the first game was removed. The interface was obviously designed for XBox, not designing it system specifically(i.e. different interface for PC) was lazy and insulting to the user(this isnt something that Ion Storm are alone in doing, it is a major flaw of the game industry at the moment).

-The story wasnt bad, infact it was quite immersive(although not as good as the first one) however there were some bits that made no sense. Yes there were multiple routes which in theory should add to replayability, I couldnt bring myself to play it a second time though because it wasnt fun to play.

There is no doubt that Ion Storm f*cked up when making this game, if you dont agree with this point then you should realise that Ion Storm have admitted it themselves. The main problem with DX:IW was that they tried to change the first game to appeal to a wider market. Dont get me wrong, i think this is a very good idea… IF you are capable of it; Ion Storm werent. They tried to make it appeal to a wider audience however their approach was basically dumbing down other features. They tried to make it appeal to more people, instead they just made a pile of crap.

Ion Storm have learned from their mistakes a bit with Thief 3, the interface better designed for the PC however there are still some very fundamental flaws with how they have designed the game. The MOST important thing with game design is Usability, a player must feel they are in control of the character and that the engine will respond to their input or they will lose confidence in the game. The movement in thief 3 is a step backwards for games, both of the previous thieves played better, in this Garrett is about as agile as a corpse, a corpse with no legs.

Anyway appologies for the rant, Ion Storm just make me mad; someone needs to teach them the fundamentals of making games.

10

so much hate! :frowning:

i think some people go into games wanting it to play like something else. they like the look of it or something else attracts them, but they want it to play like some other game. i go into a game hoping to have to learn a new unique gameplay methodology. i think that is why i am one of the few people who loves gunvalkyrie. i didn’t really look at deus:ex as a first person shooter, i took it for what it was and learned how it wanted to be played. yes, you could look at it as being “dumbed down” from the first (dumbing down is something that i am adamantly against) but if you accept that it is a different type of game, that statement becomes invalid. the game is certainly not without flaws otherwise, but to me the unique interaction it offers justifies its existence more than any of the uninspired games we see on the market.

11

Umm…bullshit :D!
I should accept the crap graphics and performance especially compared to the pre-release screenshots?
I should accept the SEQUEL of a game to have LESS and WORSE character development than the 5 year old original?
I should accept the tiny levels with loading every few metres?
I should accept the mediocre AI?
The silly way you use multitools?
I should accept the unbalanced weapons?
I should accept silly gameplay mechanics like Unified Ammo? Nanites that make anything so you only have one main pool of ammo? Someone please shoot the guy who thought of this. And if the nanites make anything why don’t they just make more nanites when I’m low so I can have infinite ammo? Or why don’t they make grenades and spiderbots? Moreover why do they make spider bots for that gun later? These are some of the inconsistencies that are in it. Dumb system all the way tied in a very weak way into the storyline.
Another thing, why the hell is the story so boring and the characters so bland and “plastic”, I haven’t seen a worse more unemotional character in ages, and again, why are there no real consequences up until near the end? Where is the open ending nature of the game’s story? (Someone said the original only had the diff engines “decided” near the end, that’s TRUE but what is ALSO true is there were much more diverse paths during the game, they just all lead in the same point more or less later, still that DID add a lot of replay value and coupled with the HUGELY different characters you could create you COULD have the different experiences that the sequel PROMISED but didn’t deliver)
I got the game and I expected it to play how it was DESCRIBED, if that’s a crime sue me. Just don’t give me shit as if I expected the game to be something other than they stated it is… It’s fine if you like it but don’t tell me I’m wrong to hate it and that I played it wrong or something. Especially when you don’t know how I played and when you don’t know shit about me and what games I like. How the hell can someone play a game wrong anyway? You only ever use what you have available in the game and you only ever do the objectives the game gives you. I did the objectives, I finished the game, I tried different play styles, different choices (which are all quite possible whether you use biomods or not) and ultimately I found it a boring and shallow experience that shouldn’t have been released at this day and age… They better do good with Deus Ex 3 cos if not I imagine IS is going to close down just like it should have ages ago. Ion Storm Dallas should have remained open since they made the excellent game that is Anachronox…
And Gun Valkyrie IS good and doesn’t even fit as comparison here. It’s a game that’s good at what it does and after that it’s on personal preference if someone plays through it or not. DX:IW does bad in all aspects. About the only thing I thought was neat in it was the ability to mantle up ledges. I hadn’t seen it done in a first person view environment before so I thought it was cool. Then I saw the levels weren’t really made for it with all the places that you can go out of the level from… meh…
Now give it a rest, you like it, be happy for it, you got your money’s worth in your opinion, we didn’t and we’ll keep expecting more from our games’ quality and noone can tell us we are wrong to think that for whatever reason >_>

12

i had a full response typed out, but i have omitted it because i question the purpose when i look at the change in tone. i’ll leave the final paragraph intact.

anyway, this discussion seems to have upset you so i’ll go ahead and discontinue it. you should know that i only continued to respond to the points that you made because i respect your views. i believe in the exercise of healthy debate, but this seems to have become more of a contest…

13

I’m planning on getting my brother Hitman:Contacts since he is a huge fan of the series. I might even give it a go myself, although I’m not to good at these types of games, as I either kill anything that moves, without a thought of secrecy, or die straight away.
Ninja Gaiden looks good.

14

Disregarding that there ever was a Deus Ex 1 or whatever expectations people had of the game, the main reason I dislike DX:IW is that it is poorly made. The bad decisions about changing the game are excusable, maybe they just wanted to change how the game player - fair enough. My opinion is just that it was poorly made and there is no excuse for that.

15

[quote=“Megatherium”]i had a full response typed out, but i have omitted it because i question the purpose when i look at the change in tone. i’ll leave the final paragraph intact.

anyway, this discussion seems to have upset you so i’ll go ahead and discontinue it. you should know that i only continued to respond to the points that you made because i respect your views. i believe in the exercise of healthy debate, but this seems to have become more of a contest…[/quote]

When you imply I didn’t “Get” the game and I “played it wrong” and things like that and that’s the reason I think it’s bad when it’s actually good, then, yes, I’m upset in that aspect and I replied accordingly.

16

Thief III is actually quite good IMO. Everything that made the original games so great (namely the stealth gameplay and the intriguing storyline) is still present. However, why the hell is Garrett wielding a puny dagger now? Where’s my short sword? It feels as if the creators wanted players to focus solely on the stealth aspects of the game. Personally, I was hoping Garrett could dual wield at one point or another just like D&D thieves.

Removing rope arrows from the game was also a mistake IMO.

The Xbox version of Thief III suffers from unstable frame rates in some areas of the game (which is totally unacceptable in my eyes), so gamers should avoid it in favour of the PC version.

17

Assuming they have the hardware needed Geoff cos it’s quite the resource hog.
I agree that Thief III is good BUT it could and should have been much better. The levels should have been big and continuous like in Thief 2, the rope arrows should have been in, the camera/player motion in FPV mode should have been done smoother, the textures should have been higher res, Garret should look like Garret and not have a scar, the game should have been TOUGHER and REQUIRE being stealthy, with all the gadgets you get and especially the flash bombs it’s much easier to escape/distract enemies now rather than be careful… And many other things.
Yes it’s good and fun but, well, it’s like ORTA, it’s good and fun but not quite what a lot of the fans expected. Except in T3 I suppose it’s in a higher degree…

18

i said “get into”, it was why you couldn’t “get into” it. and i honestly never directed anything else at you. but i will re-type another paragraph to show you what i meant by “playing it wrong” (it also explains why i brought up GV).

i wasn’t comparing GV to anything, i only meant that there are people that went into it saying, “this game looks like a third person shooter, thus i will play it like a third person shooter.” then when they encountered the very un-third person shooter-like controls and were swarmed and mauled by the enemies (due to remaining on the ground) they would say, “this game sucks. i’m going to tell all my friends that this game sucks.” that would be an example of people playing the game wrong and i feel that to an extent many people did the same with deus ex invisible war.

i can accept that, i said a few times that the game was not without problems, but i guess i still found the end result fairly enjoyable.

19

Maybe some did, I’m sure that happens to every single game out there with the extent of “mainstream” buyers that buy things based on their cover, however I never buy a game based on things like that. And I rarely buy a game without playing a demo first. When I played the PC demo of DX:IW, I thought “Oh well, it’s quite mediocre but hell, all the reviews are raving about the open ended nature of the storyline and all the different play styles you can employ etc etc etc so it must be a good enjoyable game even if it’s individual aspects are not so great at all. The demo doesn’t really give me a chance to see those things.” And I ended up buying the game… And it’s one of the worst buys I’ve ever done… I’m never buying anything if I have the slightest suspicion it’s not going to be so good from now on >_>

20

On its own merits, DE: IW is a fantastic game. It’s been two years since I played the original, so perhaps I’m not quite as jaded as others, but come now - why is it that only fans of the original think Invisible War is awful? Conversely, why is it that almost all the reviews I’ve read put IW in a positive light?

Objectivity. You’re free to your opinion, naturally, but all I’m hearing is “compared to deus ex 1” and “isn’t as good as”. I know of at least 3 people who played IW without playing the original - and they loved it, so much so they took every oppportunity possible to talk about it.

Even if you haven’t played the original, it’s your own damn fault for believing all the hype surrounding IW. It honestly makes me chuckle to hear people say IW is the worst game of last year - yet not one respectable review extols this viewpoint.

Deus Ex Invisible War is one of the best games I’ve played this generation. Of course there are minor grumbles and niggles I could point out, but the idea that they detract from the game just isn’t true. If that were the case, slowdown/framerate/poor level designs would’ve rendered KOTOR as the worst game of last year.