Gameworlds have become ever-more lavish, but has there been a dark price paid for this? Craig Lager believes so. Production values are up but these worlds don’t seem to react to players’ actions as fulsomely as they once did, he worries – are we allowing games’ strange logic to take us for granted? But there is yet hope. Frowned at: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dragon Age II, Skyrim. Smiled at: The Witcher 2, Dwarf Fortress, Outcast. Please note these are Craig’s views, not necessarily those of RPS.>

In my version of Human Revolution, the police station should be surrounded. There should be SWAT teams, negotiators, probably even an evacuation zone. Adam Jensen’s face should be being projected from every single screen that litters Detroit’s streets as Eliza explains him as being a more-than-prime-suspect in a new, horiffic incident. An hour ago, she would explain, Jensen asked for access to the police morgue and was declined. Now the back door has been broken into, and a path of corpses and hacked computers lead to the morgue in which a body has been clearly tampered with. Instead, Jensen walks into the main lobby and is greeted with “Hello”. (more…)

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions’s first piece of expansion DLC turns up on the 18th, for the price of $14.99 USD, €10.99, or £8.99. I’ve been having a bit of a play, and I’ll be able to tell you a bit more – while attempting to dodge spoilers (there are few quite stealthy ones, but nothing fatal) – below.> (more…)

Somehow, this is the first official in-game footage of Hitman: Subtitle which has been released to the hungry eyes of the public. Feast, feast!

As Adam worried in his preview t’other week, old 47 doesn’t appear to be quite so silent an assassin as he once was, but it’s good to see he’s still playing fancy dress in between punching people and shooting people and throwing people and choking people. (more…)

Deus Ex: HR came saddled with a selection of preorder incentives, a phrase that tastes like a little bit of sick in my mouth. The upshot is that if you didn’t buy the game from a grid coordinate during the correct lunar sequence, you may be missing little bits of content. No longer. Now, everything can be yours, provided you’re willing to reach into your digital wallet once more. There are two packs available, neither of which I have any experience with so don’t expect an informed opinion. Personally, I haven’t found the game to be lacking any of the things that are listed below. Have you? (more…)

Update: new video!>

Adam Jensen’s story (which he never asked for) may be the canon prequel to the cyberpunk conspiracy theorising of the original Deus Ex, but the future-world’s a big place – there’s plenty of room to tell new tales from the time before JC Denton trotted across the globe. 2027 is a massively ambitious, Russian-made mega-mod for Deus Ex 1, the English version of which launched last week. It offers a new, apparently highly non-linear story, levels based on real-world locations, amped-up DirectX 9 graphics with stuff like weather effects added and a slew of new abilities, weapons and spider-bots. Also, new fonts. I do so like a font. Haven’t had a chance to give it a spin yet, but the below in-game footage certainly speaks for the visual upgrade. (more…)

Last week, cloud gaming service OnLive launched in the UK. Americans have had it for a while now, and doubtless thus look down on us as some kind of addled-brained backwater cavemen who’ve only just discovered fire, but for this small and governmentally-besieged isle having local services for this ambitious technology could be a game-changer. Or maybe not. Everyone who’s used it has something to say about it, and very often that’s ‘it kind of works but it looks rubbish on my PC.’ I would say the same thing – full-screen play on my 1920×1200 monitor looks like someone threw grey jelly at my screen and like everyone in the game is melting into the scenery. In windowed mode, I can play for a bit without being too bothered, but if I want OnLive to use more than 25% of my monitor I give up within five minutes.

Then I tried out the Micro-console thing they’ve started giving out/selling over here and my tune changed almost immediately. (more…)

The kerrrrayzeeeee hi-jinks of Adam ‘Elbows’ Jensen are set to continue very soon, with the impending The Missing Link downloaderised content injection. What mad scrapes and hilarious misunderstandings will our man with the facially-implanted sunglasses get into this> time? Well, let’s have a little look, as Eidos Montreal’s Lead Narrative Designer Mary DeMarle narrates a five-minute taste of the new, ship-bound corridors, staircases and security control rooms Elbows is due to explore. (more…)

Yesterday I had a chance to catch up with Deus Ex: Human Revolution lead, Jean-François Dugas, and to chat about the state of things now that the game has been released. Read on for what he had to say about the “disappointment” of the boss battles, the way in which the ending of the game did not match the original plan, and the delight the team felt in having managed to create this formidable game as their first project.> (more…)

Right, so here’s the first step in answering the mystery of Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s boss battles – they were outsourced. Meaning, a lack of continuity during the development process, one has to assume. That’s not a condemnation of the work done by G.R.I.P., the company responsible for the bosses, who will have their own story to tell. As I said in my review of the game, the real story of how they happened will likely come out in a few years time, once enough people have moved on to be willing to explain. So why such a feature was outsourced, why there wasn’t a coherence between them and the rest of the game, and why they weren’t just ditched when it became clear they didn’t fit in, are questions that will perhaps one day be answered. But not yet. But as a magazine noticed, there’s a behind-the-scenes video with GRIP’s president discussing the battles that quietly appeared last month. So yes, this information was always out there. You can see it below.

(more…)