Deus Ex: Revision [official site] is a project that overhauls “the environments and soundtrack” of Ion Storm’s classic, and it’s out now on Steam. The release has the backing of Deus Ex’s current publishers and developers (Square Enix and Eidos Montreal), and is designed to work exclusively with the Steam release of the original.
I m in the camp that thought Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a hell of a good starting point. The level design ran up against apparent technical limitations, chopped into distinct sections rather than flowing naturally from streets to interiors and back again, and the stealthy approach sometimes felt more difficult than it should have been thanks to sticky cover and too-rigid AI.
During a day of hands-on experience with follow-up Mankind Divided, it became apparent that Eidos Montreal felt similarly about their first stab at their cyberpunk revival. Moving from the tech renaissance of Human Revolution, the sequel steps into a fractured world of corporate feudalism. It s looking superb.
The Deus Ex series, with its highest of highs and most middling of lows, is 15 years old. Old men, running the world. But not complicated pre-order schemes. They can’t run those, it appears. The anniversary is being used to promote upcoming fourth game Mankind Divided, due out in February (thus I will be a man divided between it and XCOM 2), and so we get this animated trailer which is mostly tease for the new title but does include various shots of characters from the first game. Who ever would have thought glimpses of Bob Page and Walton Simmons could make us feel so warm and fuzzy?
Expansion packs were once a core part of playing PC games, but they can often feel less essential in a world of constant updates and microtransactions. Original game Alec, expansions Adam and Graham, and brief DLC Alice gathered to discuss their favourite game expansions and why they still think the model works.
Here s a thing I love: going back to an involved game after weeks, months or even years away, after life got in the way or you hit a brick wall, and abruptly abandoned that world. Starting a brand new game from scratch can never offer the same delightful confusion, even though you begin it from a place of even greater ignorance.
Without fail, I go back in to an abandoned game convinced I know how to play it, that it s a simple matter of resumption and I ll be romping through it as if I d never been away. Then, crushing reality. It s not simply that it takes some time to remember the controls, or the flow of combat, or which device is needed for which action. It s re-establishing the motivation. What was it that drove me onwards? … [visit site to read more]
At Gamescom 2015, I had the opportunity to talk to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gameplay director Patrick Fortier. We talked about feeling a sense of ownership over Deus Ex at last, expanding the language of its level design beyond vents, and the politics of a “mechanical apartheid.” Before I asked him about the game’s ceilings.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution had the best ceilings of any game ever made. I’m not kidding. I’ve had screenshots of that game’s ceilings as desktop wallpapers and I know others who have done the same. Each one was a sculptural work designed to communicate the cyber renaissance setting. I spoke to gameplay director Patrick Fortier about this at Gamescom and unfortunately it sounds as if sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] won’t carry on the game’s ceiling-based legacy in quite the same way. “That dream is dying,” he said.
Level 28! No, the other kind of level. The type that you run around in, shooting people or jumping on their heads and that sort of thing. Adam, Alec, Alice and Graham gather to discuss their favourite levels and/or maps from across the vast length of PC gaming, including selections from Deus Ex, Call of Duty and Quake III. Someone even makes a case for Xen from Half-Life, and means it.
An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC RPGs ever released. Covering the entire history of computer role-playing games is a daunting task and attempting to place the best games in such a broad genre in any kind of order is even more daunting. Thankfully, we are equal to all tasks and below, you will find the best fifty PC RPGs of all time.
Fail Forward is a series of videos all about the bits of games which don t quite work and why. In this episode, Marsh Davies discusses Deus Ex: Human Revolution [official site], its beards, its many lovely desks and what it says about power.