Recenzii recente de Dr Bob

My rig:

• Gigabyte 7970 GHz Edition
  
• Intel Core i5 3570K @ 4.2GHz OC
  
• 16 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz
  
• Windows 10 Pro
  
• 1920x1200

I wish I could pick an "in-between" rating instead of just recommended or not recommended. This review may be updated again based on new thoughts as time progresses.

Summary
Things I liked:

• A good variety of tools and equipment to tackling the game’s objectives and challenges
  
• Characters look more natural in their animations compared to HR, though there are some exceptions
  
• Good character model detail
  
• The soundtrack, while a little too ambient for my taste, is quite good
  
• A good selection of PC graphics and user experience options to fine-tune your experience
  
• Dense city hub with many places to explore
  
• The hacking can be fun, but you’re also now rewarded with XP for inputting the correct code or password
  
• Generally good performance at medium/high settings on my 2012 rig

Things I didn’t like:

• The awful amount of expository and redundant dialogue
  
• Effective stealthing requires the use of the third-person cover system
  
• The "hold down this key to do something" is bad and often brings up menus/PDAs when you're trying to drag a body somewhere
  
• Enemy characters don’t care if you’re pointing a laser at them
  
• Enemy AI don’t seem to care if one of their own suddenly disappears
  
• Vaulting/mantling mechanics are clunky and unreliable
  
• Transitioning to in-game merchant’s shops takes too long
  
• An abrupt ending that leaves you wanting more to conclude the main objectives pursued during the main storyline
  
• An unsatisfying final conclusion against a cookie-cutter villain
  
• The social stigma and apartheid boils down to "We don't like augmented gits"
  
• The idea of microtransactions in a single player game like Deus Ex is concerning

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (MD) builds upon the gameplay and story foundations set by its 2011 predecessor; Human Revolution (HR).

It’s certainly a more competent game with regards to mechanics and technical fidelity, which is definitely due to its new Dawn Engine (based on the Glacier II engine that debuted with Hitman: Absolution (2012)). Conversely, HR used a heavily-modified Tomb Raider engine from 2006, so yeah.

During my 30+ hours, I discovered many tools and solutions to tackling the various objectives compared to HR. I feel that MD is closer to the original Deus Ex (DX) than HR was, which I think is very good, though some may disagree. The game only features one city hub in Prague, so this was a little disappointing after the variety of hubs that could be explored in earlier games.

There’s a lot more vertical exploration compared to HR (hooray!) so I recommend upgrading your jump boost aug to help with your traversal around the city. The Smart Vision aug is also very useful in identifying environments you can interact with, like destructible walls, though it did seem a little cheesy for it to spot hidden areas for you. It reminded me of the obtuse visual indicators for the multiple paths you could use in Crysis 2. It’s not emergent gameplay if the game visually labels everywhere you can go.

I like playing Deus Ex stealthily - hacking past enemy defenses and ensuring I’m never spotted. To play like this in MD, you have to use the third-person cover system. This same gameplay was present in HR; both games require you to use the cover system to efficiently stealth your way through the game. My problem with this is that I feel like I’m “cheating” because of the third-person camera. It dampens the immersion and makes things too easy when you have such a wide field of view over the level. There have been times where enemies have begun spotting me whilst I’m out of cover, yet when I pop in, still in their field of view, their detection level goes away. I don’t like it, and I wish there was a way to play the game stealthily in first-person, just like in the original Deus Ex.

In addition to the above, takedowns return though they definitely seem more fluid compared to HR’s awkward takedown animations. Unfortunately, as fluid as they look, MD’s takedowns still retain HR’s weird effect of freezing the world around you during the animation. It’s jarring and weird, and I don’t like it. That said, takedowns are quite effective in dispatching enemies because you don’t need to worry about aiming or missing shots. Plus, they give you a lot of XP so it’s kind of a no-brainer to use them as much as possible.

Ultimately, my biggest gripe with the game is its story. Specifically, the writing and how expository it is. It’s littered with so much obtuse exposition, I feel as though it’s catering to the lowest common denominator of players who need story and information spoon fed to them instead of working things out themselves. The way the main characters speak during story segments doesn’t feel natural; they state the obvious and ask questions that they should already know the answer to. Where is the subtlety?

The conclusion left me hungry for more. I had spent 30 hours exploring as much as I could during that time. The critical mission path is not very long at all; possibly around the 6 to 8-hour mark if you ignore everything else in the game. I anticipate that the story will be expanded upon in future paid-for DLC, which I personally don’t expect to buy at full price.

Cutscenes. I wasn’t a fan of them in HR, and I certainly don’t like that they’ve returned in MD. Considering that Deus Ex is very much about player agency, it’s baffling that Eidos Montréal still incorporates these immersion-breaking cutscenes where you lose all control and watch your character do or say things you may not have done yourself. The original DX did not incorporate cutscenes during gameplay and it aided greatly in immersing yourself in the world. The silver lining here is that the pre-rendered cutscenes don’t look like an orange mess as they did in HR, although they do look a bit fuzzy, which suggests a low resolution was used when recording them.

As far as the PC port goes, I think it’s competent but not excellent. I’ve been playing the game since it went live, so I experienced the weird sensitivity disparity between the mouse’s X and Y axes. Taking into account Nixxes’ long history in delivering PC ports, I was a little surprised by this oversight. It’s also worth mentioning that, on launch, the FoV slider displayed a percentage value instead of how many degrees it will be. Another odd oversight that has since been addressed, just like the mouse sensitivity issue.

Performance wise, it’s okay. I’m still using hardware I bought in November 2012, so I’m quite chuffed it runs relatively well on medium/high settings at my native resolution. I have tessellation, bloom, subsurface scattering and temporal AA on, and motion blur, sharpening, cloth physics (heavy on the CPU) and chromatic aberration set to off. I’ve left volumetric lighting on because I think it makes scenes look that little bit nicer, though it does come with a performance impact. I encourage people to follow Nixxes and Eidos Montréal’s advice in disabling MSAA and being realistic in your expectations about running the game at 60FPS on Very High and Ultra. You can find their performance tuning guide here: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Performance Tuning Guide

1) Poor performance across a multitude of setups despite a delay for the PC release
2) FoV sliders don't make a difference, meaning that your view is still extremely narrow, which can cause motion sickness
3) Unoptimised UI; having to hold down mouse buttons to switch menus or select things is a remnant from an obvious console port
4) UI is stretched at certain aspect ratios (I'm on 16:10) - lazy effort from devs
5) Stuttering mouse movements - why?
6) Having to restart the game to apply graphics settings
7) Charging full triple-A price for an unfinished and unstable product

I'm thankful that Steam refunds are a thing.

I don't think this product is worth £40/$60. The maximum I would pay for it, and this is considering the awful communication around the previously confirmed multiplayer features, would be £15.

Soma is a deep, intriguing atmospheric horror game from the developers of the survival horrors Penumbra and Amnesia.

The game tackles a variety of themes, ranging from isolation, suicide, relationships and what it means to be human.

It’s interesting how everything comes together by the end of the game. I felt that there was a bit of a slow start and I wasn’t really feeling that scared until a few hours in. I think you’ll appreciate the pacing of the game as you continue playing through it.

There were times where I felt genuinely uncomfortable performing certain actions. You will discover these as you play through the game.

One thing to note is that this game lacks the typical ‘survival’ elements of horror games, so no health bar, inventory management, delectable resources etc. I think this works in the game’s favour though, because it helps keep things flowing in the more narrative-driven style of play.

Recommended.

This game has awful stealth encounters with trigger-happy, auto-aiming NPCs. It seems as though there are quite a few of these throughout the game, probably to help pad out the hours it takes to complete it. There is no freedom in how you handle these stealth encounters or the dull missions.

The characters are bland and lifeless. You don't really feel a connection with anyone.

The sound design and lighting is great. The developers clearly have a love for the source material. Unfortunately, sound design and nice lighting effects do not make the core gameplay any better.

If you're expecting another survival horror like the original Amnesia then turn around, because this is a more linear game that focuses more on telling a pretty poor story in favour of creating interesting gameplay scenarios.

Feels and plays like a modern rendition of Silent Hill that doesn't suck. You wouldn't believe that this is a mod for a game as old as Half-Life 1 by looking at the screenshots or watching some gameplay.

This is a real survival horror game. It's great, and you owe it to yourself to experience it.

An abysmal excuse for a Hitman game. Gone is the assassination sim that we enjoyed in previous iterations of the series. Now we have a stealth game in the vein of something like Splinter Cell: Conviction.

The disguise system is completely ridiculous; if you are disguised as a police officer, other officers in the level will see through your disguise and detect you, even if you are walking around like a normal person! But, if you walk while spinning around, so that they can't look at your face for too long, they won't detect you!

Further, on all but the hardest difficulty level, 47 has access to an active wallhack (think of Batman's detective vision from the Arkham games) that lets him see enemies through walls. This is intended to replace the map screen from previous games, but all it really does is pander to the casual audience that has never existed for these games.

Bottom line: this doesn't have the Hitman DNA - it's a stealth game that focusses more on telling a poor story over providing interesting emergent assassination scenarios.

Not recommended.

The successor to Deus Ex we've all been waiting for.

A major improvement over Borderlands 1, great fun with friends!

A bad sequel to the original F.E.A.R. This was one of the first "consolised" games to come out after the golden years of native PC versions.