toxicitizen

Yeah, definitely. The best thing they could've done would've been to strip it of the XCOM name and let it be its own thing. I can understand why they wanted to use the XCOM brand when it was first revealed as an FPS and was the only XCOM project. But after Enemy Unknown became a thing there was no need to slap the name on it anymore. A lot from that video was actually recycled into The Bureau's plot. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I kinda feel like that says a lot about how little they actually gave a shit about the story. They rebuilt the game from the ground up into a different genre but barely tweaked the story. Or shit, maybe I have it backwards. They had their own story and were forced to change genre and make it tie into Enemy Unknown, so they half-assed it. If that's what happened, I kinda feel for the team at 2K Marin. I can imagine how much it would suck to have that happen to a project because of another studio's project. What sucks is, given how secretive the industry tends to be regarding these things, we'll likely never know what truly went down. :/ And I feel like it's a story worth telling, if only as a cautionary "Here's what not to do if you don't want another Thief/The Bureau/Destiny/etc..."

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It's actually not that bad. Once I managed to get it to stop crashing every 20 mins, it became pretty enjoyable. Having to completely disable PhysX was a huge bummer, though. I was pretty happy to have something more demanding to throw at my new GPU and some of the effects looked great. But yeah, it's a decent game with some genuinely cool ideas in it, including what I thought was actually a pretty clever "player integration" plot twist. Unfortunately, it has a lot working against it, especially if you're a fan of Enemy Unknown. The story is your typical sci-fi shooter fare and the 1960s setting makes for a really cool backdrop for the plot. The gameplay is basically Mass Effect. I'm not even joking, the combat is lifted straight out of ME. It feels and plays the same, right down to the stiff running and cover animations. Also, dialogue wheels. The XCOM base even kinda feels like the Normandy when you're walking around in it between missions. Holy shit, now that I think about it, there's even a stealth loading room where you're stuck in a "scanner" kinda corridor for a few seconds. Overall, it's nothing particularly impressive or interesting but it gets the job done. The main problem is that the story simply doesn't make any sense when you take into account Enemy Unknown. They try to set it up as the origin story of the XCOM program, and I think the ending was implying a more direct prequel connection, which is cool in theory. But here's the thing... The characters keep insisting that "We're keeping all of this under wraps!" and "The public will never find out about any of this!" and I'm like "Are you people fucking high?!" The aliens terraformed entire fucking towns with gigantic machines, put these big-ass towers all over the goddamn place and infected hundreds of people with a black goo virus. Even when taking into account the limited means of communication of the time, the aliens weren't exactly being sneaky here. I do not buy for a fucking second that any of this happened "outside of the public eye". Like, how fucking stupid do you think I am? And let's not even get into how retarded it is that these assholes developed laser and plasma weapons and did a bunch of research on the aliens only to conveniently "forget" about all of it when they come back 50 years later. There was a lot of potential here. If they hadn't felt the need to go all-out action with it, it could've been a really cool smaller, slower X-Files kinda story with more of a thriller/mystery tone to it. That would've been awesome. Making more of an effort to better tie in with Enemy Unknown would've been a good idea, too. Despite being a completely different genre, this could've been a proper chapter in the universe established by Enemy Unknown. Instead, it's this derivative tactical-shooter with a plot that barely makes any effort to not contradict EU. If I had to guess, I'd say they probably had this story planned out long before Firaxis started working on Enemy Unknown and simply didn't feel like putting in the effort to properly tweak it once a real XCOM game was actually happening. Overall, it's a decent game, just not a very good XCOM.

You're much kinder than me. When it's the gaming community AND is on the internet, I just assume they're fucking idiots. Especially when they're losing their shit this intensely over not only video games but also what's pretty much a non-issue.

"I never asked for this. But it's kind of alright, I guess." edit: I somehow missed that bit earlier but I have to throw in an edit here. I'd argue that the production values were one of the areas where the game failed the hardest. It looked good enough but it was a technical mess at launch and there are many indications that they had to scale some presentation aspects back significantly. For example, the loading screens show concept art of a rioting city but in the actual game the closest you see to that is two dudes watching another dude get lynched. Clearly something got left on the cutting room floor. Where the game truly shined was its mechanics, imho. It was Thief through and through. Moving and sneaking as Garrett felt as good as it needed to. The various tools at your disposal didn't provide as much depth as previous games did but it was still in the same spirit. As for linearity, that depends what we're talking about here. Some levels were more linear than others and admittedly a little too scripted. But it's not like the old games were open-world or anything. Granted, it was a far cry from the first two games where the maps felt like they were designed as real places rather than as game levels. But most areas in the new one still offered multiple paths you could take, some stealthier than others. You just had to look for them. But honestly, not to start a thing here, but I never really understood this obsession the internet has with non-linearity. It's not like linearity is inherently bad or anything. I'll take a deliberately crafted linear experience over one that's open just for the hell of it any day. So it's possible I'm simply less sensitive to it, I guess? But, I mean, something like Grand Theft Auto seems as linear to me as anything else. You're still going from point A to point E the same as any other game. Giving you agency over the order in which you go through B, C and D doesn't really make the experience particularly richer for me.

Damn it! Gonna have to wait until I get home to watch, my shitty laptop doesn't like youtube. edit: I just did and it's SO GOOD! Also, Steam page is up.

I read that as them working on improving the weaker aspect of the game rather than focusing on it. Seems reasonable to me. Everything else I've been reading suggests that the multi-approach gameplay is still core to the experience. Like I said, I'm fairly certain it was different teams within the same studio. Thief had been known to be in the works since before HR came out and I'm sure this has also been in development since before Thief came out.

Much like The Bureau, which I'm currently playing, Thief had development hell written all over it. It's no secret that it had a long and troubled development and it clearly shows in the finished product. Like I said, it has its issues. But I'm with you, I don't think it was bad at all. I love the Thief series and it was Thief-y enough for me. I'm just glad that, for once, it was only the internet that felt the need to needlessly shit all over it. Some critics actually rated it reasonably well. The PC version is sitting at a Metacritic score of 70 and that seems about right to me.

It really shouldn't since it's the same studio that made Human Revolution... It's a big studio with more than one dev team. Plus, going by that Game Informer video, I'm pretty sure the project leads are the same guys who made HR. Besides, Thief had its issues but most people who actually like the series seemed to enjoy it. I know I did.

There's more info and a "trailer" for the Game Informer coverage here. Getting hyped! Looks like it. There were mentions of Icarus going as far back as the original so it's not that surprising, I suppose.

I too picked the ending where Jensen died. It's no surprise that it's being ignored, though. The google translated Russian is borderline incomprehensible but it seems to suggest no ending will be canon. That would suck but I guess it beats just having an half-assed "a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B and a little bit of column C and a little..." kinda bullshit like IW did. Also, looks like they said fuck it and started releasing stuff. Sounds like we'll get a trailer tomorrow. Gimme that second one in proper 1920x1080 and I think I'll have found a replacement for my shitty Phantom Pain desktop wallpaper.

Invisible What? A game set after the original would indeed be cool but I can see why they'd want to capitalize on Human Revolution's success. Personally, I hope they explore the traditional conspiracy stuff a little bit more this time around. I'm talking X-Files shit, here. Not necessarily aliens (although that would certainly be nice) but I remember at one point in HR you started uncovering stuff about Jensen's past and why he's important when it comes to augmentation. It was this cool conspiracy stuff and I think there were even some MIBs that showed up. But it was all relegated to a short side-quests, iirc. That was probably my biggest disappointment out of the entire game.

I was about to start a new thread but I guess this is more of a general Deus Ex thread than specifically about Human Revolution? Anyway, seems the Russian branch of Square-Enix flipped the switch early or something. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Seems to be current-gen only, so PC/PS4/XO. The name is also kinda familiar, I think there might've been a leak of some kind a little while back? Also Jensen's back!

Based on what? I guess I'll know for sure when I finish the campaign but so far there's been nothing to indicate that it's its own thing. It mostly comes off as "let's put in the very minimum of effort to not overtly contradict that other, better game". And I'm talking lazy throwaway lines that just kinda make you go "lol fuck off". They simply didn't care enough to bother making sure everything remained coherent. I mean, this game was in development hell for a little while and it kinda shows. Besides, if it was meant to be its own thing then they should've just rebranded it as something other than XCOM. Especially considering they already had a proper XCOM game out by the time this came out. I mean, even when it was first revealed as an FPS the reception was pretty negative. It was always going to suffer from having the XCOM brand needlessly slapped on it. Yeah, the first couple missions had some encounters that were kinda frustrating but now that I've leveled up my squad a bit I'm really glad I'm playing on Veteran difficulty. Now it's just challenging enough to be satisfying. Curious to see what you mean about the ending, though, since I heard it wasn't very good. Hopefully I'll end up agreeing with you.

Most of the impressions I've been hearing pretty much boil down to: it's good but not good enough to bite just yet, wait for the first expansion. Would you agree with that? As for me, I started playing The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Man, I want to love it, I really do. But it's just so ugh. The Mass Effect-like combat isn't bad but it is pretty average at best. And it would be much easier to look past the braindead squadmates AI and nonsensical story that basically contradicts Enemy Unknown if the game didn't insist on crashing every fucking 20 mins. At one point there was a fight I couldn't get past and the game would literally crash every single time I reloaded the checkpoint. It's so bad that if I hadn't already played a bunch of Far Cry 3 without any issues I'd be kinda worried that there might be something wrong with my new GPU. :/ Honestly, so far all the game is doing is making me wish I was playing Enemy Unknown instead. And since I still haven't taken the time to fully dig into Enemy Within, I'm really tempted to actually do just that...

What Ethan said. For which one? I know for a while (maybe still?) they allowed you to register your Steam key on GOG for a "backup copy" but this is the first I hear of them doing it the other way around. But yeah, I mean, CD Projekt are an awesome company overall. Like I said, nothing against GOG or them. I'm glad GOG exists. It's just not my personal preferred digital distribution service.

Lol. I had a feeling you would reply to that bit. It's not like I have anything against GOG, I just like Steam better. It's where I already have the vast majority of my games and I don't like splitting my library among multiple services unless I have no other choice. There's also extra stuff like achievements, cards, etc, but that's all just secondary bullshit. It really just boils down to preferring to have my games on my Steam account. I'll probably end up double-dipping the game at some point for that very reason.

Got it for free from the Nvidia promo. Seems like Newegg.ca arbitrarily decided to not include my card's model in the promotion but I insisted a little bit with their chat support and they ended up giving me a code anyway. It's for GOG rather than Steam, though, which is kind of a bummer. But hey, it's still a free game, can't complain. I considered trying to trade it but that seemed like too much of a hassle to bother, so I ended up just redeeming the code.

Rochard. Eh... it has some interesting stuff in it, I guess? I mean, I liked the space miner theme it had going. But it's just... not very good. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's outright bad, although having physics-based jumping that doesn't allow for precise control on the height of your jump is a goddamned retarded thing to have in a puzzle-platformer, but it is painfully average at best. There's literally tons of better alternatives to play. I only gave it a shot after all this time because it currently has some Playfire Rewards for some of the achievements, and if I didn't know going in that it was very short then I probably would've stopped halfway through. So yeah, unless you'll be making almost a dollar in GMG credit for playing it, I'd say give it a pass. Even then, it might not have been worth it... At least the next one I'll be playing for Playfire Rewards is The Bureau, which I actually do want to play.

Yeah, there were a few times where I got my next objective and thought "Oh God DAMN IT! I barely got here alive and now I have to go back?!", but mostly it was because I was dreading going back through an area where I knew the Xenomorph still was. So, I dunno, it was annoying but in a way that worked to the game's advantage for me. That being said, there was one time where an obvious shortcut I had just taken on my way from A to B was suddenly closed off when I had to go back from B to A. That one kinda pissed me off because it meant I had to go all the fucking way around the area and I actually spent a good 30 mins on that one section because I kept getting killed. I got so fed up that I said fuck it and just made a beeline for it. I didn't run (holy shit, never run) but I walked straight there without even trying to hide. And that's when it kinda dawned on me that, because of the way the Xenomorph's movements aren't scripted, just going for it can actually be a valid strategy. It's not always going to work but that time I actually made it without even running into the fucker. From that point on, I was a little more willing to risk going out into the open and it actually made the game more exciting.

Alien: Isolation. Holy shit, this game is fucking amazing. I seriously do not get how this one was so divisive. That guy at IGN who gave it 5.9 is a fucking idiot! Also, why did people think it was too long? I mean, considering how the internet likes to lose its fucking shit whenever a game is deemed too short, you'd think a 16 hours game would get some love. The pacing isn't perfect but it's not like it's bad or anything, and the game didn't really overstay its welcome, either. Anyway! With that out of the way, holy fuck did I love the hell out of this game! Not only is it a very effective horror game that had my heart racing pretty much every single time I was in a room with the Xenomorph, it's also an incredibly well-designed one and one in more ways than one. It was kinda surprising when Relic, a studio mostly known for strategy games, released Space Marine and it turned out to be a quite decent third-person action game. But here, what Creative Assembly have managed to put together is downright mind-blowing considering they're mostly known for the Total War series, which as far as I can tell has been kind of hit-and-miss. When Alien: Isolation bills itself as a sequel to Ridley Scott's original 1979 classic, it really means it. The game's sheer dedication to the look and feel of the movie is actually kind of impressive. And it paid off because the retro futuristic style applied to everything looks great. I don't think the game wouldn't have looked anywhere near as good if they had tried to unnecessarily modernize the world design. And this isn't strictly limited to the world design and visuals either, the game is actually shock full of hints and references that I never would've picked up on had I not rewatched the movie right before I started playing it. The soundtrack also feels like it would be right at home in the movie and the sound design is simply fantastic. I played the entire game with headphones and I wouldn't recommend doing it any other way. As for the gameplay, it's actually a pretty solid stealth game, which is admittedly right up my alley. But the way the map is laid out and the levels are designed is very reminiscent of something like System Shock. Sevastopol station is full of corners and rooms to explore and it actually feels like a real place rather than a series of corridors. You'll very often come across doors that are either locked or require new or better equipment to open. Some are places you'll be going to later on but a lot of it is just rooms full of supplies for you to pick up. The game rewards exploration in a very metroidvania way, which I am all about. But more than anything else, Alien: Isolation a damn fine horror game. After the last few I played, it's good to finally play one that actually scared the shit out of me. I mean, when a game that's all about hiding actually manages to make you feel so unsafe that you go "No, fuck this! I ain't got time to hide, I'm getting the hell outta here!" then clearly it's doing some very, very right. I think it might actually retroactively be my 2014 GOTY. I just loved it that much and I'm kinda kicking myself for waiting this long to play it. Up next: rewatching Aliens and then playing Aliens: Colonial Marines. Because ending things on a high note is overrated. This is going to be awful, isn't it?

Good to hear. I can't wait for it to come out on PC. Hopefully it's not too far out.

How long did it take you? I've wanted to go back and Platinum it for a while but I just don't have the patience to deal with School Mode or whatever the hell it's called. Just seems so tedious.

350$ after shipping and taxes. PC components are way more expensive in Canada than they are in the US. Overall, this model is almost 100 bucks more. I would've saved a little over 60 bucks by going with the 2GB model but I figured the extra VRAM would come in handy sooner rather than later.