Monthly Archives: March 2013

This is also one of those first impressions that I should have been writing a long time ago, anyway, here it is.

I want to start by saying that I haven’t played a 2D platformer in like 20 years. I bought this more out of nostalgia then anything. The original Giana sisters came out back in the late 80s and had some controversy surounding it, since it was basically a Mario clone. It was however, still a good game, with an awasome soundtrack. The original game has been ported to several platforms, including IOS.

Now, almost 25 years later, the sequal has been released. As I said earlier, I didn’t expect much from this game, except from a great soundtrack and some nostalgia, however, this game is actually realy good.

You play as two different characters (sisters?, incarnations of the same sister? whatever) and you can and must switch between them to bypass obsticles throughout the game.
 

Graphics

The graphics in this game is very impressive for an indi game, and without knowing much about PC platformers, I think this is the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a platformer.
It’s usually quite easy to distinguish between stuff in the foreground that will hurt you, and things that are just parts of the background.

Audio

The sound effects are nothing special, but the music is freaking awasome. One nice touch to the game is that the music changes as you “twist ” between worlds, while still staying synchronized.

User interface

I play this game with mouse and keyboard, and even though it’s probably easier to play with a controller, it’s still very very playable with just a keyboard. You’ll learn what keys to use when fairly quicly and then you play pretty muc hwithout thinking about that you don’t have a controller.

Gameplay

I’ve pretty much covered everything already. This is basically a 2D or 2.5D platformer. I haven’t ran into that many difficult puzzles, but there’s a lot of places where you have to figure  stuff out quickly if you don’t wanna die. If you play in standard mode, you have infinite number of lives but it will heart you rating if you die to much, or don’t collect enough coin in a level. That brings me to the starring system. You get stars for completing a level, and certain levels require a set amound of stars from previous levels. This can be annoying if you have to go back and replay stuff you didn’t like, but it brings some challange to the game. You can also play the game in Score attack, Time attack, Hard core and Uber hard core mode. The Uber hard core mode gives you only one life.

 

Conclusion

Since I’m not a fan of platformers, I wouldn’t pick this up at full price, and if you are you probably already own this game. If you can pick it up on a sale however, it’s definitely worth it if you have the slightest intrest in this genre.

 

Screenshots comming soon.

 

I finally got around to writing this first impressions article after having played the game for 20 hours plus. This Genre is really difficult to write a first impressions article on since the story is such an important part of the game and the gameplay may change throughout the game.
Well, anyway, here’s my impressions of this game so far. I didn’t play the original deus ex when it game out, but from what I can tell this game has a little less freedom, and the rpg elements are a bit less complex when it comes to character development in terms of statistics. Some would probably call it dumbed down. Well let’s get on to the game itself.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in a not to distant future where human augmentation through inplants is possible, but not available to everyone. There is an ongoing struggle between the people who are pro augmentations and those who think modifying humans in this way are morally wrong. This theme is an important part of the game, and brings up the classic question of how far sciance could and should go.

The main character: Adam Jensen, is (even though, it’s not by his own will) an augmented human being. He gets his augmentations so early on that I don’t consider it a spoiler. He gets involved in a big conspiracy involving very powerful augmentations.

The game consists of several “City hubs” with a main plot and a lot of side missions. The hubs are fairly large and (at least for me) fairly easy to get lost in. It’s not a true open world game but while withink a hub, you can move around freely before moving on to the next one. The missions are fairly good and usually have several solutions and sometimes leads to other side quests.

 

 

Graphics

Overall, the graphics are really good. Their are more important things in a game like this, but it doesn’t hurt that most of the game looks really good. There are some exceptions however. Some of the scripted cutscenes and “Take downs” (more on this later) looks weird. As I’ve already stated though, this doesn’t take away much from the overall experience.

Audio

The sound effects and music of this game is great. Most of the areas in the game has music in the background that adds to the overall atmosphere and feel of an area without being repetitive. Many places also have people talking to each other. You can overhear some interesting conversations, some of which can give you hints to quests or just add to the overall feel. This gets me into voice acting. The voice acting in this game range from quite bad to really good. For some reason, I really like the voice of the main character. As in most open world games, some of the general chatter can be repetitive, but I really haven’t found as much of this here as in other games.

 

User interface

There isn’t much to say here. The UI does what it’s soposed to and it does it well. Inventory management is quite easy and it’s always easy to find what you’re looking for.

Gameplay

The game is played from a first person perspective for the most part, with the exception of some, for the most part unnecessary cutscenes. This brings up the concept of the Take down system mentioned above. You can incapacitate people by using a non lethal take down (basically walking up to someone and pressing a key). This will take care of enemies without having to kill them, and can be a good solution to many situations. I think you can actually play through the entire game without actually killing someone with a few exceptions. This brings me to the most annoying part of the game: Boss fights. From what I’ve heard, the boss fights in this game were outsource to a different company and the original developer wasn’t to happy with them, however they are there and I have to talk about them. The first one almost made me stop playing the game, cause I got there with weapons that made it really difficult and these fights only take away from the overall experience of the game. They are few and far between however, so, for the most part, those shouldn’t bother anyone to much. This game, however isn’t only about killing stuff. The main story and the multi layer quests is better then you’ll find in most games. This game calls itself an RPG, and RPG  for most people today means statistics, leveling and character development (even though this can be debated and I don’t agree with it). You gain experience by doing all sorts of things; Talking to people, completing quests, hacking computers and taking out enemies). For the most part, you gain more experience by using non lethal solutions to problem, something that can push your gameplay in a way that I don’t like. While playing, I usually don’t care and I just take the solution I feel is the most righteous thing to do or whatever suits me best. In terms of leveling, you gain praxis points that can be used to buy augmentations. Augmentations are basically the skill system of this game. When it comes to weapons, I don’t feel that any weapon is more powerful then another in most cases. Everything has it’s advantages and disadvantages, with the exceptions of the silly boss fights. Same goes for the augmentations, even though I’ve found a few that would be really difficult for me to do without. There’s quite a few weapons to choose from, but I usually use what’s at hand, and what I can find ammo for, since your inventory space is quite limited, even with inventory enhancing augs. I’ll usually find myself switching weapons several times during a long mission depending on what my enemies are using. This will depend on your accuracy and the difficulty level you play on off course. Even though I have been talking a lot about combat and such here, I want to emphasize that the most important part of this game is the storytelling and character interaction.

 

Conclusion

In 2011 we saw quite a few great games, and this is no exception. If you like a game with some action, that also has a good story, this game is a must. I really don’t have much to complain about in this game, despite what I’ve said above. I highly recommend this game, and if you want quests to be more challanging, I recommend turning off the quest tracker waypoints in the options.

 

2012-09-22_00018 2012-09-23_00006 2012-09-23_00007 2012-09-25_00001 2012-09-30_00001 2012-09-30_00002 2012-09-30_00003 2012-10-06_00001 2012-10-06_00002 2012-10-12_00001 2012-12-25_00001