Deus Ex Mankind Divided

[DANGERMAN]

So far it's kind of Deus Ex Human Revolution but with better combat and tweaked augment mechanics. The latter sort of work like Crysis now, only with an rpg element so they're incredibly limited until you dump some points in to them (presumably, I haven't got to that point yet. You have skills like silent walking, Batman vision, cloaking, and another one, all of which use your energy meter. This will refill a bit, but it really is only a bit, otherwise you need to eat this game's version of the energy bar from Human Revolution

 

So far I've been stealthy bollocks, although I had to reload a save because the kill to knock people out is the same as killing them, the difference it a tap and holding it down for a nano second. Also, while I'm having a bit of a pop at the controls, the augments are on the F keys (F1, F2 etc), sort of fair enough, I assume they're on the dpad if you're using a controller, but the F keys aren't really easy to find, they should be on the mouse wheel or something

 

It looks pretty

 

The animosity towards Jensen, and all augments presumably but Jensen is the only one I've encountered so far, is a bit heavy handed, but one of his squad shouting

"Great fucking job Jensen you fucking bell end" made me laugh

[retroed]

Just started this tonight on PS4 and played through the first mission so far. Liking what I have seen, there are a lot of control schemes to choose from but I went with the Mankind Divided layout and learning them as I go. Playing stealthy so far with knockouts and stun gun, although I don't like that the punch has to recharge, it caught me out once or twice in the opening sections. The music is as brilliant as Human Revolution's. 

 

There's a decent 12 minute recap video when you start the game. On PS4 the built-in speakers is used for comms and it sounds really cool. 

[DisturbedSwan]

Played through 3/4 of the first mission earlier today.

 

I'm quite impressed with it, but not blown away really, it feels very much like Human Revolution to play (which was expected) but it does feel more polished than that game, the combat and gunplay (from the little I've experienced from tutorials so far) feel much better and there seems to be a ridiculous amount of options about how you can play through a level, whether you want to take out all the enemies in a room or just sneak by them etc.

 

The 6 or so hours I played of HR were in an attempted Stealth non-lethal playthrough, and I'll be trying to do the same again in this, although I have to say I think I'll be missing out on a lot of the cooler augments by going the Stealth route again but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

 

Like with most games this big and complex it's quite bewildering at the start, the tutorials help a lot and the guides in the menu screens to get you acclimatised to how the game works but I'm not quite fully au fait with everything as of yet, it all feels a bit clunky and I keep pressing RB and killing people with Grenades (and having to reload a save) rather than the LB for the detective vision.

 

So far so good really, just played for over an hour so hard to judge at this very early stage, story hasn't really got its hooks into me yet, but that's to be expected.

 

The only real negative is the poor optimisation on PC, I'm running a i7, 1080 and should be able to play any game on the planet in 1440p, 60fps with all setting up to maximum without any issues, but for the first time since I've had my 1080 I dropped into the game and got 24fps right off the bat (and that was just standing still!).

 

Turned off MSAA, Cloth Physics, Depth of Field, Hardening Shadows, Volumetric Lighting, Occlusion mapping and Subsurface Scattering and the game now runs at the expected rock-solid 1440/60fps. Very disappointed really, expected Nixxes (who have apparently been very good at developing PC ports for Square Enix in the past) to put out a well-optimised pc-port of the game, but I guess it wasn't to be, not sure how much the AMD GPU-Led development affected the optimisation on Nvidia cards.

 

Anyway, enough negativity, some glorious pics!:

 

 

 

 

[retroed]

Done a couple side missions now which were quite expansive, and have spent 13 Praxis points. Focusing on my biocell capacity and recharge, social enhancer, hacking, smart vision and I have gone for the Tesla experimental augmentation. We'll see how this set up pans out. So far, Mankind Divided is as good as I hoped it would be now it's properly opened up after a slightly weak tutorial. 

[spatular]

Yeah!

5 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

"Great fucking job Jensen you fucking bell end" made me laugh

yeah there's been a few bits that made me laugh too, mostly jensens deadpan answers, bit like witcher.

 

i've done the tutorial mission then explored a bit, starting sidequests i probably shouldn't start yet. i've been trying to be stealthy but messing it up and shooting everyone, probably should reload these bits but haven't been so far.

[DANGERMAN]

@BlakeyI'm on a 970 and am averaging 55 on default high (1080), so hopefully there's a patch coming 

 

@spatularthat's where I stopped. Found a drug side quest and someone in the sewers, thought I'd better leave both until all my abilities aren't flashing red. Also my neighbour is a cultist with a locked pc, I'll be smashing their face off a desk and hacking that later in the game 

[spatular]

I accidentally went into a restricted zone and it all kicked off so I ran away. Went back later and everyone was dead so I just strolled in.

 

Liked the recap video too.

[DisturbedSwan]

Another 3 hours played today, 4 hours total.

Finished off the first mission in Dubai yesterday, had a really cool end to it and had to reload a save quite a few times to make sure I did everything stealthily and manage to save one of my squad members (which was a secondary objective) who was in peril. 

Achieved this after a few tries and then an ornate intro sequence began to play which introduced me to the game properly and led me in to its first city, Prague. Things didn’t really go as I thought they would (there was a terror attack on Prague Train Station just as you arrive in the city) and you end up waking up in Adam’s apartment.

It’s from here that you’re left to roam really, the game is so complex and so deep that it is still difficult to get your head around all the various systems and tutorials/guides are popping up all over the place to try to get you sufficiently acquainted with the way everything works and the world you now inhabit.

Initially I had an absolute ton of fun just exploring Adam’s apartment, picking up little bits and pieces here and there, finding out some background info about the world at large, having a phone call via Adam’s TV with David Sarif (of Human Revolution) which was an interesting throwback, then after a while I adorned my famous trench-coat and headed out onto the mean streets of Prague.

You start in the corridors of Adam’s apartment complex, so of course I decided to hack and steal everything I could get away with from all the neighbouring apartments, I came a cropper a few times when trying to rob an arms dealer in his apartment (not a good idea...) and had to reload a few saves, the Hacking system is just as robust and deep as I remember it being in Human Revolution as well, could almost be a game in itself, reminds me a lot of Invisible Inc.

With everything sufficiently explored in the Apartment Block I headed out to the actual streets of Prague and became incredibly bewildered all over again, it is certainly impressive and the first thing I was reminded of when I saw it was Half-Life 2′s City 17, the whole vibe of it, the cars, the Police Officers uniform’s, the Eastern European Gothic architecture, everything just hearkened back to Valve’s City 17.

As I usually do in RPGs I took ages just walking about, talking to people, seeing if I could get any side-quests, didn’t really have much luck though so attempted to continue on with one of the main-quests I had. After a conversation with a corrupt Policeman over Forged Documentation it seems I’d gone down the rabbit hole, from then on a wild goose chase ensued which led me to meeting numerous people and sneaking into a few apartment blocks to first put an end to the forgery extortion that was taking place and then to find two people to give forged documents to.

A few decisions along the way, whether to despise or trust the Woman who was making the forged documents for the extortion gang (I chose to trust her) and another slightly more difficult one where I had to choose who of the two people I’d given documents to could have theirs ‘activated’ as there could only be one.

After this I was sent to another district of Prague via the Metro (damn this city’s big!) and called it a day. 

I definitely had a good time with it, but I can’t say I had a great one, it just made me feel the same way I felt about Human Revolution really, that all the things this game does should tick all the boxes for me, but something about it just left me feeling a little bored. I think in Mankind Divided so far, although Prague looks great and is still teeming with life it doesn’t feel alive, it’s difficult to explain, but somewhere like The Witcher 3′s Novigrad or TES:Skyrim’s Whiterun are examples of city’s that did feel alive to me, they felt lived in, weathered and had a historic, homely feel to, but Prague just doesn’t feel like that atall, this doesn’t feel like a City that people actually live and work in so far, I have only explored one area though so I hope this improves as it goes on.

So yeah, it’s definitely a decent first 4 hours I’ve spent with the game, but I hope I get a little more lost in the world and a little more invested in it and the story in the next few days.

Picture time:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spatular]

i've been playing this most of the day, probably not much further in than Blakey though as i've been exploring a lot, although not always able to take advantage of the exploring because i'm missing a needed perk, although i've got a lot of the ones needed for exploring now. not sure how i'll do in a fight as a consequence. last mission i did completely stealthy, and the two side missions before that i did mostly stealthy, just knocking a few people out (and had to reload a few times). i mean i've got a fancy tranq sniper thing but bullets are rarer than unicorns or something. really enjoying it, i think the setting is great, i like all this futuristic buildings and conspiracy theories and whatnot. think it looks great too.

[DANGERMAN]

In art mirroring life news Jensen is going to be late for work. For me the tram was late, more excusable than "I had half an hour before work so went to investigate a drug den near work. Boss, I think they live in the same building as you, if you notice a couple of crates stolen from someone else's security locker on your stairs, it's because I can't jump high enough yet to reach the grate in your apartment to break in to your neighbours flat so used them as a platform. Listen to your specific sister too, she talks a lot of sense in that email" which is why Jensen is late 

 

I think because of the way I'm playing it it's starting to feel a bit Skyrim. Lots of searching drawers and not taking stuff instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing 

[spatular]

i've been taking pretty much everything.

 

also accidentally pressing B near civilians can cause problems.

[DisturbedSwan]

Spent another 3 hours with this earlier, 7 total.

 

Had a bit of a strange time with it again really, started off incredibly impressed by the way I was able to find a 'straight' Policewoman to take a Corrupt fake-Policeman down to finish off the side-quest I had been going through last night, I talked to her, convinced her to do it and then just watched as a load of Police stormed into the corrupt guys checkpoint and took them all out, incredibly satisfying and empowering, love that kind of stuff in games.

 

This meant I was now able to continue on with the Story-quest located in the start district, so I continued on past the now defunct checkpoint and snuck into the compound to find the guy that was meant to fix all my augmentations, things didn't go to plan though and he ended up having to reset me (surprise surprise) which meant all my augments reset down to 0 and I had to go through and put all the ones back on that I wanted to have.

 

Ended up going for mostly stealth and hacking-related stuff, putting quite a few Praxis points into Health and Energy too as I don't want to keep running out of Aug juice and health when I'm in the middle of a quest. Didn't bother with any of the 'experimental' augs for the moments, a few of them looks like they'd be very handy for my sneaky non-lethal play-through, but I just thought other stuff would be more useful at this early stage of the game.

 

After this I wandered around a bit, trying to pick up any side quests or anything I may of missed before heading to the next area, found a guy that you could trade Noxophone (or something like that) with for Info, got some info and some 'points of interest' popped up on the map, some cool items at these locales and I was awarded some XP for finding them, but nothing too amazing, so made my way into the next area.

 

Started a side-mission to do with a drug called Neon in this new district, another wild-goose chase ensued which had me going to loads of different locations and had me digging deep into some kind of conspiracy/beef between drug gangs etc. Made decent progress until I hit a door which needed a keycard, had no idea where the keycard would be so just threw a Frag Grenade at it and continued on, got stuck again later though by a Door needing Level 4 security clearance to hack (and I'm only up to Level 2), so it seems I'll have to leave this side-mission and come back to it tomorrow.

 

So yeah, I found myself getting into it today, getting fully immersed in the world for the first time, but there's still something about it that bewilders me, I'm always thinking to myself when hacking 'Should I have kept that hack nuke? Should I of saved that for later?' and with the myriad of items, trinkets, cash and collectables you can pick up I often wonder whether I can sell something or not, like the Pistol and Machine Pistol I have and all the lethal weapon ammo, 'can I sell this, is that ok?' I just find that the game sometimes doesn't give enough guidance at times, it tells you when things have no use apart from to sell like with some chips and floor pumps I've found knocking about the place which is great, but I still find myself confused at times and second-guessing myself whether I'm doing the 'right thing' and hoping it's not going to fuck up my game later down the line.

 

More pics:

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Played another 3 hours on Friday, 10 hours total.

 

I think the game has definitely clicked with me now, not much has changed per se and I still stick my by earlier comments saying the city doesn't truly feel as alive as it should do, but what's made me get fantastically lost in the world for the first time has been the side-quests I did in this session.

 

I started out ready to ditch the Neon quest and go to a different one, but when I loaded into the game a brainwave struck me and I realised I could use the Multi-Tool I've got to easily hack into the Level 4 safe I was having trouble with, so I did this and it led me into the Sewers for the first time, usually I find Sewers quite dull in games in general but in this it kind of feels that there's more going on than on the surface at times, it felt vibrant, mysterious and the atmosphere intoxicating.

 

As soon as I got down there I just wanted to explore all the nooks and crannies and work out where everything was and where the boundaries were, found lots of cool stuff, people getting attacked by Drones, a hangout of some biker-types and lots of restricted areas which were for the 2 side-quests I had to do down here.

 

I started out by finishing the Neon one, had a little with a door as it had no power to the keypad and when I turned the power on it electrocuted me, so I found an exploding barrel, shoved it up against the door and voila, the door opened. I went through the door to discover an automatic turret, managed to sneak around this and then found the Neon 'production' area, reminded me of the Dr. Freeze environs in Arkham City a bit really, the way the room had been designed was quite Rocksteady Batman too really. Made my way around the top and managed to drop down into the area with the Neon production tanks, a cutscene started and I was chatting with a Female Scientist who was in charge of keeping everything stable and on-track in regards to the Neon production.

 

What I was most impressed with during this conversation was the LA Noire-like ability to attempt to read her actions and persuade her to turn the tanks off for me instead of causing a mess blowing them up etc. There's a scale on the top left of the screen which showed how positive or negative she was, below this are Alpha, Beta and Omega boxes which will pulse if a certain things she's saying registers with a particular box, after she finishes speaking you get an Alpha, Beta or Omega option in the dialogue wheel which you use to try to make her more positive towards you and more agreeable.

 

Needless to say, I managed to persuade her successfully to shut down the production for me (by using Reverse Psychology in the end), and it was just an incredible feeling really to get the choice and the chance to conclude a side-quest in such a meaningful way, without anyone getting injured or bringing any undue attention upon myself, incredibly empowering and puts things like Fallout 4's Combat-focused resolutions to quests into perspective, absolutely loved it.

 

After this long side-quest had been concluded I decided to explore some more, I found a guy called Vatzchik or something like that who was freaking out near a door, babbling a load of nonsense to me, he said something about a Cult behind the door and how a guy was controlling people in there, really interesting stuff and I had another side-quest to do.

 

Before this though, I wanted to get the Compiler for Koller in another side-quest, didn't have any troubles here, found a nice entrance by lifting up a heavy container with one of my new Augs and then snuck in, made my way through some Vents, knocked a guy out, opened a safe and made my way out the way I came, managed to get the 'Ghost' rating for this side-quest which I was happy with, very satisfying.

 

Back to Vatzchik's side-quest now, made my way around and entered through the big metal door, a dream-like Haze came over the screen and a guy called Richard began talking to me on a massive flat-screen, the Cult's environ was very Fallout really, maybe the Children of Atom in Far Harbour or parts of Fallout 3's story quest-line, it had that kind of vibe about it. I had a little explore then found a microphone to talk to Richard with, the A, B, O boxes popped up and I attempted to persuade him to let the people in here go, I couldn't though as he was controlling my thoughts, so I gave up and started exploring some more looking for clues.

 

Found a poster which led me to a Magic Shop owned by his former partner in a different district of Prague, went and spoke to him and he gave me some transmitters that would block Richard's signal in the warehouse and allow his followers to go free. Made my way back to Richard and had another explore, couldn't find anywhere to put the transmitters so went on up a ladder that said 'don't go up here' or something next to it, a restricted area with lots of cameras and stuff to avoid, managed to find the first place to install the transmitter easily enough, but the 2nd and 3rd really stumped me for quite a while until I spotted a metal gang-way I could get to by jumping onto a metal container on the ground-floor, did this, went onto the Catwalk above and managed to find the remaining two transmitters to stop Richard in his tracks.

 

The haze disappeared, I returned to the Microphone on the ground floor and this time persuaded Richard to let everyone go without any bloodshed, felt really cool once again doing things this way, found Richard's dressing room now as all the defences were switched off and Richard was just sobbing in his elaborate Lair  absolutely incredible side-quest!

 

Messed about a bit more in the sewers, then went back up to the surface and called it a day, not sure I've got many more side-quests to do yet so may make an effort with the story-quests on Monday if needs be.

 

Pics:

 

[spatular]

Finished this yesterday, really enjoyed it, the environments, the sneaking around, the other stuff, it was great.

 

At first I thought cutting to 3rd person for takedowns and wall punches was silly but I ended up enjoying the animations.

 

Near the end I triggered what I thought might be a bad ending but just went with it, then today I did the end again to get a better one, not sure I would have got the better ending anyway if I'd reloaded after messing up on my fist attempt, without some info from Google anyway.

 

Oh and I did some sort of dlc side mission thing today too, it was pretty good but I see why they cut it out of the main game, well I'm not sure if they cut it, it fits in with the main story, but maybe gives more weight to one side of the story than maybe they wanted. Who knows.

 

Might start a new game plus to make some different choices, and/or try the breach mode.

[DisturbedSwan]

Whoa fair play man, you definitely knocked that one out quickly!

 

In my game in 14 hours in, played another 3 hours yesterday.

 

Had no other side-quests left so did a bit of exploring in the Sewers again, tried to find out what was causing all the commotion with the Drones, couldn't really find anything, switched off an electric breaker which stopped them shooting all the time and found a few dead bodies where they were but that was about it, searched high and low but couldn't find anything more so gave up.

 

After this I begun the story-quest I had in my inventory, had to get to the TF29 building in a different area of Prague, before this though I sold a shit-load of stuff to the weapons vendor near Adam's apartment and had enough to buy a Praxis Kit, made my way to the TF29 building after this.

 

As soon as I arrived it reminded me of the Police HQ from Human Revolution (if anyone remembers that) and the CTU building from 24, quite futuristically-generic really, but cool all the same. Spent a ton of time just sneaking around in vents, hacking stuff, reading emails and picking up as much stuff as I could find from desks, lockers and safes really, spoke to a few people (including the guy I saved in the tutorial mission, which I thought was a nice touch), put some chip into a server or something which fulfilled the objective I had, then I spoke to another guy called Michael Chung or something who was paranoid TF29's front-company had been hacked, and sent me to investigate.

 

This triggered a side-quest and led me down to the sewers again, eventually made my way to the objective marker after a bit of exploring and had another one of those conversations where you could persuade someone (this time I was attempting to persuade a group of guys to hush a story), failed it this time unfortunately, so had to reload and do it again, felt a bit cheap doing this but did it anyway, love that mechanic!

 

That's all I had time for today really, time just flew by with all the exploring of the Sewers and the TF29 building, more tomorrow!

[DisturbedSwan]

Another 3 hours played yesterday, 17 total.

 

I loaded into my previous save and began on the surface level of Prague, I decided to continue on with the Semoszat side-quest from yesterday and see it to completion, so made my way over the next objective marker in the Palisade Bank/Office building across town, it's a very imposing building, very Deus Ex, maybe even a little Perfect Dark too. I was tasked with digging up dirt on the Palisade CEO to give to the Semoszat leader so he'd drop forget about me and TF29.

 

Made my way into the building and it was rather imposing, not exactly special though, it had the same kind of industrial-greyness to it that seems to adorn a lot of the futuristic office-type spaces in the game and was filled with tons of nooks and crannies to explore, vents to climb into, loot to take and keypads to hack which is my favourite thing to do :). I meticulously made my way from room to room, picking up all the loot and intel I could, finding as many hidden passwords and pathways until I'd exhausted all possible routes, during my digging I managed to find a keycard which took me up to the 3rd floor which was 'restricted', but before this I decided to venture down to Level 1 and have a little look about down here.

 

They seemed to store all the Vaults down here and security was a bit higher, nevertheless I managed to find a keycard for one of the Vaults and once inside I could access a couple of server rooms and do some digging around for loot and items of interest, once I'd done a sweep of everything of interest on this level I finally made my way up to Level 3 which was marked completely Red (restricted) across the entire floor, so I had to be extra careful and reload a ton of saves when needs be. Did a little bit of exploring where I could but the objective marker was on this floor, so I wanted to focus on getting that first and then have some fun afterwards, snuck by a couple of guards, made my way up some stairs, dashing under a camera and hacked a keypad that led me into the CEO's office. Had to use a Multi-Port to access one of the computers as my security skills weren't up to the level requirement yet, got a bit stumped as I couldn't find the evidence needed on the computers, one of the emails mentioned a puzzle in the office though, looked around for a bit and found a few Rubik's-cube looking columns on a plate that you could spin (they lit up when you got the correct combination), this led me into a secret little cubby hole that had some evidence on it about a Plane crash in a safe, this was just what I was looking for, had a quick snoop around then made my way back out the office.

 

Now I was free to explore I went from room-to-room again, breaking through a wall or two in the process, evading some guards and using my new invisibility-Aug when needed, found some more bits and pieces but there wasn't as much to explore as I'd initially hoped. Exited the Palisade building and made my way back to the Sewers to hand the evidence to the Semoszat head-honcho, I thought this would be the end to the quest...but no, I had to go to another place in town and hack a keypad to turn something on, this was very easy in the end and didn't take long at all, voila, another side-quest done, and another memorable one! Not up to the level of the Richard side-quest but still bloody good all the same, loved exploring that Palisade building.

 

After this I continued on with the story-quest I'd continued to put on the back-burner up until now, made my way back to meet Miller at TF29 HQ and then I believe I was given a choice between finding info out about the group that attacked the train station in Prague or leaving that to someone else and finding out about the group that attacked TF29 in Dubai, I chose the former and got access to a previously inaccessible subway station where the bomb went off.

 

By now, you know the deal, I made my way in through the vents, sneaking by people, hacking keypads, knocking out a few guards, picking up as much loot as I could and eventually found the scan data I was looking for that would appease my colleagues back at TF29, have to say I really enjoyed the environs here, it got away from the somewhat generic-futuristic greyness of the office-type buildings and added a bit of mystique and gothic grandeur into proceedings (albeit mixed with future-world zaniness), after I'd finished this there was just enough time to make my way back to the Metro station and head back to the centre of Prague before logging off.

 

Also wanted to mention I had a couple of bugs today for the first time, once down in the sewers where some debris was floating in mid-air and another time when I couldn't open any drawers in the Palisade offices, the prompt to open them never appeared, very strange but it went away after a while thankfully, another slight downside was a drop from 60 to 44fps when entering the Palisade building for the first time, it recovered quickly enough but I found this rather strange indeed.
 

[DisturbedSwan]

Another 3 hours yesterday, 20 total.

 

Carried on with the main story thread from yesterday, making my way back to Smiley (yes that's his actual name...) at the TF29 HQ, after this I had to see the Psychiatrist, quite a cool interaction here (I think) essentially setting up what kind of guy you want Jensen to be throughout the game, whether he was pro-Aug, pro-Human, neutral, sympathises with the terrorists actions somewhat etc. It was interesting. After this I had 2 different objectives, one to meet up with Alex (Juggernaut collective contact) at an old LIMB centre (remember those from Human Revolution?) and the other to meet Miller and my pilot at a helipad in town.

Made my way to Alex first, and had a conversation with her where she played back a secret recording of Miller having a conversation with his boss, got the choice to decide whether to agree with her or cut Miller a bit more slack (putting blame on his boss), I chose the latter. Then it was time to make my way to the Helipad, had a look round this area first as always, finding everything I could, then numerous ventilation shafts later I had a conversation with Miller, met my South African pilot (who's office I'd already raided) and I was on my way in the ship to Gollem City (Utrecht Project or something).

 

A cool cut-scene played and then I was dropped in an area that just dazzled the eyes, it was like a typically dystopian-futuristic, blade-runner, Gotham City-inspired miss-mash of poverty, despair and grime, bloody brilliant. Was very excited to explore everything I could here, so as always I crawled in tons of vents, found all the stuff I could find and hacked a load of panels, then back to the mission at hand which was finding my contact for ARC in amongst the poverty, turns out he's in a cell and I have to break him out or something.

Go there, beat a load of police up, a load more vent crawling shenanigans ensues and then I come out the other end with a couple more secondary objectives and into a new market area which just looks absolutely incredibly, I honestly felt like a kid in a sweet shop the amount of places there are to explore and everything dazzling the eye.

 

More tomorrow!

 

Pics:

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Got back from holiday on Tuesday and just been putting off playing this ever since really, been dreading going back to it as I found it so dull and such a slog before I went away, played Overwatch yesterday as I just fancied a bit of fun, my new Job seems to of weirdly put me off games as I'm too knackered when I get in to play them and just want to mong out watching tele

 

But yeah, finally sat back down and got on with this today, played around 2/3 hours and I'm glad I did as I quite enjoyed it, I still think the plot is fucking shite and Jensen has about as much character to him as a squashed baby otter but yeah it's been quite fun, did a few side-quests and an amazing story-quest involving a Bank Heist, possibly the best Story Quest I've done thus far other than the stuff in Gollem City.

 

Does make me laugh this one decision during the story I was given, was meant to be a really difficult decision with weight behind it 'save the Bomb Maker woman or perform a Bank Heist instead' but I'd never even met the woman in question so why would I give a fuck about saving her? Made no sense so went for the bank.

[DisturbedSwan]

Finished this yesterday.

 

Funny old game really, huge swathes of it were boring as hell, with a main protagonist largely devoid of character taking down identikit enemies in an incredibly grey and lifeless world, but there was something about it that kept me going and kept me enjoying it.

 

I think its mainly the side-quests, they're easily the standout as the story is very disappointing and ends abruptly, but the side-quests are great, full of loads of intriguing scenarios and cvhharacters with plenty of twists and turns along the way.

 

I played in a pacifist stealthy way, reloading a save if I set off an alarm or something and it was very satisfying playing this way, sneaking through a whole facility and coming out the other end unscathed is a great feeling, the active-camo doesn't help though as it just makes it too easy to wonder through a load of enemies, keeping the battery topped up with Biocells.

 

So yeah, ultimately I recommend it, but it suffers from much the same problems that Human Revolution did and the story isn't very engaging at all, the world can be cool at times but the side-quests are the real star.

[DANGERMAN]

Bought the season pass and started the Pritchard dlc, probably shouldn't have done as now I want to stay up playing it. 

 

I'd heard some bad stuff about it but it's started out decent enough. The breaking in and combat scenarios, so far, have been very small scale. I suspect the core of the mission is going to be meatier, but I wish the preamble had a bit more to it