Suskie's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review

I got chewed out for walking into the bathroom, too ^_^

..the thing about the bosses. Seen a lot of people complain about that, but...

//spoilers//


//I'm serious!//

The first boss can be defeated by throwing a gas-canister at him. There's a specific talk when you do it, and a specific animation. On normal, it's one or two canisters, and three gunshots to the head. So the encounter would be sneaking around as much as possible, using stealth, and then striking from a distance.

Second boss can be defeated by blowing up the server banks. It's difficult, but you can get her to blow the banks up herself, and that will cause more damage. So in the end you stun the boss, and can defeat her with just a few shots to the head.

Third boss is worse, specially if you did that .. thing early on. But it's more of a classic boss-battle, like Bruce Lee fighting the guy with the bear claw in the hall of mirrors. Or the scene in Boondock Saints when the police-guy goes on a rampage. They even have that slow-motion music every time the boss turns up :)

..arguably, the first terrorist leader could be a boss as well. And you can defeat him by just talking.

Maybe Hugh Darren is a boss as well. And you defeat him by "extrapolate", "critique", or "appeal". :D

...sorry, shouldn't complain, really. I've been trying to write a review for a couple of weeks now, and I can't. ..I just.. there's something I can't really explain here. About how the game doesn't really nail you on it if you change attitude and direction half-way into the game. The original did that. It would have Gunther go "oooh, ze boyscout learns way of real world". Or the people in the base suddenly are impressed that you stick with your way of doing things, and still get things done. There were a lot of these things in Deus Ex.. but..

Same with the transport stages. It seems so haphazard in DE:HR.. The actual levels are great. But it's.. "oops, I'm in Shanghai for no reason". "Now I'm off to sleep in a canister that goes god knows where".. . just seems they could have let there be something to Pritchard being involved with the hacker, or something like that.. Just to explain how they know where to go.

Anyway.. It is a good review. And the free approach thing really is the core of the game, after all, so good thing to focus on that. Approval :p

(....one thing... it's Adam Jensen. The "-sen" affix comes from the same thing as "-son", though. In Sweden, it typically is "-søn" on the surnames. On Iceland, for the few who have patronyms, it's "-son"(pronounced "sawn" at the end. Both of them mean "son". Denmark and Norway tend to have "-sen" instead. ..but it's not as common as using farm-names or places.

So Jensen's parents probably were Danes or Norskies :p).

I liked it more on my second and third playthroughs.

I second Suskie's complaints about the bosses. Sure, you can use multiple methods to defeat them, but it still forces a player to play like they are a combat whore. It has nothing to do with augmentations. It's all about not catering to different play styles.

Case in point, I just defeated that annoying boss last night where if you did... you know... you can't use your augmentations. I was able to defeat him (on the hardest difficulty, I might add, which made me feel good) because I had been playing a heavily combat oriented game. I couldn't use augs and, frankly, I didn't even have the greatest weapons (I ended up using all of my combat rifle ammo and then switching to the exploding revolver, which I had to be quite accurate with).

Point is, I was only able to defeat him because by that time I'd trained myself to be dead accurate and incredibly fast at using cover and dodging shots.

If I had been playing a stealth game the whole time, I would've been fucked. None of those skills would have been developed. That is a problem in design, because Deus Ex encourages such a variety of play in the first place.

Mm. Agree with that. ...the annoying thing is that the first boss (the terrorist leader) can be stunned, and then he can be arrested. I spent all my darts on the second guy before ending up throwing crates.

It's .. you kind of can accept that you have to kill them inside the plot. ..in a way. I decided I had put the entire thing behind me when I finished the Mother-in-law quest.. So I really didn't want to kill the guy, not really.. So if you had a way to trap the guy, drop a crate on him, or disable his weapons. Have some sort of parallel track where you could hack a rocket launcher he would always be using to finish off his target, something like that. So he would blow his arm off, and try to self-destruct an blow you up as well, using the lead to lure you closer, etc..

And that's not there. :(

..anyway. So you did the upgrade, then, Zipp? I didn't trust them :D ..and the last boss was very easy when I had the cloak (and the improved hud).

Third boss you can kill by punching him in the face once.

I'm serious.

As for that thing you can do that makes that fight harder...highlight below for spoilers

Well, I figured, I'm playing a game in a series about conspiracies and things not being what governments and corporations claim they are. So when it comes out that there's a design flaw in the standard biochip and EVERYBODY NEEDS TO GET ONE REPLACED RIGHT NOW GUYS, I thought "Hmm, something's fishy here". Turns out I was right. :D

I look at the biochip thing as a way of poking fun at people who are too trusting of NPCs. Trust nobody. I absolutely love that it's an option though, cause you end up either like Zipp, feeling really good for overcoming a massive handicap that came out of nowhere, or like me, feeling really clever not falling for a trap. :D

Spoilers:

I took the chip because I thought you had to get the side quest at the Limb Clinic to appear. Then when I was infiltrating the Harvesters' hideout, I noticed the guy on the radio mention that he thought the recall was an Illuminati plot to control people and I was like "Ah shit I'm going to get a bad ending or something." Even worse!

Spoilers:

I had the same experience, Will, and I wound up wondering what would've happened if I'd taken the chip. I'm glad I didn't, because fighting that boss without augs sounds awful. (I, too, played this on the highest difficulty.)

I'm serious, though: Typhoon works wonders against bosses. All three of them (not counting the final boss, which is a bit more complicated to take down) die from two or three Typhoon shots. The only boss who gave me trouble was the second one, and that's only because I'd run out of Typhoon ammo. And even then, I only beat her when I found some of said ammo in one of the nearby lockers.

"Third boss you can kill by punching him in the face once."

Really? ..That makes sense. So the first one is the gas-canister. The second is the exploding servers. And the last one is close combat. :)

The exploding servers electrify the floor, though. She kept destroying those on her own and then I'd get zapped to death. I only won once I'd learned to keep her the hell away from those things.

..if you have full health, it should drop you down to 10% or so. Then if you regenerate and do it again, she should be stunned after the third time, I think..

It's suddenly throwing you into a fight with lots of guns everywhere in the room, though.. So yeah.. a bit strange. That there's no way to jump somewhere and avoid the zap or something..

I suppose if I were to play through again, I'd get the EM shielding aug early.

Which is a shame, because having your HUD go nuts when you run into an EMP grenade is really cool/immersive.

I should mention that you CANNOT punch the third boss in the face, though, if you are under the influence of a "poorly thought out decision."

He was hard, Suskie, yeah. I had to save after each successfully volley I landed against him. Once I got in the groove I didn't die too often and the time I actually beat him was a nice streak of saves without the need to load any of them, but it was still a bit of a shock to have to pull out "Half Life" quick save tactics in Deus Ex.

The only bosses that annoying in recent memory were in Alpha Protocol. Which I think you mention in your review.