[Garyos]

Originally Posted by twifkak

Interviews said it was supposed to mimic the kind of HUD you might get implanted right on your eye. Which is stupid because, a)it's NOT, and b)Who would put any vital information in the periphery of your eye? If it has to be in the periphery, color coding would make a lot more sense. But I haven't played the demo (or DX1) to see if your complaints are just stupid.

Man, I would've loved a toggle-crouch in Halo. It was so AS$!#235 annoying to have to press in and forward at the same time, and it never worked reliably.

Well, it would be nice to get a choice here. And the interface is a bit annoying at its standard setting, and a bit cumbersome. DX1 had numbers beside all your quickslots so you immediately knew what number to press to get the approriate item. Here you either have to cycle through everything or press a button you HOPE will be the right one.

[Garyos]

I've read a little around, and apparently I'm not the only one finding faults. For isntance, Geforce MX cards aren't supported. At. All. You simply can't play the game with one (not just the demo). And XP points and skills are gone. Gone. Only biomods left, which I found far less fun than hunting for experience points....

I'm getting depressed by this. A lot of people are saying that this is dumbed down for consoles. Now, I don't really think console games are automatically "dumb", but this certainly seems less and less like good ol' Deus Ex....

I'd love to hear treps thoughts about this, though.

[Royal Fool]

Originally Posted by twifkak

Man, I would've loved a toggle-crouch in Halo. It was so AS$!#235 annoying to have to press in and forward at the same time, and it never worked reliably.

I hear ya, brotha'. Halo's way of crouching was horrible. You had to move the stick really gently forward so as to make sure it didn't accidentally pop out and put you back into the standing position.

As for the controls, I agree that there should be an option to pick either toggle or hold, but I'd prefer toggling in a stealth game like DX2. (Although it mostly depends on what you're really doing...)

I don't know if I should even bother with downloading it. First off, for some reason my GameSpy ID just doesn't manage to validate itself when I login... I type it in, and once I submit it I just get returned to the main page, without being logged it. It's not a cookie problem since all other sites work perfectly in both my browsers (Opera and IE), so I have to assume it's just another one of GameSpy's brilliant ways of pissing off it's users. And then there's the issue with me only having a GeForce 2....

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Gary-uuuunnnh!

I'd love to hear treps thoughts about this, though.

Why? Am I supposed to be some kind of guru on this? But I don't want to be a snit, so....

I just beat the demo now. Before commenting on the beef, I'll tell you the nuts and bolts of my chosen playing style. I played Alex D. as a woman (which got only simple results - some compliments from that sexy but shady Aussie pilot). I decided on non-lethal passive/defensive maneuvers (no killing humans), accepting side quests, hacking, environmental resourcing, and general dialogue and intense inquiries with NPCs. The only time I used a weapon was to kill greasels.

Now the beef. The core essence of the demo feels just like DX1, which is magnificent! The atmospheric continuity is there, it felt like 15 years had passed since J.C. Denton's time, and yet it didn't feel too severely changed. NPCs still talk to you without being clicked on, carry on conversations with each other while you eavesdrop, and generally do their own thing. However, some of the depth of immersive interactivity is gone. By this I mean that certain things felt cut down, abridged. The random books to read, for example. In DX1 every book I found featured at least 2 pages of text, but here in DX2 it's only a paragraph, two if you're lucky. I miss the extensiveness. But the DX world is there! Gorgeous, saturated, dark, edgy, urban, and gritty! I love that.

Technicalities. I think there's a screw-up with the mouse. It's slow, unsmooth, and jittery. I don't think it has to do with framerates and system capacity, either, many people in other forums were complaining too. The HUD, I thought, was weird looking at first, but after several minutes I acclimated, especially since I made it as transparent as I could without losing it entirely, so the key is transparency. But, the learning curve to use it is awful. I had to map several separate keys for the various subcompartments of the menu - toolbelt, biomods, inventory, weapons.... too complicated!! Eventually I got used to it. See, the original DX was also complicated in the HUD, but once you were accustomed it became more or less intuitive. This does have strong RPG elements, after all. So my thoughts on the interface is this: it's complicated, but once you get used to your configuration it'll be fine.

I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but every time I'd load a saved game or move between levels, the game would forget my keyboard settings and I would have to redo them every single time. Is there something I overlooked, or is it a bug in the demo that would have to be fixed? Please advise.

The A.I. seems pretty good. I was poking around Miss Sak's floor, and the guard kept a sharp eye on me. He even followed me into a room when I thought no one was looking and told me I shouldn't be there. Not sure of the extent of the A.I., this is just a demo. *SPOILER***** I accepted the quest to kill the sure-bet greasel to sabotage a greasel fight in the pit so I can up my chances of making more money. I snuck up the fire escape to the window, threw a spiderbot into the room. The two owners, in good A.I. fashion, panicked and tried to do all they could to protect the greasel, but the spiderbot killed it. And I watched from the shadows as this happened and felt wonderfully wicked. A quintessential DX moment! *****END OF SPOILER* Unfortunately I wasn't able to stumble on the chance to use the physics to my advantage, but that's mainly because of my chosen playing style.

Graphics and sound. If you study the visual style of Ion Storm's games you'll notice a consistent way they always do things. In this regard I wasn't at all disappointed in the graphical style of Invisible War. It's quite simply DX1 but far better looking and more refined. The character models are amazingly done, finely detailed, the animations are satisfying. The lighting is superb although I think it's too harsh, especially the shadows. I don't know why other people are bitching about the graphics, Ion Storm has always had their own consistent style whether you like it or not. The DX series is not the Unreal series, it is not Doom III. Period. Warren Spector, Harvey Smith, Bill Money, and the rest of Ion Storm would rather be known for their depth and freedom of gameplay, not for constant neurotic f##king around with bleeding-edge graphics. But as it stands I think the graphics look excellent and serviceable for what the game needs. Also, I realized I'm gonna need to get more memory for this game - another 256MB RAM at least. *sigh*

I like the music soundtrack quite a bit, with the vocal variation on the DX theme and the simple piano notes. The ambient sounds were pleasing, immersive, and enveloping. Didn't care much for the NG Resonance jukebox music, although I thought it was perfectly suited for The Greasel Pit environment.

So, overall? It feels like a console game in many parts (my god, those are the hugest f##king subtitles I'ver ever seen! Perfect size for a f##king t.v. screen). Now, I hate to sound like a snob, but I wish consoles would beef the f##k up so that PC versions at least don't have to be 'dumbed down' for them. The first DX had this amazing, um..... intellectual look and feel to it, a certain refinement. But Invisible War, with its huge-ass subtitles and letters and cursor, etc., feels like Sesame Street!

But the essential, classic, and ultimately elegant DEUS EX feeling is still there!! IT'S STILL THERE! And I am definitely getting this game!! Yeah, this is ABSOLUTELY YET ONE MORE GAME in which I can lose myself for hours and hours. I remember one session of DX1 where I played for 12 hours nonstop! Invisible War looks to be that way too! OMG.

Hookay, there. Another long winded demo impression courtesy of the Trep. Keep talking!

P.S. - There is also a rather nice new teaser trailer for Thief III included with this demo. Click 'extras' in the menu.

[Royal Fool]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I'm intrigued...

[Garyos]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Why? Am I supposed to be some kind of guru on this? [/COLOR]

No, you're just more of a Deus Ex fanboi than me. And you're more eloquent.


I agree that you'd probably get used to the interface. But don't you agree that the original one was much better organized? In addition to everything else I think they've simplified and changed too many things here... I guess there's not enough buttons on a console pad to have buttons for leaning...

And I got the mouse thing too... I do believe its framerates in my case though. For not "f##king around with bleeding-edge graphics" they sure made the requirements steep... Compare with Max Payne 2, which plays fluid as a waterfall on far less superior systems than mine, and looks just as pretty (maybe except for the shadows which makes things really really dark).

I'm sad now. I usually don't rip on games like this, but I guess I had hoped for so much more with this game. I'm sure it's got atmosphere and plot twists and open-endedness in spades, but with the gameplay mechanics they've used here its going to be damn hard to appreciate it...

[Crunchy in milk]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Now, I hate to sound like a snob, but I wish consoles would beef the f##k up so that PC versions at least don't have to be 'dumbed down' for them. The first DX had this amazing, um..... intellectual look and feel to it, a certain refinement. But Invisible War, with its huge-ass subtitles and letters and cursor, etc., feels like Sesame Street!

Maybe you're right, maybe consoles got together and held a gun to Ion Storm's head and prevented them from making minor adjustments to the interface in the PC version. Goddamn consoles!... and such

Accepting the above as clear fact, I don't know that I'd think of you as a 'snob' when you rip on consoles for not insisting the average punter lay down 10k for a plasma screen TV or failing to design a revolutionary affordable high definition television alternative. You know, so your cursors are smaller.

Today's consoles do actually support decent HDTV, exceeding the average resolution and refresh rate requirements of PC game releases. That doesn't mean its wise for developers to design their releases just for those who have HDTV.

I don't think snob is the word you're looking for.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

How about 'extremely picky', then? I played some Halo on my nephew's Xbox and his HDTV. I didn't like the resolution and washed out picture quality, it still looked like someone smeared Vaseline on the entire screen, and the image seemed stretched out. Then I played the Halo PC demo: crisp, sharp, defined, precise, rich, and vivid. I've seen the image quality of plasmas, too. I am picky, I did not like the plasma quality, either. Hell, I don't even like LCD monitors (refresh rates too slow and image quality is too...um, dotty and pointillistic.

I sincerely hope ISA scrambles madly to tweak the PC version of DX2 before launching the full game, and then immediately send out a patch to fix other things. The general consensus - beyond this forum and extending all over to other forums such as Gone Gold, 3DR, AVault, and the official Ion Storm forums - is that the excellent DX atmosphere and nuances are still there, alive and kicking, but there are definitely console aspects that should not have been left alone and not allowed to appear for PC, such as the huge 'Sesame Street' captions, the oversized aiming reticle, the lack of a lean function (!!!!!)..... I guess the Xbox controller ran out of buttons for that, eh? There's also the glaringly inept and inconsistent A.I., and the strangely behaving Havok physics. The demo was almost dripping with bugs! I actually don't think the they took the time to optimize the demo for PC. My fingers are crossed...

[ysbreker]

Originally Posted by Erkki

The ATI drivers require that a "Standard VGA Adapter" is previously installed. However, I can't install these things. Even if I boot windows with "enable VGA mode", there appears a "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)" in the OTHER devices menu (indicating that the drivers are missing or something like that).

So much for playing the demo. Fuckin PC's.

That's pretty easy to do, just uninstall your previous drivers, reboot, windows installs standard driver (if it chooses anything non-standard, click on choose your own dirver from list, pick the standard vga driver) reboot again, and finally install the new driver...

That, in a nutshell, should do the trick I think...

[Erkki]

Originally Posted by ysbreker

That's pretty easy to do, just uninstall your previous drivers, reboot, windows installs standard driver (if it chooses anything non-standard, click on choose your own dirver from list, pick the standard vga driver) reboot again, and finally install the new driver...

That, in a nutshell, should do the trick I think...

I CAN'T! I did a search for a similar problem and everyone replied like you but they just didn't understand that the one having the problem could not install a standard VGA adapter. And neither can I. There are no standard drivers in the list even if I interrupt the automatic install process by deleting ATI .inf files.

However, I managed to do a manual install (after reinstalling Windows which I should have done anyway actually) and now it seems to work but the computer is shutting down 10-20 minutes after starting for some reason ("Remote Procedure Call service failed" or something). And the fucking DX demo is somehow magically become corrupted so I'm downloading again.

[Chrille]

The demo felt exactly like the first game (to me atleast) and unfortunatley that includes the weak weapons feeling and the jumpy frustrating movement system.

[Bird]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

[IMG]
I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but every time I'd load a saved game or move between levels, the game would forget my keyboard settings and I would have to redo them every single time. Is there something I overlooked, or is it a bug in the demo that would have to be fixed? Please advise.

I have this problem too, and it's very annoying, since we use azerty-keyboards (zqsd instead of wasd). I think it's a bug; I tried changing it in user.ini, default.ini (putting 'read only' on after the change), didn't change a thing.

I'm not very enthusiastic about the demo (and I can't compare to the original).
I don't like the inventory + the fact that when you use a multitool to open a door, your character doesn't switch back automatically to your weapon. The guy with the jet says you have to pay him 500 credits or something to leave with him, but if you don't have them and go to the jet (after killing all persons; miss Sak and guards) he doesn't seem to bother about that; the demo is over then...
There are some nice weapons, though (flamethrower, spiderbots).
I expected more from the gfx (after seeing screenshots). Shadows are sometimes quite ugly (e.g. from the fire in the "greasel pit" (or what's it called)).
It runs smoothly on 1280x1024, 6x multisampling on my radeon 9700 pro.
My cpu is no match for that card; overclocked celeron [email protected] (could get the card quite cheap from ebay), so I think this game relies a lot more on the gpu than the cpu. I don' experience anything weird about the mouse (initial sensitivity was a bit high, that's all).

The trailer for thief 3 looks nice!


btw: Garyos, I think Max Payne looks better and Intrepid, I think the response time of the new LCD monitors is short enough for gaming (no ghosting effects). It's true that you have to get used to the pointillistic effect, but it's less fatiguing for rhe eyes + I prefer the design and dimensions (still use a CRT at work, though)

[Crunchy in milk]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

How about 'extremely picky', then? I played some Halo on my nephew's Xbox and his HDTV

Gee with such extensive testing like that, its clear you're 100% correct in that the HDTV offered by the Xbox is shit.

http://144.92.43.200/hdg/hdg.asp?submit=ShowGames

But Isn't halo a first-gen title? A PC port? It only supports 480p? well then um... gee. Even then it sports a lot of lighting, textures and bumpmapping that are lacking in the PC version.

As you can see from the list, while 1080i is possible on the xbox, not many games are yet released supporting it. HDTV is still a mine field with a severe lack of standards. The different connector cable kits are just a small example of how hard it can be to get a HDTV to talk to your console properly (You also have to tell the Xbox to output the chosen HDTV signal in the dashboard settings).

Maybe you could hang on TV makers to get their act together.

As for the lack of lean, other games have pulled it off on the console. Try Rainbow Six 3. The xbox controller has 16 buttons, not including the directional movement and camera thumbsticks. If you need more than that to play deus ex 2 then its either a flight sim or the developer is an idiot when it comes to interface design regardless of the platform.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Bird

I have this problem too, and it's very annoying, since we use azerty-keyboards (zqsd instead of wasd). I think it's a bug; I tried changing it in user.ini, default.ini (putting 'read only' on after the change), didn't change a thing.

No, you did it wrong.

1. You need to go into your Documents folder: Deus Ex - Invisible War Demo.
2. Right-click the user.ini file, click 'Properties', then uncheck the 'Read-only' box'.

Here's a link to an Ion Storm Forum thread featuring fans who took matters into their own hands and started screwing around with other problems, things like mouse sensitivty and such. One thoughtful fellow posted this to fix the HUD, expanding it out towards the edges of your screen, thereby making it less distracting:

Go into your Program Files and find Deus Ex - Invisible War Demo/System/default.

In default.ini there is a section that says:

;this FOV is for the HUD only. On the XBox, we need to keep all HUD elements within 10% of the edges.
;FOV__d=68 ;68 is good for the PC version
FOV__d=61

Changing the 61 to 68, 69, or 70 expands the HUD to the edges of the screen.

Originally Posted by Crunchy in milk

The xbox controller has 16 buttons, not including the directional movement and camera thumbsticks. If you need more than that to play deus ex 2 then its either a flight sim or the developer is an idiot when it comes to interface design regardless of the platform.

Neither of the above. The first Deus Ex also had a complex interface, much more related to a RPG than a flight sim. Have you ever played it through (on PC)? The learning curve was slightly long, but once you acclimated it was smooth and intuitive, with your customized configs and hotkeys. Beyond that you'll have understood the particular pacing, patience, and thought demanded of you. Most of us DX admirers love the game precisely because it was challenging to get into and be absorbed by. Besides, the DX games are NOT games you just pick up and play, not at all GTA3 or Halo and such.

[Erkki]

Oh well, after all this trouble I just found out my graphics card (Radeon 7200) is too old to run this demo ("Pixel Shader 1.1 or greater needed").

[Bird]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

No, you did it wrong.

1. You need to go into your Documents folder: Deus Ex - Invisible War Demo.
2. Right-click the user.ini file, click 'Properties', then uncheck the 'Read-only' box'.

I read that somewhere else too, AND I read it doesn't work.
I still tried, but guess what: it doesn't work!!
Therefore I tried changing the key mapping in the ini files and making them read only again (cfr. quake, UT configs). Still doesn't work...
(but since I finished the demo, thx to that silly pilot, I'm gonna uninstall it anyway)

[Intrepid Homoludens]

That's funny, it worked fine for me.

[ragnar]

Originally Posted by Garyos

I've read a little around, and apparently I'm not the only one finding faults. For isntance, Geforce MX cards aren't supported. At. All. You simply can't play the game with one (not just the demo). And XP points and skills are gone. Gone. Only biomods left, which I found far less fun than hunting for experience points....

I think it should be much more refined than some general experience points. A good system would also hide the experience from the player (In the real world you never think about how many experience points you get by doing things, right?). I want a system where you get better at what you do. If you (in the DX case) use your sniper rifle, you get slightly better at using the sniper rifle. If you hack into a computer you get better at that (and it ultimately shouldn't matter if you succeed or fail I think). All this is hidden away from the player, so that when you have hacked into a lot of computers you will begin to notice that it goes much easier and when you have sniped a lot you will notice that the accuracy is much better.

In DX1 the general XP was implemented better than in most RPG:s as you got XP by getting to certain places, not by how many people/monsters you kill etc.

[Garyos]

Originally Posted by ragnar

I think it should be much more refined than some general experience points. A good system would also hide the experience from the player (In the real world you never think about how many experience points you get by doing things, right?). I want a system where you get better at what you do. If you (in the DX case) use your sniper rifle, you get slightly better at using the sniper rifle. If you hack into a computer you get better at that (and it ultimately shouldn't matter if you succeed or fail I think). All this is hidden away from the player, so that when you have hacked into a lot of computers you will begin to notice that it goes much easier and when you have sniped a lot you will notice that the accuracy is much better.

In DX1 the general XP was implemented better than in most RPG:s as you got XP by getting to certain places, not by how many people/monsters you kill etc.

Yes and yes. I agree. No such thing in DX 2, though.

I used to love the sense of accomplishment I got when hearing the XP sound in DX...

[Intrepid Homoludens]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R., I believe, is implementing that 'invisible' experience building system, ragsie. The more you use a particular weapon the better you get with it, etc. You see the results gradually.