Discussion What's your favourite video game you've been playing?

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have finally started Mankind Divided but only a couple hours in. pretty much what i expected, another awesome Deus Ex game.

mostly been playing Darksiders remastered collection. got a deal for Warmastered & Deathinitive so will be doing a consecutive playthrough. are still great games.
 

I thought so at first too, but since it is mostly void of boss fights, overpowers you way too much with stealth tools, and has a pretty short campaign, it ends up feeling like a gadget demo that offers little challenge unless you go in like Rambo.

They claimed mostly the combat pillar was improved since HR, but by adding a non lethal option, stealth I feel was buffed too much, and the gameplay is mostly focused on it. It's basically a short, repetitive campaign that lacks climactic moments.

 

Even then, you'd still have the ability to disappear whenever you need to, and only one boss fight at end of game, plus a short campaign. There's not just 1, 2 or 3 things wrong with this game. A lot of what they added could be great, but they would have needed to fix all those other things for the game to really shine overall.

 
I agree about being overpowered but I didn't think the game was short. My first playthrough of the base game was over twice as long as The Human Revolution with the DLC. ~25 hours for THR as opposed to 50+ for Mankind Divided.
 

Well, first off, I was talking about the main game, not DLC, and HowLongToBeat.com's database of player submissions shows 14.5 hrs for MD's main story, and 21 hrs for HR's main story (24 for HR Director's Cut). That's also how short MD's main missions felt to me.

It's been discussed a lot by DX fans, and you generally see people acknowledging that MD is shorter. As far as the DLC, I've played Missing Link, and Jensen's Stories and System Rift. I liked System Rift, but found Missing Link too easy, and Jensen's Stories too short.
 
I was talking about THR with the DLC or the Director's cut ( I have all 3 ) taking about 25 hours to do all the quests I could find. Mankind Divided without any of the DLC took me over 50 hours to do all the quests I could find. I was including side quests in both estimates.
 
I really want to play Mankind Divided right now, but I'm still trying to finish up MGS 5 completely.

You could say I've "beaten" the game but I've got 2 more of those repeating missions. I've put around 70 hours into this game and I have to say, I wasn't disappointed. If you're new to the series like I am, the ending (not a proper ending) was okay. Yes, there are some things that weren't explained but these surfaced to me only after I did some extensive reading about the lore.

I have no idea how Kojima was able to string up all these plot points together. Either he planned all this from the start or he made a lot of comprimises that actually make perfect sense. It's brilliant, IMO.
A certain plot twist in the game was astonishing for me even though there were hints about it in the very beginning.

About gameplay, I'd say it's definitely one of the best stealth action games to date. There are so many ways to do missions, so many equipment you could develop and use, lots of customization involved. The game was so much fun and it has made me interested in playing the older MGS titles now.
 
I am a PS4 gamer and currently I have been playing Rainbox six siege a lot. The best thing about the game is tactial (FPS) gameplay which I like the most, plus its characters and weapon choices. I am a huge Ubisoft fan I am desperately looking forward to Ghost Recon Wildlands. That game look amazing enough from its 1st & 2nd trailer. If you have played the Divison from Ubisoft then I am sure Wildlands will tempt you too!

 


Nah. You won't be able to spam cloak with the regen gone and cloak drains energy fast. Actually you won't be able to spam any of your augments and even melee takedowns. Think about it. It will be like a chain reaction balancing the entire game design. Exploration and resource management will become a necessity then.

As for boss battles in HR everyone complained that it totally undermines going stealth. You go stealth the entire game and then suddenly you have to use guns for a boss fight. MD actually fixed that.

As for the campaign length, i never skip side missions in a game, so i didn't really feel that the game was short. Actually it felt a lot longer than HR and even the first DX since there were just too many unique stuff to discover. There are lots of stuff that happens in the background if you explore and make sense of whatever you find like for e.g.
Madame Photographe kills Vadim Orlov.
Elias Chikane will order to sound the alarm at GARM if you choose to contact Miller instead of Vega
There's a Jensen lookalike body in one of the containers at Versalife vault.




Do try the FOB infiltration events (events not other players' FOB). It's fun for a couple of tries.
Playerbase in MGO might be dead now but the cloak and dagger mode was a lot of fun while it lasted.
Also there were subtle details in the campaign like this one:
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW8CrAQ-r1Q"][/video]
 

What do you mean "regen gone"? HR didn't have biocell regen, MD does. Have you even played MD? In HR you really had to think about when and where to use your energy. In MD, you can pretty much spam it non stop once Biocells are upgraded.


Agreed, MGSV is stealth done right. I also think it has maybe the best prelude I've ever seen in a game. That said, it starts getting a bit long in the tooth the way they did the replays in Chapter 2. Many if not most felt it would have been a lot better, especially in a sandbox game, to just offer difficulty modes, rather than force their kind of replays on the same missions.

In a sandbox game you don't hold the hand of the player and tell them this is how you have to complete this mission to get the most challenge out of it. If you want to do anything like that, you can accomplish it with achievements. Better yet, you can do it with challenges that unlock upgrades, like Id did with Doom 2016.

 


I was replying to this. Don't know how you cannot understand this.





 


IIRC, the Director's Cut of HR let you regen up to two cells worth of energy, but not your full bar. Not sure how it works in MD.
 
Never played HR Director's Cut. IMO regen would kill the game. You guys want a challenge, try playing The Evil Within with no upgrades. I beat it on Nightmare with no upgrades in just under 14 hrs with 31 deaths. Next I plan on trying a no upgrade Akumu run.

Chimera, yeah I know what you meant, but I'm saying there's not that many places where you even need to go invisible. You'd still be able to use it in those places even without regen, especially since there's tons of Biocells laying around.

Like I said before, doing just one thing, like removing regen, is not going to fix the game, because there are several things wrong with it.
 


You need to find biocells, that's the point! Also you can't spam Smart Vision to find them you would actually have to explore. Currently you don't even need biocells.

And yes in HR even in non-Director's cut, there was regen but only for a block. If you deplete the block it's permanently depleted.

 
I'm saying you'd have to also make Biocells less prevalent too. I mean they're literally everywhere. In a game like this you search for and find things a lot. In HR, you didn't have easy regen, easy finding of Biocells/Praxis. Plus it actually had boss fights, and harder stealth, and harder enemies. It was only let down by bad graphics and a bad ending.
 
You don't get it. Even though there are plenty of items, without Smart Vision spamming you would miss a lot of the biocells and even every other item including Praxis Kits. I'm obviously talking about the first playthrough experience when you don't know the location of items not subsequent playthroughs. In HR, it was easy to find items because the environment wasn't that detailed, had samey textures, it didn't have that many objects in the environment so you could easily spot the useful items from the environment. In MD it would be a nightmare without Smart Vision. And I already explained before why the boss fight is actually handled 'right' in MD. Stealth isn't even the main aspect of the game. Exploration is. Stealth in DX is just a minor gameplay element for assisting you to progress through the game. Also i'm not talking about making the game extremely hard, only hard enough to be enjoyable and rewarding.
 
My first play through I wasn't spamming Smart Vision as you put it, and I had tons of Biocells piling up that I didn't use because I'd maxed my recharge upgrades. Obviously I'd not have done so had I known the game would be so void of challenge.

In fact quite the opposite of your take, on my first play through in a game like this I want to check all routes, out of curiosity and intel for play throughs on harder modes. So I stumble upon most if not all useful items to find. I mean it's not hard to find them when anything that can be opened has glowing edges. You don't need Smart Vision for that, but you did remind me of yet another thing this game holds your hand with.

So no, it's not that I "don't get it", I just play the game differently than you, and for that reason I'm going to respectfully agree to disagree.
 
I've finally decided to play through Deus Ex MD. I think I'm near the end now. What stood out for me is how easy it is in MD than it was in HR to get past enemies. I have not once fired a lethal weapon on anybody, hell, I've probably shot the stun gun only 5 times the whole game. Rest of the time I was able to sneak past all my enemies without having to wait around for the perfect moment to slip by. I do knock them out though. There are just so many approaches to an objective in the game. Can't hack? There's probably a vent around here somewhere...Can't find a vent? You could probably jump over the walls of the room (Only one time I saw that though).

The amount of paths they've laid down for this game is just insane. It also made it quite easy. Too easy, actually...
I'm only playing on 'Give me a challenge' (normal) difficulty. Maybe that's why, but I remember having a more difficult time with HR than I did with MD.

Praxis kits are so abundant. You get them by the hour. So is ammo, painkillers, biocells etc. I haven't even used a biocell yet, apart from charging up lifts.

It's definitely a great game. I'm liking all of it so far. I don't think I spent a lot of time hacking peoples' computers and reading their emails in HR. It's more interesting here in MD. Fact that you get codes and passwords from them is pretty neat. The mesenger mini game is also nice.

I'm liking the story too. Side missions are awesome, btw. I was disappointed with the Palisade bank though. I decided to perform a heist myself
(Even before they gave me the option to do the heist or save allison.)
and I couldn't find good stuff in there. I was hoping I'd get lots of credits but most of the vaults were just empty.
I went for the machinegod mission if you guys were wondering. Now I'm waiting to see what the consequences of not finding the orchid cure was.
 
Even playing it as a shooter isn't hard. There's a new DLC coming in a few weeks. The 23rd I believe.

I finished New Vegas with a few mods. Nothing crazy, really just some custom followers and character replacement models. Still a very fun game. That was the third time I'd played.

I started Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon which I believe was a free game from UPlay not long ago. It's an absolute blast. I'm not sure how I missed it when it came out. Not a game that takes itself seriously at all. I also installed Assassin's Creed III. I've had it awhile ( was it free too? ) from somewhere. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is the only one I've played so far and I enjoyed it. I haven't started AC III yet though.

Mostly waiting on Andromeda. And waiting. And waiting. :lol:

My first playthrough I robbed the bank before you were supposed to as well. And killed all the guards. They respawn.
 
I never got around to finish blood dragon. I didn't like it that much. The satire was nice and all but I didn't like the aesthetics. Too dark and purple/red.

AC 3 was also a free game, yeah. In terms of story, it's probably my least favorite AC game. Connor wasn't interesting enough. It was the well received naval fights that became the main theme for Black flag. AC 3 brought in new mechanics, which I liked and graphics were nice too. I suggest giving it a go, maybe you'll like it.
 

Funny, I don't get "great" from your description. I expected you to say boring with such lack of challenge. I decided to start another play through after beating it on W7, then installing W10, but quite frankly I've been distracted by games like Mafia III and Watch Dogs 2. Even though they're sub par in many ways compared to their predecessors, at least they offer some amount of challenge. It's understandable why MD gets only Mixed reviews, and it's not just due to performance issues and micro transactions like many claim.

 
I've only played Blood Dragon a few hours but I'm still liking it. I did grow up in the 80s that it satires though so maybe that makes me appreciate it more.

I personally can forgive less than challenging gameplay when other things such as aesthetics and compelling world building are done so right. But I've always seen games as much as art and entertainment as viewing them on a competitive level.

I got a nice little accessory upgrade. :)

ohhFI2M.jpg


DCPILi9.jpg


Got new ear pads for the HD 598s while I was at it. I haven't played a game in days. I've been rediscovering my music. 😛
 
Yeah, I guess my write up seemed more critical than it actually is. It's easy but that doesn't necessarily mean I didn't enjoy it. In comparison with HR, I was just surprised.

I haven't tried the breach mode yet.

 
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