Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I have a confession to make. As well known as it is I have never played Deus Ex. I have always been a console gamer and so big PC titles like Deus Ex often got ignored. After playing Human Revolution I have since downloaded the original Deus Ex from Steam and aim to play it sometime soon (Although my personal backlog is quite big).

With all the Game of the Year accolades and its surprising and sudden price drop I picked it up despite having no knowledge of the series. I’m glad I did as while it is not Game of the Year it is still an excellent game, deserving of a place in any gamers collection.

You take the role of Adam Jensen who is in charge of security for a major corporation called Sarif Industries. It’s set in the future and science has lead to people being able to use robotics to enhance themselves. These Robotics are called Augmentations and can range from enhancing speaking skills to boosting jumping ability and speed.

You start off in the middle of an attack on Sarif Industries and as you try to save the lives of Sarif’s employees Adam and his lady friend Megan are killed by the attackers. Adam is saved through a heavy amount of Augmentations and as soon as he is able he starts tracking down the people responsible to find the truth of what happened.

Gameplay is a mix of stealth and first person shooting with some RPG elements. DE:HR’s greatest strength comes in it’s ability to let you decide how to handle situations from being able to talk your way out of trouble to shooting everything that moves. The game tends to favour stealth and there are all sorts of multiple routes throughout the levels and hub worlds.

For example you may need to hack the keypad lock of a door or into a computer to continue. Jensen starts with basic hacking skills that you can improve as you progress. Or you could find who has the password/code, knock them out and steal their pocket size device that tells you the information.

You also choose whether to kill, knock out or completely avoid your enemies. Each way has its own advantages. Non lethal weapons allow only one shot at a time so aren’t very good and taking out multiple opponents. Lethal weapons are usually loud but hold more bullets per clip. You can obtain stealth camouflage to sneak past enemies undetected but it uses up energy which is used for taking down opponents in CQC.

The RPG-ness comes in your ability to upgrade Jensen’s abilities. You do this through “Praxis Kits” that are obtained in three ways. Some well hidden ones can be picked up, Some can be bought for a high price and you also get a kit every time to level up.

You gain experience for levelling up by completing challenges, hacking doors and computers, getting through areas undetected, winning arguments through persuasive speech and taking out enemies.

How you upgrade your abilities should relate to your play style. If you aim to sneak past everyone you’ll want to upgrade silent movement and stealth camouflage augmentations. Going all guns blazing works better if you focus on armour upgrades and aim assistance.

Unfortunately one of the most common criticisms is that the bosses, particularly the first one, are much harder if you have focused on stealth based upgrades rather than combat ones. You’ll always want at least one heavy weapon so you have a chance against the bosses, even if you won’t use it for anything else. Also without a boss gauge meter it isn’t easy to work out whether a strategy you’re using is working or not.

And this may just be me but I wasn’t a fan of the constant switching between first and third person. Holding LT while near cover will bring you into third person, aiming while in third person is tricky but it is the only way to shoot from cover. It may have been better as a third person over the shoulder shooter rather than one that switches between perspectives constantly.

Another thing that disappointed me were the visuals. There is a stylish golden glow throughout which is nice, but a lot of stuff fells very last gen. In particular the character models are very poor featuring many square heads. Compare to something like Mass Effect and you will definitely see a difference.

The plot remains mature and gripping without taking over too much of the game. The Sound and soundtrack are great and make up for the shoddy yet stylish visuals. The level of choice for most of the game is excellent even if it does bit you in the arse whenever you face a boss. An excellent game let down by some slight flaws.

8/10

DIary of a Summer of Sonic veteran - SOS2012

Friday 6th July 1pm

Hotel booked, Sat Nav fully charged, everything packed, ticket printed, just to fill my car with petrol and I can start the 8 hour drive to Brighton. Here we go.

Friday 6th July 4pm

Fuck! more traffic jams, more rain, more 50mph speed limits. This trip is taking even longer, Thank Fuck for iPods.

Friday 6th July 8pm

Finally reached M25, can’t be much further. Sat-Nav won’t find GPS signal so I’m worried it’ll take forever to find the Hotel.

Friday 6th July 10:30pm

After all the traffic jams and finally getting my Sat Nav to work 20 minutes from Brighton I managed to park up and check in to my Hotel. Feeling hungry I get a BMT from Subway and check the local area. Hove Centre is literally just down the road from the hotel. Think I’ll aim to leave the hotel at 9, get some breakfast and join the queue.

Friday 6th July 11pm

Open up my Laptop. Internet isn’t all that good, frequently goes on and off. Wait what’s this, Urgent update to all Summer of Sonic attendees. I’ll just check this E-mail. Change of Venue! What the fuck. ARGH where is it now, Brighton Centre? Where’s that? Oh it’s OK, just a bit further down the main road, maybe 10-15 minute walk. Stick to the plan.

Saturday 7th July 12am

Alarm set, clothes laid out, time for bed.

Saturday 7th July 9am

Right I have my bag packed, using the same orange bag we got at SOS 2010, let’s head down the main road. Hopefully it’s not that far and I can get something to eat before the queue gets too long.

Saturday 7th July 9:30am

Arrive at Russell Road. Queue is already pretty big, haven’t had breakfast so I’ll find something once I’m inside. Turn 3DS on, gets plenty of Streetpass hits early on. Doors don’t open until 10 so there is a bit of a wait.

Saturday 7th July 10am

Ok why the fuck aren’t the doors open, come on, I’m waiting.....

Saturday 7th July 10:05am

There we go

Saturday 7th July 10:15am

Wow that was quick. Cool cloth tote bag, wait this room doesn’t seem all that big. All I see is the stage and a load of TV’s with Sega Racing Transformed. Oh there’s an upstairs, ah there’s the merch table and food. Ok breakfast time. More Streetpass hits.

Saturday 7th July 10:30am

Let’s see what’s in the bag. Sonic Universe comic, already have this one but hey it’s free can’t really complain. Sonic Generations on PC for Free, awesome. Sonic branded Stick of Rock, I’ll save that for later. Let’s check out Merch table. T-shirts, T-shirts everywhere, only go up to XL, oh well didn’t expect them to do bigger to be honest. Disappointingly no soundtracks.

Saturday 7th July 11am

Show officially starts with a tirade from Eggman, thwarted by Tails Doll and Marine. Yay it’s the Boozerman cartoon! Loved it. Said hi to Siriku but he seemed busy, said well talk later. Queue for Transformed was short, figured I’d get an early play. Picked Vyse on the panzer dragoon stage. Was pretty good, can’t wait for the finished product.

Saturday 7th July 12pm

Time for Buzzbombers. Excellent show, highlight being an unintentional joke about Elise crying. Can feel Aircon but it’s still getting pretty warm. Go get a drink from the food table, Sonic Paradox cartoon plays on the TV but there’s no sound. Fuck! It’s finished by the time I go downstairs.

Saturday 7th July 1pm

Jun comes on stage for his first show Jam with Jun. Plays some songs with some people from the Sonic fan community. Some Excellent performances all round. Gameplay videos on the screen become oddly compelling and for some reason draw my attention from the stage. I don’t seem to be the only one. Weird.

Saturday 7th July 2pm

Caught Sumo’s Q&A halfway through. Was part of the crowd chanting the Infamous “SEGA” opening used in Sonic games. Here’s hoping they got a good recording like the “Happy Birthday Sonic, Woo!” we did for Sonic Generations last year. They also did something I wanted to see at SOS for a while now, an exclusive reveal. The NiGHTS stuff looks amazing.

Saturday 7th July 3pm

Things started to quite down a bit. Upstairs was the cosplay contest with all but the final hidden away for some reason. Some of the costumes were great. Worthy winner, the top four in particular were excellent. The Banjo Kazooie costumes made me think of Ronan and Mumbo. Iizuka’s Q&A was good, crowd seamed to respond favourably to Chao Gardens making a return. With WiiU, SmartGlass and PS3/Vita the technology exists again to support proper chao gardens again. Managed to get my copy of SEGA racing signed by the guys at Sumo. StreetPass stopped getting hits for some reason.

Saturday 7th July 6pm

Club Sonic was excellent. Seemed like more people were really getting into it this year. Throwing lots of Plushies and badges into the crowd was a good idea. Got a 20th Anniversary pinbadge. Crush 40 were very loud but still incredibly awesome. I guess what I like so much about Crush 40 besides the whole Sonic link is that I’m an optimist and pretty much all their songs are optimistic, feel good songs. Refreshing change from the long list of artists who think depressing you is the only way to go.

Saturday 7th July 7:30pm

So ended another Summer of Sonic. I collected my Jacket from the Cloakroom and briefly discussed the after party with Siriku. For some reason I hadn’t thought much about what I was going to do after the show, I intended to go to whatever afterparty was going on. Assumed it was near the venue, Station bar near Hove Station….Where the fuck was Hove Station? Raced back to my Hotel, picked up a free map, literally just up the road, about five minutes from where SOS was originally meant to be held. Woo Panic over.

Saturday 7th July 8:30pm

Changed out of my sweat drenched clothes into some new ones and headed out to find the bar. Was pretty easy to find in the end. Got asked for ID, could’ve been the space invaders T-shirt I was wearing, but I’m 29 for fucks sake. Got there didn’t recognise anybody just knew they were Summer of Sonic attendees (lots of Sonic and Crush 40 T-shirts)

Saturday 7th July Afterparty

Joined Foreversonic’s table which turned out to be the “Brony” table. No I don’t watch it but I couldn’t care less what other people thought of it. Discussed the Zombie run with Siriku, would love to see him join us. More subdued this year compared to last, don’t know why, last year was excellent. Nice to see SOL from Sumo join us for a drink, I wonder why more of the guests don’t come out with us.

Sunday 8th July 12am

Finished the night hearing T-bird talk about becoming a doctor next year and his nights out in Tokyo with Jun. We all slowly left as we were kicked out of the pub. I said Goodbye to Siriku and headed back to my Hotel. The receptionist was kind enough to let me have a pint of water at the bar (to prevent a hangover next morning, usually works). Went to bed

Sunday 8th July 10am

Checked out of the hotel, loaded up my car, got some breakfast and set up my Sat Nav. It couldn’t find a signal so I couldn’t find the petrol station I had intended to use. I drove around trying to find A) the way out of the Brighton and onto the A23 and B) a petrol station I could fill up my tank with. Eventually found one and started the long journey home at 12pm.

Sunday 8th July 7:30pm

Finally arrived home, except for the time spent driving around Brighton the trip back home was a lot smoother than the trip down to Brighton. Unloaded the car, updated my Sat Nav (needed a GPS update, I’ll make sure I check that next time I go on a big trip) and checked my photos. About half of them are too blurred to upload unfortunately.

Some rough stats:

Total time spent 54.5 hours

Covering 800-ish miles

Hotel for 2 nights £140

Parking £18

Petrol around £100

Other stuff including food around £90

Total cost around £350

Mii’s collected via Streetpass: Around 100, covering around 5 new regions

With around 50 new Generations 3DS missions collected via Streetpass

Lollipop chainsaw

Remember Fun? Remember Silliness? Remember Over the top? Remember bright and colourful? It’s easy to forget that in a sea of Single colour, ultra serious shooters usually involving some sort of military that there are other genres of games. The latest offering from Grasshopper is as you’d expect crazy, over the top, silly, fun and absolutely brilliant.

You play as Juliet Starling, an 18 year old cheerleader who loves lollipops. It’s her eighteenth birthday today and has decided it’s time for her boyfriend Nick to meet her family. Problem is she has a dark secret, her family are monster hunters and Juliet is very much a part of that. Her weapon of choice, a big fucking chainsaw.

She arrives at school to discover it’s been overrun with zombies. So we have a school fun of Zombies and a Monster hunting cheerleader with a big fucking chainsaw, do I really have to do the math for you?

The game plays like any other Bayonetta style beat em up but with a twist. Y is you standard chainsaw attack, slow but damage dealing. A is a low chainsaw attack, used to chop of zombie legs and attack crawling zombies. B performs a jumping dodge and Juliet will leapfrog over zombies if close enough. X performs a pom pom attack and this is where LC comes into its own.

The idea is you used pom pom attacks to stun zombies making them groggy. In their groggy state Zombies are much easier to kill, usually going down in a single hit with Y. Manage to kill multiple zombies at the same time or in very quick succession and you’ll get more medals which can be used to enhance Juliet’s abilities, and is also one of the things you’re ranked on at the end of each level.

The Zombies aren’t your standard Zombies either. They have some intelligence and some will throw objects at you, some can breath fire on you and some even fire guns. Despite this though the difficulty on normal is a little on the easy side, barring some difficulty spikes in the form of Minigames.

These minigames are such huge leaps in difficulty as you go from having plenty of health to deal with zombies to instant death if you fail the minigame. They are fun to play but also frustrating. 90% of deaths will come from failing these minigames, not from normal Gameplay.

Difficulty is all over the place. As it has two easy to fail minigames Stage 2 becomes the hardest level to clear, yet the final boss (on stage 6) is really easy.

The story is pretty short and it won’t take more than a couple of days to finish it but LC biggest strength lies in its replayability. Each of the stages can be completed in under an hour and there’s plenty of encouragement to beat your previous scores. Playing on harder difficulties change zombie locations, with some special zombies only appearing on the hard modes and some items only become available on hard.

There is a long list of unlockables waiting to be unlocked including concept art, music and costumes to keep you going beyond the story. It’s not the most time consuming game but it’s a sweet ride while it lasts.

LC’s greatest strength lies in its characters and dialogue. While the story isn’t going to win any awards, the dialogue is excellent with many quotable lines. Grasshopper have given us such as excellent script with characters you really feel for. It’s almost impossible to play this without at least smiling.

Visuals are pretty standard but like I said earlier it’s refreshing to see a game with such bold use of colour. The soundtrack is excellent and customisable, but I would’ve liked a default music option, choosing just five for the entire game is a little annoying.

One final annoyance is a problem Grasshopper can’t seem to get right, Unskippable cutscenes. While some of the longer ones can be skipped there are some pointless ones that are just frustratingly annoying.

For example on stage 5 you come to a smallish room filled with explosive barrels. There is a survivor here and it’s very easy to accidentally kill him. Reload from a checkpoint and you have to watch a stupid cutscene where Juliet gets a phonecall from her sister. It doesn’t last long but after the 3rd or 4th attempt it really starts to grate.

While it may not be as deep as Bayonetta, Lollipop chainsaw is still a very competent Hack and Slash style beam em up with an awesome script and presented with a rainbow of colours and a kick ass soundtrack. A couple of annoyances such as Unskippable cutscenes and random difficulty spikes also get in the way of what is otherwise an amazing and unique game.

8/10