Recent reviews by jcdenton666

I have to keep an external, USELESS launcher which has NOTHING to do with this game up to date in order to be able to play. That's more than enough reason for a thumb down.

PS: Oh and the astrariums are pure cancer. One of the worst executed puzzles ever in an RPG.

I'm giving this a rare thumb up as it didn't have any frustrating stuff in it AND it was quite a fun game to play through.

First of all, this isn't a very long game, but it got quite a load of mechanics crammed into it coming directly from Human Revolution. The setting is an extension of that game as well. As for the storyline, it doesn't have much, but I liked both the idea of the Tyrants as an elite black ops unit and opposing them as enemies, though, just like with the original Deus Ex, I wish I had had the option of remaining with the "evil" guys as well. The stories of both HR and Mankind Divided were appallingly bad, so this is a superior example in that regard.

Second, this game didn't crash a single time, so having just 1 savegame slot was bearable (though that still should NEVER be the case in the first place. Not having free saving is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coming from PC's retarded cousin, the gaming console).

As for multiple paths, this certainly doesn't have the complexity that esp. HR had. With some minor save scumming, you can probably do 100% in one playthrough. I still went for one violent non-guide first playthrough as for me with games I enjoy playing I do want to actually play them, not only 100% them. All achievements fired on the first try (I'm looking at you HR...), only the double takedown is rather hard to achieve because it is really stingy compared to the mainline games. Takedown is still way overpowered and I'm certain you can beat the game killing every human enemy without ever using a single gun. I didn't like that saving the doctor didn't finish that quest but cancel it, voiding the sidequest achievement. It's worth mentioning that though this is a very easy game (as the AI is very bad) there are no difficulties and enemies CAN in fact one-shot you, easiliy (which doesn't have any consequences, however). I had some troubles with the interface as some things are different than in the main games and not very well explained. Once again, the forced tutorials are APPALLING. Keep tutorials out of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ games proper, seriously, like the original DX did.

The big elephant in the room is of course there's no part 2 and there never will be. As the first thing the new owners of the IP did was turn off the Breach servers, I do not recommend actually paying any money for this game – that's certainly not the point of my thumb up. Fact is however that I had more fun with this minor title than with the major two games of the HD era (GTA analogy there) as NONE (!) of the frustrations which you can read up in my reviews of those games was there. Maybe less is actually more, sometimes – or rather "more" is better left to competent developers...

Like with the other two: overall the games are great of course, true classics, but, alas, there are some terrible things marring the experience. In this one it's the Assassin achievement with the horribly implemented stealth kill mechanic that doesn't work two out of three times. Of the 10 times I stealth killed the second guard by now the animation worked correctly A SINGLE TIME – leaving me without a clue whether the animation spazzing out still COUNTS as a stealth kill, of course! Then afterwards the bartender sometimes spots you, sometimes you can get past. Finally, adding insult to injury, you have to let the guards slowly shoot you to death to reset the mission (at least there is a checkpoint system in this one mercifully).Truly this is the most horrible experience I had in any of the 3s games, beating even flying a plane with the mouse in Vice City (until I found out there ARE keys for it too, at the very last moment...). Sure, after some 50 attempts and like 90 minutes of frustration I got through now, but how? By following an exact path of positioning and actions, and that is as far removed from a sandbox game as I can possibly imagine. (Side note: of course we all know that every other mission in the fifth game is like that... which is why I never even finished that turd).

I had to cheese the Burglar ♥♥♥♥ too by just robbing two things from a house and entering a different one to respawn those two things and repeat because the way you are actually supposed to do it is cumbersome beyond belief (grabbing things only works when it wants to work...) and basically not worth anyone's time. Or what about the treadmill... I get on, then I fall off. The game doesn't even tell me (after the first time) what key I have to press in order to run! There were little bars in the original explaining these minigames which they TOOK OUT! Stamina sure seems to take a lot of time to go up, when at the same time you can go halfway to the muscle maximum in three or four training sessions. The vehicle schools are a crapshoot, where sometimes you have to turn the frame limiter, or turn it off, so that you can eventually get that one lucky try. There should never have been a 100% requirement for Gold, 90% would have been just right! Even so, the rewards are mostly useless... vehicle spawns in ONE location. Do you know how big the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game map is?!? Only the Hunter is a good reward cause it makes Vigilante POSSIBLE (next to impossible without it, just like it was in the other games). Oh and gang warfare was a joke in the original, but here you are WIPED OUT in phase 3 in less than 2 seconds with health and shield both at 150!!! I was supposed to be able this to raise my weapon skills, but that simply is no longer possible here! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage!

Things like these show that testing clearly was not done before releasing these remasters, tons of bugs were added while no grievances were lessened or removed, and that's completely unacceptable, after all there was no reason to re-release these games with just some improved graphical effects to begin with – there's TONS of console-only spinoff games a PC player can't even play to this day, they should have ported those instead!

PS: oh and the sheer idiocy of replacing 10 rewards for 10 hidden packets each with one ♥♥♥♥♥♥ reward (GTA 3 was the only one who got it right, giving you the weapon spawns in EVERY hideout, not just in ONE) for spraying 100 (!) tags has to be mentioned here! As is the fact they still don't give you the thing you need the most... armour. And neither do the other collectibles. Major downer there. And I can't even imagine getting them all without a guide... makes you wonder what they were thinking, if at all... the snapshots are literally INVISIBLE, LOLOL

PPS: With Rockstar's unacceptable anti-mod attitude nobody should buy their games at all, obviously. I for one will not re-buy 4 and 5 on Steam (it helps that they both sucked, of course).

This has the worst interface of any visual novel I've ever played. Absolutely no sense of actually being in control of the game. When you click on the coloured words sometimes a little window pops up, other times... it doesn't. And why can't I see the entire scene to be examined at once instead of that horrible zoomed in view (probably because this was multi-platform... LOL)! And to top it off, the way any new text appears is very unappealing (even after turning the horrendous wavering effects off... wow, one a whooping TWO options in the menu)! You literally cannot decide whether you want to continue the previous game OR start a new one (which you likely might have to as there are branching achievement paths and NO SAVE SLOTS) – that option is hidden (!) in the load/save menu accessible only after you indeed continue. What the hell were they thinking! Next time use that same software all other visual novels use, look it up damn it!

The deductions quickly got on my nerves to the point I was just combining anything with anything else (I did like that they put custom messages for almost all of those possibilities in!), still not succeeding and having to look up the actual solution on Youtube. Pfff

Other than that, it was a pretty decent Ace Attorney trilogy clone with its own little atmosphere (if none of the humour of that game). But episode 3 got cancelled, so the story doesn't have a conclusion and there's really NO reason for anybody to buy this now.

the basic idea is ok but the gameplay clearly hasn't been tested for longer than a few attempts take. the gravity is waaay too much. makes your hand hurt quickly. hell, there isn't even a windowed mode! special credit for the all-icons interface... and yes, I mean THAT kind of special (in other words, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ horrible... give me TEXT or give me death!)

it should be possible to get all achievements, but don't rush it. do 2 or 3 attempts every session and you'll get there (like I will)

No free saving, that's a thumb down.

My original review might have been deleted, I'm not sure. Anyway, two achievements (not killing anyone and not setting off any alarms during the entire game) are a) stealthy (in other words, you don't have any way to know whether you've failed already during your current playthrough) and b) heavily bugged c) on top of that, you're not told the actual rules anywhere in the game... granted, the latter one unfortunately IS a Steam feature, as manuals (physical or otherwise) are no longer a thing solely because of Valve.

If you are playing Steam games for achievements like I am, you recognise why that constitutes an automatic thumb down completely independent of the game's other merits, shortcomings and flaws.

At first it was a pretty decent sequel to HR, but now it got some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Cloud synchronisation failure and will crash every time during the SEVEN INTROS before it even reaches the menu.

EDIT: works again now but the sheer idiocy of making taking cover and the sniper rifle zoom the SAME KEY (which essentially prevents you from shooting whenever you're near cover) deserves an immovable thumb down. I know this game was designed for consoles (which is by itself a thumb down), which do not have as many keys as a keyboard has... but hell, even the NES (!) would have been able to handle that situation! And this still crashes more than any other Steam game I've ever played other than that one version of Bioshock (1 or 2? I forgot),

PS: Your roleplaying options are also severely limited in this one. E.g. I literally WANTED to talk to the psychologist about my past – couldn't do it. What I got however was three ways of saying I want to minimise bloodshed... ♥♥♥♥ that. I think even that pile of trash I*******e W*r gave you more freedom in the roleplaying department... oh, and just like in the previous one, you can kill to your heart's regard, and almost never will have the game react to it. I was solving a crime with the cop that's just before retirement... after I had killed dozens of cops in the open. Yeah...

Some of the sidequests feel really tacked on as they have literally nothing to do with either your character or the main plot – AND you can't handle them like you want (e.g. I wanted the forger to forge a pass for me, or the drug producers to give me a cut – not possible).

Oh, and once again, you cannot save at will. Can't tell you without cursing how big of a problem that is. Or was it your cursing that is not saved? Oh, no, that's Steam... never forget how it single-handedly erased the concept of owning PC video games, by the way... it's so apt to mention that little tidbit on the review of a Deus Ex game. APT!

This is also thoroughly filled with bad gameplay mechanics. For example, you can PICK UP enemy turrets and throw them around, but alas, that doesn't allow you to disable them like in Portal! Better hope you toss that three-pointer (or something, I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to American garbage sports...), or you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ – because EMP is useless in this one! The best you can hope is a temporary disable... and oh, frag grenades are HARD to come by in this one! There should be a grenade launcher, but after 90% of the game I haven't found it, so ♥♥♥♥ it. And TWO (!) games into it, I still haven't quite figured out the hacking ♥♥♥♥ minigame...! This and more keep adding up to the fact you die and die and die and DIE DIE DIE DIE, and not because the game is especially hard or anything (I had no problem beating the original DX, for example, on Realistic even before Steam), no, just because of the bad mechanics! The game developers wanted you to sneak, but I've got ZERO interest in that... when I play a shooter (!), I clean the map as a matter of principle! On the plus side, you can kill a lot of civilians in this one, that's always a gooden.

Shame how much work went into this product, as the setting (in contrast to the story and characters... by the way, boy, did they try overly hard to tie this one to the original in some spots!) is once again top-notch, and, just like Human Revolutions was, a not-too-unlikely vision of our actual upcoming reality some twenty or thirty years into the future (unless global warming and its consequences stop all technological advancement before that timeframe, of course. We can only hope... we can only hope.).

EDIT: PS: On my second playthrough, the game crashed but a single time! My guess is that some flag got set in some really wrong way early on on my first playthrough, but that's just a guess. Needless to say, the game is a LOT more playable when it doesn't crash all the time! Obviously I also got a lot better at the game the second time around, so the dying problem was greatly mitigated as well (I found out about the +health and +armour augs and the fact robots can be killed a lot easier with bullets than in the original game). I up my rating to sideways thumb, which, alas, Steam doesn't allow. But I'd say go pick it up on a heavy discount so we eventually get the sequel that fills the blanks between this one and the original game.

PPS: Third playthrough, crashes are back hard. Also, the Breach mode idiotically requires connection to servers that are now down (permanently?). Forget what I said above, this is a hard thumb down, do not buy this!

You don't have to eat. In fact you can't cook anything until you upgrade your house (which probably requires a TON of wood). You don't have to feed your pet. You can't even pet your pet! There's no inspection key so unless you draw a map of what you planted, good luck figuring it out. You run out of energy all the time and for some reason, only in MULTIPLAYER can you recover energy in the bed during the day. What the ♥♥♥♥ is up with that!?!

90% of the game's information is only available from the wiki (e.g. favoured gifts).

A good third of the game consists of going to places, always unnerved by the ticking clock. Last time I played I couldn't turn a quest in with the Mayor because it took me an HOUR to walk from the mine to his mansion. I still arrived at 10 p.m... but the mansion (open until TEN PEE AM) was locked!!! Not much lost though as quest bounties SUCK anyway, at a couple of hundreds of gold each. Oh and what a great reward for turning 5 things in in the museum... some packs of seeds worth less than 500 gold.

For a sandbox game, there is surprisingly little to do here. You don't have to tend to your crops in any way other than watering them – no removing overgrowing weeds (even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Cookie Clicker has that feature!), no fighting pests other than crows (you have scarecrow right from the beginning, so they sure don't matter). What did the game even give me a cat for? There's nothing it could even theoretically do as there are no rodents. Speaking of animals, you can have rabbits that give you... a rabbit's foot... wait, what? But you can't slaughter or breed them? You can't breed RABBITS? LOL. It's even funnier with pigs, which give you... truffles. But no meat or other pork products. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ soy-infested joke!

NPCs. Oh, boy. The ultimate downfall of this game. So you can talk to them, and they give you generic FF-style answers, two times. And you can give them gifts (after you looked up in the wiki which ones they like). That's the extent of NPC interaction you can have in this game. Now I'm certainly no Sims fan, but even I am aware Sims 1 had ten times (no joke) more things you could do with/to NPCs, in the year TWO THOUSAND. Sure, (a lot of gifts) later you can marry one, even have a baby that never grows up (I wish I was making this ♥♥♥♥ up)... like I said, Sim(pson)s did it already... but all NPCs of this game combined don't have an ounce of personality (other than maybe the hobo). Next time, have less NPCs but flesh them out more, seriously!!!

This game is literally advertised as a life sim. Let that go through your head for a while. What a joke. Each and every feature this has has been done way better in a different game. This is no sim of anything, as it lacks the basic concept needed... needs!!! In Stardew Valley, you can just let the clock run out (and it does so ridiculously quick), there's no way to fail or die.

This game doesn't even have to be in real time... other than fighting monsters (on that thought, this game's controls are really not very good and as far as I can tell you can't play solely with the keyboard in an effective way), everything could be done in a browser game/turn-based form.

The setting and writing is just banal. Evil mega-corporation, yawn. Geezer complaining about them whippersnappers, check. There's even some fantasy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like a wizard and dwarves in the pile to curbstomp the last shred of realism. All flaws could be forgiven (!) if the tone of the game wasn't the most generic imaginable.

So who's the target audience? People that like Sim-like games but never have played the Sims? Farmville (not that I would know what that is, I just know the name...) veterans? Everybody knows the emperor is delivered new clothes daily, but 570000 reviews and an Overwhelmingly Positive? Have you all really never played another game that did anything presented here much much better? Not even one? Now that's just... sad. Nothing here is new, nothing here is above average, and oh so many features that are to be expected are blatantly missing... it's not the worst game ever, but damn, people, this is so mediocre I'm not even having any fun writing this review!

PS: it took me four attempts to get past day 10, with years (!) between tries. So no, I don't expect this to "grow on me" anymore.

The tainted characters range from horrible (Eve, Jacob) to unplayable (Lazarus, Lost, Keeper because of the asinine 2 heart limit when the original has perfectly balanced 3) with few exceptions (Judas is fun and his dodge should be a core mechanic, Cain has potential to be fun), and most importantly, less than FIVE PERCENT of their unlocks are good. Jacob and Esau are UNPLAYABLE. The mother fight is an abomination that's 10 times harder to get through than any other boss in the game – you wanna win, better have the damage. The beast fight is marred by the idiotic Dogma (which shouldn't even be a thing) stage II with the next to undodgeable quick appearance pattern that he repeats five times, UNLESS you're lucky and he doesn't do it at all (just what this game needed, more RNG). Literally EVERYTHING that sucks (except for the fact that you don't ALWAYS start next to a treasure room and have to R 1 to 20 times, wasting your time with this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥) about this game was added in this failed expansion... you're better off without it (but then again one is better off without this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game in the first place, and if I'll ever finish it, I'll do only so to metaphorically and personally spit into McMillen's face).