Blog - deus ex | bit-tech.net

Listen: Season Three of Unlimited Hyperbole

Posted on 24th Oct 2012 at 07:06 by Joe Martin with 77 comments

It's been a long time coming but Season Three of my ultra-short and ultra-edited games podcast, Unlimited Hyperbole, has now launched. In keeping with tradition, Simon's been kind enough to let me tell you about the first episode and force the show onto your earballs.

As those of you who've listened previously will know, Unlimited Hyperbole takes a different approach to most other podcasts. It uses a pre-determined theme to guide discussion with a new special guest for each episode, then edits those discussions down to a focused 15 minute show.

The incompetent thief

Posted on 4th Sep 2012 at 07:22 by David Hing with 26 comments

When Adam Jensen's first act as a freshly augmented trans-human super-spy was to nonchalantly squat-walk into the storage area of a building site and knock over a pile of construction supplies, alerting the nearby patrolling guards to his location, I realised I'd been here before.

As he hopped around with one foot lodged in a bucket proclaiming "I never asked for this" at the bemused mercenary who had come to investigate, the pattern unravelled itself before my eyes. In every game that gives me the chance, I always end up playing the stealthy option. Badly.

Gaming 32 - Deus Examined

Posted on 1st Sep 2011 at 10:54 by Podcast with 5 comments

Joe and Paul are joined by Black Library and Deus Ex: Human Revolution author James Swallow and BBC Radio's Adam Rosser.

As you would expect from a podcast featuring this particular group of jibber-jabberers, the discussion is dominated by our thoughts on the latest Deus Ex game. However, we also find time to chat about what proved to be Joe's Gamescom highlight, Dishonored. Joe also tells us about Dragon Commander - a crazy game that fuses flight sim, RPG and strategy elements, which he also saw out in Germany.

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Desert Island Games

Posted on 23rd Apr 2010 at 09:37 by Joe Martin with 69 comments

This blogpost wasn’t my idea, it’s pretty blatantly spun out of the Desert Island Disks forum thread, but I wanted to talk about it some more.

The idea is simple – if you were going into seclusion and you could only take five games with you, which games would you take and why? Read my choices and justifications below, then let me know your own thoughts in the forums.

Thoughts on Difficulty Settings

Posted on 22nd Apr 2010 at 10:42 by Joe Martin with 72 comments

I may as well start off by saying that I don’t usually like my games to be too difficult and that, if I’m sitting down to play a game for my own enjoyment, I’ll almost never, ever put it on Hard difficulty. In fact, I’m more likely to play it on Easy.

There’s a lot of people who’ll baulk at that; the type of people who label themselves as ‘hardcore’ gamers with an inflated sense of pride and dismiss the majority of titles as ‘baby-games’, most likely. Despite what they think though, I think my reasons for opting for a lesser difficulty are pretty good ones.

It comes down to a matter of taste and what you’re looking for – and what I usually look for in the games I play at home is a good story and the chance to have some fun. Sticking the game on maximum difficulty is something that’s more likely to get in the way of that than facilitate it and the worst fear I have with any new game is that I’ll play it on Hard, love the story, reach an impassable boss and then get stuck. In that situation I’d be more likely to put the game down and move on than to replay on a lower skill setting – and I’d hate to miss out on a tale I’d otherwise enjoy.

Games I Own: Deus Ex 2

Posted on 21st Oct 2009 at 12:46 by Joe Martin with 9 comments

Deus Ex 2: Invisible War is a game which gets a bad rap whenever you see it discussed among PC gamers, who inevitably love the first game and loathe the sequel. To be honest though, I never thought it was half as bad as anyone was making out. If approached with reasonable rationality and not the more obvious optimism, the game actually held up quite well.

Yes, Invisible War had issues. It obviously suffered from attempts to bring the series to consoles. The tiny, insular and empty levels. The universal ammo system. The constant load times and clunky, overly rounded feel of the engine – these were all issues that dogged the game and deservedly so, but slamming Deus Ex 2 for not living up to the legend of it’s predecessor is easier than fist-fighting with a one-armed toddler.

Instead, I prefer to think of the good things about Deus Ex 2 – the things it did better than the original. Believe me, they’re there.

I'm Only Stupid Because I Know Too Much

Posted on 8th Oct 2009 at 12:09 by Joe Martin with 17 comments

I was playing Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box yesterday (in the course of writing the review) when I had a moment of utter brain failure. It’s embarrassing to even admit it, that’s how stupid it was of me.

The question was; if you have a rectangular piece of paper and fold it so that there’s an extra centimetre on one side and then you fold it the other way with a centimetre extra on the other end, then how far in millimetres would it be between the two creases when the paper is unfolded?

It’s a simple, easy question and the game gave me three spaces to write a number into. I quickly scribbled my answer down; 100mm and was told that was incorrect. Baffled, I got a piece of paper out and tried it out – measuring the gap as one centimetre. Again I put my answer in. Again; incorrect. It was only on the third go that I slapped my face and realised that there were only 10 millimetres in a centimetre – not 100. I was being a moron and had been led astray by the fact that the game gave you three spaces to put an answer in, not two. I’m an idiot.

That then got me thinking (as best as I was able anyway) about how my brain is stuffed with useless information that I use everyday and all the actual useful stuff that I never need to know has trickled away over the years. It’s ironic and twisted, but I can get more use out of game memory than I’d ever get from remembering how to do trigonometry properly.

What I learned from Deus Ex

Posted on 2nd Mar 2009 at 14:16 by Joe Martin with 37 comments

“What did I learn from Deus Ex?” someone asked me on the forums the other week. My answer? Tonnes.

The things that Warren Spector’s seminal FPS/RPG taught me can be broadly divided into three things; things it taught me about games, the world and myself. The very fact that I can definitely point to Deus Ex as something educational says an awful lot about the depth of the game itself and about how much I love it, by the way. When it comes to Deus Ex I’m fully willing to admit to being a totally biased fanboy.

Deus Ex taught me more about computer games than almost any game I’ve ever played and a huge amount of that is owed to the structured non-linearity of the game. If you’ve not played it (and I’ll accept no excuses) then you should know that although Deus Ex is a very linear game, it’s also very freeform. The storyline is best described as elastic as, although you’ll always go through the same levels in the same order, their content can differ hugely.

My favourite part of the game is the New York hotel your brother stays in, The ‘Ton.

Games I Own: The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain

Posted on 16th Feb 2009 at 15:09 by Joe Martin with 11 comments

The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain is a game I should be ashamed of owning, but I’m not. You know why? Because it’s an enshrinement to my life as a gamer and it’s damned fun, that’s why.

Produced by Sierra Entertainment back in 1994, this was one of the games which came with my family's first PC. It was one of the dividing lines that marked my move from an Amiga user to PC gamer.

Apparently the third game in the series, the story revolves around the titular Dr. Brain, who manages to swap his brain with his lab rat. It’s up to you, at the direction of his rather useless niece, to restore the good Doctor’s intelligence – done mainly be solving strings of puzzles in one of ten different areas of his brain.

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Archive for the ‘deus ex’ tag

Listen: Season Three of Unlimited Hyperbole

The incompetent thief

Gaming 32 - Deus Examined

Desert Island Games

Thoughts on Difficulty Settings

Games I Own: Deus Ex 2

I'm Only Stupid Because I Know Too Much

What I learned from Deus Ex

Games I Own: The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain

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