Greetings fellow earthlings. I have recently returned from the near future. I have tidings…
Yeah, I’m 50 years old. Yeah, I’m a gamer. So what? You got a problem with me wasting my life away clicking my mouse and blowing away bad guys on my monitor? You should try it sometime. It’s cathartic, and I mean that in the emotionally purging way.
So, back a few years ago there was a game called Deus Ex. It was a dystopian fun-fest of the 1st order. I had played PC games before; Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 2, etc., but this game was eons beyond those. Not only were the graphics greatly improved, but the immersive quality of the storyline and game play were astounding. Deus Ex became my all-time favorite PC game, then along came the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, but that’s another story for another time.
Everyone knew there would be a sequel to Deus Ex, so the wait was on. A few years after the initial release, we were presented with Deus Ex: Invisible War. It wasn’t bad, but it was, as are most sequels, not as good as the first Deus. Of course, that’s just this one writer’s opinion. I still have the game and will probably play it again sometime.
Now, here we are… a dozen or so real time years after the release of the original. I’ve spent the last 9 days, about 54 hours of gameplay, experiencing Deus Ex: Human Revolution. My initial feelings? WOW!
And, of course, now the real gamer’s fun comes… I get to play it again on the highest skill level and explore many of the areas and subplots that I missed the first time through. It amazes me still the intricacies of these game worlds created by the amazingly talented young folks who do this stuff for a living… and for fun, I’d bet. There are also game enhancement packs and side stories available for purchase already. Eventually, there will be a horde of community created hacks and mods for this game; years of FUN! Yeah. I should see about getting a life one of these days, I s’pose. 😉
The story line of the Deus Ex series of games is a conspiracy theorist’s petri dish of twisted plots and capitalistic greed. If you’re a Bill Cooper fan or an Illuminati groupie, you’ll love it. Sometimes, the storylines of these games can be quite thought-provoking and disturbing. Deus Ex is no exception to this. It will definitely make you think more about where technology is taking the human race. It’s made me think so much about it the past few days that I’m going to write about it at Nocturnal Slacker v1.0 in just a few minutes. Check it out, if you’re interested.
If I were the Roger Ebert of PC game reviewing, I would definitely give Deus Ex: Human Revolutiion FIVE BIG THUMBS UP! Don’t miss this one, folks! You’ll be impressed.
By the way, I sort of got snookered into purchasing a Steam version of the game on eBay. It was brand new, factory sealed and all that, but requires a Steam account and downloading of the actual game. I was a bit miffed, but the price was right, so I let it slide. I do definitely intend to purchase a full version for myself shortly, though. This is a game I will want to have access to often in the future. As far as Steam goes, I don’t have any complaints at all. Their system is efficient and easy to use. I enjoyed my first Steam experience.
Later…
~Eric
Nocturnal Slacker v2.0 
Great game, I played it a couple of months ago and loved it. After reading your review, I think I may run through the game again.
Thanks
I have other things in life to catch up on, but I’ll definitely be playing through this one again sometime in the next few weeks. 🙂
Gaming is so much fun! And it always feels so good to kill a bunch of baddies and win the day! 🙂 First person shooters are a lot of fun, but the old style side scrollers are good too. Our son loves the strategy games. He went ahead and got an XBox 360 to play since he’s loves it so much. Lots of fun! I haven’t gotten into the gaming consoles as much as I would like. I play more on my computers.
But I will say this, you better have a big unlimited pipe and a fast computer with lots of memory. More than you would need for the games in order to use Steam over the long haul. I have had some clients that have had some serious issues with Steam’s memory footprint and memory leaks. Maybe they just had a lesser computer than was needed, but I was not very impressed personally.
Gaming is definitely fun. It’s a form of escapism/entertainment just as much as books and movies, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like living a movie for some of these games; they’re so well crafted.
As far as performance issues with Steam, As you know, I’m a 99.99% daily Linux user. However, I keep a Win XP Pro SP3 installation on one of my drives just for gaming use. With 4 Gigs RAM, a quad core AMD processor, and 15M/5M FIOS; I experienced no strain at all. I noticed that my processor didn’t get anywhere near as warm with this game as it does when I play S.T.A.L.K.E.R., though. It cooks up pretty good at times playing that game. 😉
Exactly Eric!!! These new FPS games are like playing through a movie. The graphics are insane especially if your able to play on high settings 😉
Indeed! A good graphics card is a must for these type games. 🙂
Awesome! Sounds like your system is pretty darn good. I bet you do get some warm up on some of the games. The visuals are so awesome! Some of the games I can’t even play on my systems. Too slow and not enough ram. But I have tried some of those on other people’s computers at times and they are amazing. Way different from the ones we used to play in the late 80s and even the early to mid 90s, eh?
One of the most highly advanced games I played, graphics-wise, was a game called Far Cry. It came out in ’03 or so, I think, but was a few years ahead of its time. If you ever get a chance to grab a copy,fire it up on your best graphics capable machine. You’ll be astounded. Instead of coding vision out to about 100m, like most games back then, this one coded out past 1Km. It takes place mostly in a tropical island jungle setting. The graphics just left me breathless the first time I fired this one up.
Far Cry –> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_cry
I just realized that Far Cry 2 came out in ’08 and I missed it. Far Cry 3 will be release shortly. AH! So many games, so little time. 😉
Far Cry was definitely ahead of it’s time! I played that on a friend’s computer. Didn’t have a computer with high enough specs to see all the great visuals the way they were intended. But it was breathtaking!
Yeah, Far Cry 2 was a great game!! 🙂
I don’t do games but enjoyed your enthusiasm.
Noticed your system keeping in line with lefty’s second law: Never, NEVER put the cover back, or it won’t work.
HAHA! Yeah. Cluttermagnet over at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux is the designer of the ClutterMaster 2007 –> http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/9138/dscf0004apy7.jpg w/ direct air cooling. His motto is “Open hardware for open software.” I’m a believer in his methods of direct air cooling. 😉