I hate my cousins.

[WarLocke]

My aunt recently bought a computer, and had Uncle Johnny fix it up/refit it for her. While he was there he apparently left her kids several games for use on this computer.

I didn't know this until I decided to hang out over there yesterday. As I walked in I caught Casey installing Unreal Tournament on said computer.

He had left the following games:

UT
Thief II (!)
Deus Ex (!!)
Star Ocean (!!! ... Oh dang, the Playstation version)

Let me tell you; it is surreal watching your 14-year-old cousin blowing people away in UT and shrieking at all the blood and gore. :blink:

But anyway, Casey let me "borrow" Deus Ex, so now I get to see what all the fuss is about. B)

- WL

[[wcip]Angel]

My aunt recently bought a computer, and had Uncle Johnny fix it up/refit it for her.  While he was there he apparently left her kids several games for use on this computer.

I didn't know this until I decided to hang out over there yesterday.  As I walked in I caught Casey installing Unreal Tournament on said computer.

He had left the following games:

UT
Thief II (!)
Deus Ex (!!)
Star Ocean (!!! ... Oh dang, the Playstation version)

Let me tell you; it is surreal watching your 14-year-old cousin blowing people away in UT and shrieking at all the blood and gore.  :blink:

But anyway, Casey let me "borrow" Deus Ex, so now I get to see what all the fuss is about.  B)

- WL

So you've never played the best game ever before?

You're in for a treat, if you can overlook the apparent graphical drawbacks..

[WarLocke]

Nope, never played it. I've heard good things about it, though.

I haven't played Thief II, either (think I played a demo of the first a long, long time ago) and want to try it as well, but I figured asking to borrow two games would be a bit greedy. <_<

- WL

[[wcip]Angel]

The Thief-series was a fantatic idea but was sadly ruined by dinsorasus/undead corpses/giant spiders. I never even finished the first game, I was so disappointed the first time I saw a dinosaur underneath a castle.. :(

[TaiDaishar]

I hardly reached half of the Thief 2 campaign but I liked it (I think I got distracted by Diablo 2 or something...), the zombies weren't something I disliked in the game, I felt it added some mystical/magical feeling into the game... besides, they were unbeatable :)

I certeinly liked the zombies over those dumb robots (god I hate robots...)

[[wcip]Angel]

Dinosaurs in Thief is as ridiculous as Uber Soldats in Wolfenstein II

[WarLocke]

Deus Ex so rocks.

I started a game (on Easy, I'm a wuss) and upgrade Computers, Electroics, and Lockpicking to Trained as my first options. I'm a sneaky ninja hacker. :ph34r:

Taking out UNS terrorists is so cool. I've tranq-darted tons, shot others in the head with my pistol, even snuck up on a couple, giving them a dose of pepper-spray to the face, and then sticking my combat knife in their eye. Then I loot the bodies and dump them where noone will see them. :lol:

Too bad there's no automatic zoom feature to help with aiming (for headshots especially); I found an NPC willing to sell me a scope, but I don't have the 700 creds he wants. <_<

So far it's a very, very cool game.

- WL

[[wcip]Angel]

You shouldn't kill people on the first mission. Your older
brother will be very cross with you :)

Deus Ex's greatest selling point is its replayability. I
played through the game 9 times start to finish and
each time I discovered something new or did something
different. You have a vast amount of choices on how
you want to do things in Deus Ex, which in turn leads to
many differing paths to take.

Choice = good
Linearity = horrible

Linearity killed Max Payne. It was fun to play through
for the first time, but my second run was excruciatingly
boring.

[Feryar]

Just make sure you are really going to use a weapon before you start spending mods on it :)
There's a lot of weapons in the game, and with the small inventory you can't carry it all.

HF with Deus Ex, it's a great game!
I think I've played it through 3-4 times and solved most of the problems different each time.

[[wcip]Angel]

..

[Feryar]

I Should have remembered that this isn't a FPS community.
(First Person Shooter ;))

[Bolty]

Just remember to be yourself, or roleplay a personality, whatever you prefer.

You will be required to make a number of split-second decisions in the game that will have impact - decisions that you have less than 5 seconds to make or they're made for you (or worse).

Pick them, and keep playing. And when you're all done, start the game over and try some different decisions. Deus Ex always surprises me by the number of CHOICES you have throughout!

-Bolty

[[wcip]Angel]

If Deus Ex II is half as good as Deus Ex I'll run around naked screeaming with joy!

Bolty. Did you know that you could delay killing Mr Bad (Not -the- Bad, but mechanicly-Bad) till the very last level? (the one beginning with you being sniped from a tower)

[WarBlade]

Let me tell you; it is surreal watching your 14-year-old cousin blowing people away in UT and shrieking at all the blood and gore.&nbsp; :blink:

Shrieking? At UT's blood and gore level??? :blink:

Now you can inform your cousin of of the beauty of UT's modding system and the ease at which new game types can emerge by downloading mutators the size of a TT font download. :D For ramping up the blood and gore, try Bloodtrails and Decals Stay. Blood Trails makes wounded players/bots leave bloody footprints everywhere and Decals Stay makes stops the blood and bulletholes from disappearing (great for small maps and a high player count if your machine can handle it) :D .

Another visera manipulating mutator springs to mind. Hamburger is a humourous little mutator that when running causes any Nali Warcows in the game to drop several hamburgers as they die. You basically just kill them and are rewarded with a little visual treat of something like 3 or 4 burgers bouncing amid the mess. :D

[WarLocke]

Just remember to be yourself, or roleplay a personality, whatever you prefer.

Yeah, I restarted and cleaned the NSF guys out of the Statue without any fatalities. The three-man group right outside Gunther's cell was a pain, since I didn't want to let them set off the alarm (so I hacked the alarm button, hehe).

I'm still playing a super-sneaky 007 ninja hacker, but I'm going to try to keep from killing unless I have to. Of course, now I have something like 80 rounds of 10mm ammo to waste...

Also have a shotgun and sniper rifle, but I think I'll be dropping those soon. Along with my baton/crossbow/pistol, my tools (medkit/tool/lockpicks) and other assorted junk (5 or 6 upgrade kits, a hazmat suit, binocs, flares, etc), I literally have no room in my inventory.

Oh well, time to head into the UN building and see what's up next.

You will be required to make a number of split-second decisions in the game that will have impact - decisions that you have less than 5 seconds to make or they're made for you (or worse).

... Aww crap.

- WL

EDIT: I also have a pepper spray gun/canister thing. Is it just me, or does it just not do anything? I spray people point-blank and it does nada. Bah.

[[wcip]Angel]

Max out handguns, use a crossbow with tranq darts modified with a scope, and you're settles for life ;)

(well, except for later when you need heavy artillery to take out the bots :P )

[WarLocke]

Oh geez, how am I supposed to max out Handguns? To go from Trained to Skilled is something like 3600 experience. Sheesh.

And what about the stealth pistol? It's a silly name, but the quartermaster gave me one and it seems pretty darn neat. Mount a scope and accuracy booster, and its inherent silencer makes it deadly cool. Course, you kind of have to go for headshots with it...

- WL

[SwissMercenary]

I hope you have fun with these games... Thief 2, and Deus Ex are just amazing.

Deus Ex: You don't even have to put off the murder of Mr. Bad guy to the last level. You can just run past him. At some point, he will get bored, and will go away :) In any case, I always skip the first fight with him - his second speech is great :)

Deus Ex has, and can be completed without killing anyone. You can even avoid killing the first "Mini-boss" with some creative teargas positioning ;)

For the first playthrough, though, you should not be afraid to use your more damaging weapons. The guards have ridicilously short attention spans.

Regarding your inventory:

Keep the tranquiliser. You are going to need it at a few points in the game :)

The shotgun: It's a nice tool for the first part of the game. I prefer the assault shotgun/rifle. (The assault shotgun will take some time to aqquire.)

The heavy weapons: Don't use em.

The sniper rifle: If you are going to put points in rifles, use this. Otherwise, get a GEP gun in it's place.

Grenades: Keep them all.

Hazmats, Ballistic vests, Flares, Pepper spray, shock prod - nearly useless (If you pick the right augmentations...)

If you really choose the stealth route, keep the sniper rifle, and take a GEP instead of the assault weapons. These two toys will make your life a lot easier...

Melee weapons: You only need one melee weapon. If you choose stealth, get the baton, and the shock prod. Otherwise, use a crowbar.

The standard pistol: Loud, and not very accurate. If you are going for stealth, upgrade the sniper rifle instead. Tranq + sniper is what you will need.

Regarding the pepper spray: It doesn't KO people. You spray them, and hit them in the back with the baton. It can also be sprayed on some security lasers. Move through them, while spraying, and they won't detect you (Stay crouched.)

Regarding Thief:

The first Thief did have a tad too many undead/burrucks/magical creatures. However, in Thief 1, you are a force of order, fighting Chaos. The creatures also add a great feel to the medival, magical timeline.

Thief 2 has mostly human guards, about 5 spiders, and a few undead here, and there. Did I mention the robots? You are a force of Chaos, balancing Order. (This Keeper stuff gets to you at some point :))

Overall, I prefer Thief 2. The undead are just too creepy for me...

[Feryar]

Personally I'd rather put a silencer on the handgun and throw away the stealth gun, and I would for sure keep the sniper rifle. For melee weapons I don't think it will matter much what you choose... chances are you will find something much better later ;)

The prod is excellent if you don't want to kill anyone, it's my weapon of choice untill about halfway through the game, when my favorite Deus Ex weapon appear.

I never bothered with dragging a GEP around, but if you do carry one it can make a lot of the fights easier.

[WarLocke]

Update: I just finished the Castle Clinton/Subway Hostage mission, and am off to meet Paul. I'm using the following weapons:

Sniper Rifle (w/Laser Sight, Clip, and Accuracy mods)
Minicrossbow (w/Scope and Accuracy mods)
Baton (pretty much only for breaking crates)

I have both a Pistol and Stealth Pistol, but haven't modded either. I don't know which to keep. The Pistol does more damage (almost always a gauranteed headshot kill) but can't be fitted with a silencer. The Stealth Pistol has a silencer and a larger clip, but does less damage. Argh.

For expendables, I have one of those PS20 plasma one-shot guns, 4 gas grenades, 2 EMP grenades, 1 LAM, and 3 Throwing Knives.

I kept the Pepper Spray since I have something like 234 cartridges for it, although I haven't been able to try the "shortcircuit the laser sensors" trick with it.

I also picked up a Sawed-Off Shotgun since I have nearly 50 buckshot shells, and it's deadly up close, but it's much too large to keep around if I also want the sniper rifle (7 slots for the 2 guns...).

The NSF guys in the subway station were fun; I crawled around through the ventilation ducts and tranqed one, then would crawl to another grille and tranq another while they were looking for me. :D

- WL