Every August I get into a gaming funk. Since it happens every year I don’t get too worried about it and at the end of August a good game always picks me up out of it. For the last two years that game has been Arkham Asylum, once on 360 and then on PS3 because I’m strange like that.
This year however the perfect game was going to be Deus Ex. Nice deep storyline, plenty of stealth action and I’ll all be set for Driver, Space Marine and then Gears of War(the next few weeks of releases).
I started playing and it was sort of going OK. The music is outstanding and the graphics although a tad dated have a nice design that works so I started off with a stealth play through on the hardest difficulty level. When you don’t plan on fighting difficulty doesn’t matter right? After an hour I ditched that play through because of the glacial load times whenever I made a slight mistake and the fact that I wasn’t getting any younger.
I decided that a quick play through all guns blazing was what I needed and this was going great up until the first boss battle. Which was awful, but a quick delivery of lots of lead soon got me past that and I was back in the nice world exploring away collecting eBooks like there’s no tomorrow. I do love a good collection mechanic, it fits with my play style of really exploring areas.
Then I hit the second boss. Before that room there is a storage room with a heavy rifle and the biggest stack of ammo I’ve seen in the game so far, and since this is one of the key indicators of lazy boss syndrome I was a little apprehensive as I entered The Boss Room. Where I promptly died. Again and again. Turns out I didn’t have the right weapons to beat her easily, the right augmentations to negate her damage and the videos on youtube showing how to beat her in my situation are edited down to 15 minutes and very, very boring. It’s a classic fight against somebody who just takes lot of killing and running away from their attacks until they need to recharge and with my character and equipment I am, experienced game player that I am, I’m unable to progress. I just haven’t needed the extra damage resistance up until this point, I wasn’t getting shot much because I was sneaking and being clever but put me in a room and I can’t win. I really don’t want to replay the last few hours in order to get to that point again but this time bring the right gun and better abilities as I know it’ll just pull the same trick with the next boss fight as well. It has destroyed any good feelings I have for the game and such an obviously bad design decision as to add unskippable boss fights into a game has ruined the game for me. On top of that I’m not sure I could be bothered to do the sneaking play through now anyway as it forces you to fight so I’ll be in an even worse situation if you are purely skilling up for the non-lethal play through (the achievement/trophy for which of course specifically excludes the boss fight kills).
Now all this is made worse by my summer gaming funk of course but I’m increasingly losing patience with games with obviously bad design decisions in them. I don’t mind boss fights in a game like Gears of War, they fit there and what would god of war be without the chances to make you feel like a god (new rule, “of war” games are still allowed boss fights), but when every single review says that the game shouldn’t have boss fights you know somebody screwed up the design somewhere. The otherwise excellent Arkham Asylum nearly ruins itself at the end by having the most brain dead, out of context for the IP boss fight imaginable. A boss fight against the Joker, who has been on the bane juice? What idiot came up with that?
I then decided to play a game I know I like, so started through the DLC for Enslaved. I’m right at the end and it’s making me fight waves of enemies in a way counter to the sneaking of the rest of the levels in the DLC. Again they have taken what I was enjoying and switched on me because heaven forbid you actually complete a game without shooting loads of things. Lots of games do this now, boss fights by another name where they use waves of enemies in a locked area that you have to fight off to continue and I hate that as well. I quit playing that too as I was beginning to lose my will to live, and considering a license system for games designers that I could revoke the moment they decided that they didn’t know what to do next so just throw in a locked room fight.
The worrying part is the fact that I suspect that it’s me that’s wrong and actually all that’s happening is that I’m losing the desire to play most games. I do hope I get it back soon or I’ll be down to just being left with driving games. Until they start adding boss fights to them of course.
6 comments
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Rinvan
August 30, 2011 at 6:38 pm (UTC 0)
Yes August is a sort of wasteland for games, just like it is for movies. That is too bad about Deus Ex, the first game in the series was very very good. At least November is looking good, I can finally dust off my Nintendo Wii after 3 years & play the new Zelda game.
Bel Amar
August 30, 2011 at 8:37 pm (UTC 0)
I managed to beat all of the Deux Ex boss’s (well, except the final one which I haven’t yet reached) fully stealth and hacking spec’d without dermal armour etc. They did shit me to tears and had me ready to chuck the game out the window for spoiling what had otherwise been a really good gaming experience, but getting past them was essential so I stuck with it.
The second boss I beat just using the stun gun and a fully modified 10mm pistol. In short, I’d move around slowly with the stun gun until I could see her invisible form in the distance, then try to keep my eyes on her, when she came at me, I’d hit her with the stun gun, then quickly pull out the pistol and put a few rounds in her. Run away, then rinse and repeat. Annoying, but I didn’t have to worry about breaking the power conduits and filling the water with electricity etc
The third one, which you haven’t yet reached can be achieved by carrying a hacked turret in to the room and then gas grenading the boss. Cheap, nasty, annoying and immersion breaking, but it got me past the guy…
Jon Shute
August 30, 2011 at 9:15 pm (UTC 0)
It’s that stun gun that apparently makes the boss easier to beat.. Of course I don’t have one and can’t find one close at hand…
Yeebo
September 3, 2011 at 12:58 am (UTC 0)
I can only hope that at some point a mod will be released that alters or removes the boss battles. Everyone from professional critics to random bloggers seem to agree that the boss battles are completely out of place and a glaring flaw in an otherwise exceptional game. I personally have decided to hold off on buying it until something like that is available (if ever).
Blue Kae
September 8, 2011 at 12:30 am (UTC 0)
I’d given up at the first boss battle, it was just too jarring of a change from the gameplay up until that point. There’s a mod now to enable debug mode (basically cheat), so I may go back and finish the game using that to just bypass the boss battles only. I’m thinking of it as not cheating so much as editing Eidos’ rough draft.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/05/augment-your-experience-dxhr-debug-mod/
Jon Shute
September 8, 2011 at 10:39 am (UTC 0)
It’s a shame that will never make it to the 360 version.
Giving up on Deus Ex: Human Revolution. | Blue Kae
September 1, 2011 at 4:01 pm (UTC 0)
[...] difficulty down a notch (I’ve been playing on the middle/normal setting). But after reading Jon’s experiences with the game at howtomurdertime.com, I don’t think I’ll bother. Tags: deux ex, pc [...]