Pros

Highly detailed environments

Large levels with several multiple paths to take advantage of, which explains the load times

Fine performance, minus SSAO, vsync on. The reported mouse sluggishness isn't happening on my system.

Musical cues that are throwbacks to the original game

• Ex: offices in intro set to a revisiting of the Unatco HQ theme

Interactivity on the level of the original game, which rewards exploration:

• passwords and codes written on notes, pdas, in emails
• Unique and often helpful dialog from many bystander NPCs
• number pads for secure items with 4 digit PINs
• eBooks with snippits from articles or novels

AI is refined

• Enemies are quite aware and will run an effective search if they spot you

Cover system works well and familiar to Gears of War fans; i turned on the "toggle cover" option

Experience system tied to a wide array of customizable augmentations

Interface is very PC friendly; doesn't feel like a console-ported interface

Voice acting and dialog is good but not great

Cons

Initial troubles starting the game - fixed by moving/renaming an ati dll in the Windows system folder

Long load times - >30 seconds

Many unskippable logos on startup

My system specs:

• Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz
• 4GB DDR2 800
• GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512 MB
• Installed on WD 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
• Running at 1920x1080, all visual options on except SSAO; I get a solid 60 FPS with occasional stutter. In my opinion this works well with a FOV of 90, which you can set in the in-game options.

Edit: added my system specs

I'm currently playing this game on the 360 with the game installed (6.8Gb) and after an hour of playthrough i have not gotten a 30 seconds load screen, but only around 10 seconds, even though people said it has long load times, even longer on the consoles. So is this something more present further into the game? At this point i don't have any concs for the game, but i'm sure they will come sooner or later, as with every other game. I'm enjoying the game a lot. No technical issues what so ever.

I was thinking about getting this for PC.  What are your system specs, and how is it running on your computer?

I'm currently playing this game on the 360 with the game installed (6.8Gb) and after an hour of playthrough i have not gotten a 30 seconds load screen, but only around 10 seconds, even though people said it has long load times, even longer on the consoles. So is this something more present further into the game? At this point i don't have any concs for the game, but i'm sure they will come sooner or later, as with every other game. I'm enjoying the game a lot. No technical issues what so ever.

Very excited to get home tonight. :D

Looks good so far. Unfortunately I work today, so the game should be waiting for me once I get home.

this time tomorrow it comes out here

I'm kinda excited

I just came in to work, and this will be a long day. I'm already planning in my head how to best take on a room of 4 thugs that repeatedly thwart me.

I'll be installing this on my 360 after hearing about the load times some people are experiencing.

@FritzDude said:

I'm currently playing this game on the 360 with the game installed (6.8Gb) and after an hour of playthrough i have not gotten a 30 seconds load screen, but only around 10 seconds, even though people said it has long load times, even longer on the consoles. So is this something more present further into the game? At this point i don't have any concs for the game, but i'm sure they will come sooner or later, as with every other game. I'm enjoying the game a lot. No technical issues what so ever.

Probably. I've heard the loading starts to be troublesome when you die.

I'm interested in hearing some numbers from an SSD install. This gives me flashbacks of the original version of SiN.

Good to hear that the PC version at least seems solid, had my concerns. Might pick it up after all.

@RoyCampbell said:

@FritzDude said:

I'm currently playing this game on the 360 with the game installed (6.8Gb) and after an hour of playthrough i have not gotten a 30 seconds load screen, but only around 10 seconds, even though people said it has long load times, even longer on the consoles. So is this something more present further into the game? At this point i don't have any concs for the game, but i'm sure they will come sooner or later, as with every other game. I'm enjoying the game a lot. No technical issues what so ever.

Probably. I've heard the loading starts to be troublesome when you die.

Yea this gets annoying. Try not to die.. lol.

woot,  OP your system specs are lower than mine and i was expecting framerate problems on 1920x1080.
 
so the performance is better than the witcher 2?  (i had to lower the resolution on that game to get a stable framerate)

The long loads are peculiar, but this engine apparently is an old one made for consoles..?

I consider my 40gb SSD money well spent tbqh. When Friday comes I'm going for as many Ghost rewards as I can.

Yes it's definitely smoother than Witcher 2. I'm holding off on playing that one until I build a new gaming system.

Anyone running this at max settings? I'm reading about some issues with the vsync capping the game at 30 FPS. Only way to fix it is by enabling triple buffering. Also, I'm hearing the game gets "framey" in certain spots even on high end machines... I'm thinking I'll wait for them to start patching the game before I start playing.

Hmmm, with your specs like that, I guess PC is the way for me.

I just got done playing it on a late 2010 iMac in boot camp. My main PC is undergoing some stuff so I figured I'd try it out on this computer. I have to say it runs really good at 1080x720 without vsync or AA on. I'm super happy with it. I'm actually pretty shocked that it runs good at all seeing as how this is the entry level iMac desktop.There are jaggies all over the place, but I've grown out of being a graphics whore a long time ago.

iMac Specs:

Intel i3 540 @ 3.07GHz

4GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 4670

Lets not judge those load times hard just yet.  Look at the specs.  That is a decent pc, but not high end by any means.  If I get long load times on my pc tonight after work I will definitely post about it.  Then you can be worried ;p.  But somehow I think it will be fine.

The only problem I've had with the game is the skybox. My god is it horrible.

With how revered the original Deus Ex is among gaming communities, I'm very interested in playing this. Hopefully, that Live Quick Look later today (I don't know what time, but I'll be there) will quell my excitement for this game. I have too many games to play right now, and I've learned that as long as it's on Steam, it'll be on sale someday. Someday.

My game keeps fucking crashing

@Arlecchino said:

The only problem I've had with the game is the skybox. My god is it horrible.

Noticed this in the leak.

Guess they didn't change it.

@Gage: Thanks for posting your specs. I was worried my laptop wouldn't quite cut it, but it has very similar specs than your machine (Core 2 Duo E8400 2.26Ghz, 9800M 1GB) and I have a lower-res screen (1440x900) so I think I'll be fine.

Does it gracefully handle a controller being plugged in?

If the Internet wasn't split by a huge ocean, I would be playing right now. Sounds promising!

I have a weirdly specific question to ask. Do dead enemies disappear instantly, after a while or do they remain until you complete mission/load/switch area?

@TheSeductiveMoose: I do know for sure that neutralized guards stick around for a while, since you are given a tutorial explaining how you need to drag bodies out of sight of patrol paths, to keep the alert level low. I haven't backtracked to see if any of my takedowns have faded from the world.

When you drag someone while holding your gun, do you hold it with both hands?! I NEED TO KNOW. Also, can you turn off the highlights on usable objects? How deep is the dialog? How deep is the progression system? Multiple endings? Replay value? Graphics? How customizable are weapons? Animation? Physics?
 
I'm so happy that this turned out to be good.

@TheSeductiveMoose: Enemies do not disappear. Dead bodies will alert other enemies if they are spotted and unconscious enemies can be woken up.

@valrog: Wow, that's a lot of questions... Yes, you continue to "hold" your gun while invisibly dragging a body. Except for the lack of visual cues telling me whether I've latched on I don't really care. You can turn off the highlight (and the waypoint markers if you care to), you'll get only the onscreen prompt when you are at interaction distance. To be honest, I was annoyed by the highlight in videos but I seem to prefer it in actual play. It felt a little like cheating when I could easily spot a hidden vent around a huge stack of boxes, but hey, Jensen is augmented for a reason.

The dialog with some characters are fairly involved, giving you a chance to convince them to do what you want if you can read their emotional state using various cues (there's an aug to help with this). Most dialogs are fairly equivalent to Mass Effect though, you have a chance to be nice or snarky then you get a series of "Tell me more about ...." options.

Character progression is handled entirely through inventory and augmentations. You unlock "praxis" by gaining enough XP or finding the items laying around and you can use them to unlock any of your augmentations. There are a couple of fairly deep trees including stealth, combat, hacking and strength and a few short or one-off leaves like the social enhancer. Most of the augments are either passive or activated in context like the hacking mods and the melee takedown ability, a few like invisibility are activated on the F1-F4 keys (probably the d-pad on consoles). You can augment your aim stability but most of the weapon's effectiveness seems to come from weapon mods that you can equip in the inventory. There seem to be quite a few weapon mod types.

I can't speak to your other questions, since I haven't come close to finishing the game. I think the game looks nice and I've heard that there are multiple endings and several reviewers mentioned a desire to play more than once. I'm optimistic that the ending will turn out as well as the beginning.

When you drag someone while holding your gun, do you hold it with both hands?! I NEED TO KNOW. Also, can you turn off the highlights on usable objects? How deep is the dialog? How deep is the progression system? Multiple endings? Replay value? Graphics? How customizable are weapons? Animation? Physics? I'm so happy that this turned out to be good.

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

@Jams: What kind of fps do you get with those specs, and on what in-game settings? Thanks.

I left everything on Normal, but set the resolution to 1080x720. I deselected Vsync and turned off any Anti Aliasing. I'm not sure what FPS I'm running exactly but it seems to be anywhere from 20 to 40 fps with the occasional dip here and there. It's definitely been playable and if I needed to I could always turn off shadows or post processing which would probably bump up the FPS's dramatically.

@mracoon said:

I'll be installing this on my 360 after hearing about the load times some people are experiencing.

Installing it is supposedly going to make a huge difference on the 360.

I kinda want this for my PC, but I think I'm getting it for the 360, just to be sure.

As a constant quick-saver, I found the loading times in this game to get pretty annoying pretty quickly. A no-kill stealth run ain't easy with load times like that.

But I'm finding the game pretty fun, definitely a more accesible title, but it seems to preserve what made Deus Ex matter to people, so I'm happy I guess.

It froze up 3 times in half an hour, but hasn't again after playing it for 3 hours.

PC version is decent except for the loading. I've got the game on a 10,000RPM 6Gbps HDD and every single load takes 30 seconds.

EDIT: Of course after writing that the game crashes twice on me...

One positive note about the load times that I just noticed: on the load/continue screens from the title screen, you can toggle story chapters left and right and catch up on the gist of or refresh yourself on what's been going on so far in the life of Adam.