after having recently completed good old Deus Ex , i went back to Deus Ex Human Revolution replaying it through an NG+
this time going for a "no stealth at all" playthrough, lots more ammo have been used this way than in my attempt at ghosting everything from my first campaign :D

While preparing to take the ship from the Hengsha port toward the built-in DLC, there was a nice scifi background there

Too bad they decided to make the events of Deus Ex HR happening before Deus Ex, because they then failed in the visual design of the Human Revolution world as everything look much more futuristic scifi than the good old Deus Ex world that is supposed to be in the future of Deus Ex HR

Cities 2, 80K

added some extra roads to deal with the increased traffic volume

During that process, i noticed i still build quite 'abstract' overall. Maybe for the next 'piece' i'll try to use more space between highways and urban areas, when appropriate, add some nature and some 'natural sound barriers...

that image is marvelous!
this rant deserves its own thread.

Following on the story of the original Deus Ex ( while being very far from being half as good as good old Deus Ex ) , it amused me in Deus Ex Invisible War to have Alex spotting some familiar face from good old JC Denton's adventures.

Far Cry still looks and plays fantastic. The difficulty is bonkers though, particularly near to the end. 2004 was a great year for FPS releases, since we also got Half Life 2 then.

Honestly the best hardcore FPS experience. I loved it on the hardest difficulty. You really have to move tactically and most importantly - mark all enemies before every engagement with the binoculars so they can't surprise you through the vegetation. Having to work for the enemy markers on the radar by having to manually spot those enemies really made it feel rewarding. A unique playstyle that no other FPS to date has made me adapt, in big part thanks to the punishing difficulty where you can't just Rambo in and slaughter everything. If you fool around, you will die. A lot. But if you play smart, the satisfaction factor is insane.

Far Cry 1 remains the only Far Cry game I've played and ever will play.

Still surprised with Deus Ex Invisible War, how could the devs really fail that much after the phenomenal original Deus Ex.
Oh it's not a bad game fortunately, but it's just a very average one, definitively the less interesting of the series.

Story isn't very involving for the player, there's nothing of all the intrigue/interesting/make sense plots anymore, the characters aren't unforgettable and sometime very cringy
But the biggest surprise was how the levels are incredibly small, it's a miracle that sometime the devs managed to give a few ways to go through them because you nearly feel you're stuck in small rooms even when the action is taking place in a city.

Sure i have read about "the game was made for console" to explain all those oddities but it's puzzling how you go from creating a masterpiece like Deus Ex into an average game like Deus Ex Invisible War

Anyways, one of the NPC that was originally a trainee like you, Klara, decided at some mission that she had enough with letting the player do all the work and instead started cleaning rooms by herself
And she did a good job at it :D

I was surprised how varied the gameplay was: I didn't expect the great vehicle handling ( hang glider flying was really enjoyable too). Huge, interesting, gorgeously looking areas. Weapons that feel fun to use. But the X-Ray-visioned (shooting through tents?!) and rocket-spongey enemies were a bit much in certain spots.

On Deus Ex Invisible War

After Alex has met with the previous game main character ( a shame they didn't give him his cool shades) and got his new tasks set, after a detour back to Cairo for some unfinished business, it was time to go to the finale

And nice touch that the finale takes place in the same location in which Deus Ex started, though it's much colder this time
(apparently nanites used to the current repair of the statue brought the temperature down a lot, though visually it looked more like the statue was now a hologram instead of being repaired) .

It was a nice last level as it brough some back some memories of the whole places as you even got to visit the now derelict UNATCO HQ for your mission, though sadly with those very small maps mentionned in previous post, there's a bunch of loading t to do when walking around the place.

While in good old Deus Ex there wasn't as the whole area was loaded

Toying with "Sigma Theory: Global Cold War" , a spying game that feel like a tabletop boardgame with hidden dice rolls

It's been a while i haven't played with it, so my new attempt was met with various disaster that ended the game with the doomsday clock going full and nuke missile ending the world

The highlight of this one was when i decided to sell some newly researched absurdly powerful mind technology to some private company, that sure pleased my employer (was working for the USA on this game) but made one of my scientist go mad ... shut up Hawking, let me count the money (screenshot 1)

Then went more cautious on my 2nd attempt, with going more diplomatic and making sure my best hackers were lowering other countries alert level before trying to do anything (as the higher the alert level, the more everything will fail and snowball into people hating you and your employer and the doomsday clock going nuts)

It worked greatly, the notJameBond agent (Maestro) , that went augmented with some of my techs i kept for myself was unstoppable at converting enemy scientists to my cause, or abducting them and/or taking them out of the country to join my hidden labs
My hackers did such a great job, until one of the them got abducted by some company i had failed to follow their side quests, but fortunately it was late in game and i was on the road to victory.

There's probably several ending to this game, but the one i got was .. the less i can say completely wild , basically my character ascended into being some lovecraftian deity as seen in screenshot 2. I don't remember that kind of ending in James Bond or Impossible Mission :D

Trying out the new update in 'Distant Worlds 2'

low energy windows profile and a value of 35 for the system load slider in game prevent my system from overheating

I enjoy the new improvements, one of them very simple, improves the overall look of the cargo trade going on about their business. In the picture, you see traders and shippers shuttling their wares. With only 1 docking port, the space stations seem ill-equipped for its designed task