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04/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Normal)
05/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Jetstream Sam DLC (Normal)
06/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Blade Wolf DLC (Normal)
10/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Hard)
14/01 - Killer Is Dead (Hard)
18/01 - Q.U.B.E: Director's Cut
20/02 - Okamiden
23/02 - Bayonetta 2 (Normal)
27/02 - Shadow of the Colossus
02/03 - Monster Hunter World
06/03 - Snake Pass
08/03 - Deus Ex: The Fall
10/03 - Bayonetta 2 (Hard)
22/03 - Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
28/04 - Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth
03/05 - Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
05/05 - Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (Nero/Dante - Devil Hunter)
08/05 - Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (Vergil - Devil Hunter)
12/05 - Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
13/05 - Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (Lady/Trish - Devil Hunter)
21/05 - Omensight
26/05 - Mafia II
27/05 - God of War
31/05 - God of War: Ascension
12/06 - Unravel Two
15/06 - Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion
23/06 - Vampyr
05/07 - Cat Quest
14/07 - The Legend of Korra (Extreme)
20/07 - The Vagrant
28/07 - A Hat in Time
31/07 - Way of the Samurai 4
25/08 - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Knight)
25/08 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
10/09 - Zone of the Enders The 2nd Runner : MVRS
18/09 - Yakuza Kiwami 2
19/09 - Figment
20/09 - Darksiders: Warmastered Edition
20/09 - AER: Memories of Old
22/09 - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Much like with recently playing through Human Revolution, this time I decided I wanted to go through the game differently to being stealthy my first time. Going in this time though I was less set on sticking to it, knowing from HR how much stealth is kind of necessary. I also think in this game taking the lethal route doesn't really make as much sense narratively. In HR, you're going up against PMCs and the likes. People who have the objective and means of killing you on sight. In MD however, you're up against people who mostly are only violent in retaliation, and don't want to go after you specifically. It's not until the very end of the game that taking the lethal route makes sense. Most notably that final boss fight.
As such, I spent most of the game saving up for that encounter, making sure I had a big arsenal of powerful weapons, and lots of combat-focused augmentations. But when I got there, I found that I had some device that I forgot about that allowed me to just skip the boss fight entirely, making all that preparation pointless. So I went back and actually did the fight a couple more times, just so I could use the stuff I actually wanted to. And honestly, even though it was somewhat fun to do that, it was a little anticlimactic. Being in NG+ with a bunch of upgrades, the fight is kind of a push-over. Very different to my original run where I had to sneak around and avoid direct confrontation. Honestly that was probably a more enjoyable way to do it.
Playing this one directly after HR, and focusing so much on my equipment this time around, I realised how this game actually has a pretty different focus to that one. It may seem like these games are more or less that same thing, but MD leans way more heavily on the augments than HR. In that game the guns you have available to you, and the things you can do with them, are much more expansive. Here you don't really have that many over-the-top powerful guns. Instead, you have a bunch of crazy overpowered augments. It seems like a lot of the utility of those old weapons were sort of transplanted over in to Jensen's own body. I used some of them a bit, but not much. But there's a lot of cool stuff there for powerful lethal and non-lethal methods.
But now I think I'm done with Deus Ex for a good while. Won't bother replaying the DLC, or The Fall either. Not sure if I'll try to pick up any other game in the genre either. Playing these games again, and with Prey's DLC coming out recently, got me thinking on my relationship to so-called "immersive sims". Even though I really like the idea of them, I have a feeling that maybe they're just not for me. Not "real" examples of the genre anyway. Wasn't a fan of either Dishonored or Prey when I tried them. And examples I do like are ones that I guess some might say aren't "real" immersive sims. These Deus Ex games and Bioshock. Both are comparatively simple and based around empowering the player. Other stuff I just find too obtuse and punishing. For all their supposed extra options for creativity, I often found those games telling me "no" whenever I wanted to try something, while these Deus Ex games do not, even if the hypothetical range of possibilities isn't as wide.