I have been following this game almost since it was announced last year, and now the release month is finally upon us, I wanted to know if there was ever going to be a demo. After learning that somebody had leaked the preview build used at conventions such as E3, I decided to take on the task of the painful process of downloading about 9 parts and figuring out how to use "the crack".
I've never done something like this before, but it was one exciting ride to get my hands on the game. Now to get to the actual game...
First off, this game is definitely gruesome when Adam Jensen is forced to be augmented, as the robo-mercs who storm into Sarif HQ leave his body mutilated, even though there's no Gore...there's definitely a big hefty deposit of blood where he laid.
The game then does an also somewhat gruesome movie-quality cinematic of him being rebuilt. Even though his body was mostly intact after the lethal beating, the cinematic pretty much stated that his body was useless unless they replace his limbs with cybernetic parts.
After the cinematic, you're given your first chances at the branching dialogs. I pretty much kept my conversations to the point without trying to tick off anyone, and after a few minutes I was sent to one of Sarif's plants to attempt to save hostages from purists.
I decided to go in non-lethal, but by the end of the level I had ran out of tranquilizers, and ended up having to use lethal means besides using K.O.s.
I was able to talk the leader of the terrorists out of killing the main hostage, pretty much stating that he been duped and he should rather relocate his anger to the man who set up him up. This came after one of his "anti-cyber" members was actually very cybernetic, trying to steal info on an augmentation known as "Typhoon".
I came back with the CEO of Sarif being pretty grumpy about letting the guy go, but my branch was pretty much "The guy is no threat and probably will pay off later". Before I was sent to study the corpse of the "not so purist" hacker, I found out that one of my "doctor buddies" had been smuggling some sort of chemical out of Sarif's Labs, and thus I took it upon myself to find security tapes that could help him be "relieved" of having to stay a part of the smuggling, and so I opened up my first side quest.
I didn't get much farther than that, but the story was very intriguing and definitely makes me want to play more of the leaked build.
Now onto combat:
If anyone fancies themselves of Splinter Cell or Metal Gear, the stealth mechanics are pretty much the same. Taking down targets without being noticed is the best way to go, and enemies will alert surrounding squads if you are noticed. Also like those games, if you've been spotted it's not endorsed but it's best just to get rid of the enemies ASAP, non-lethal means first then lethal afterwards.
Also, augmentation points don't come easily, as I am still trying to figure out what kind of system the Augmentation levels use. I just know that with the preview build augmentation leveling is very spaced out and it seems trying to "max out" your character will take several hours, maybe.
That is of course expected in an RPG-style game, but I am still trying to figure it out so I can get a better idea what I'm supposed to be doing.
The graphics:
The graphics are just as good, if not better than what the trailers show, probably the funniest thing I find is some of the cutscenes are better quality than the in-game graphics, and some of them are worse than the in-game graphics due to the low-quality of some of them, but that's expected with software like Bink.
Feeling:
The game is quite immersive and quite intuitive for what it is presenting, you almost feel like you're in a movie and the overall feel of the graphics and gameplay make the experience quite addicting. That and I can't but feel a bit of fun when each takedown is shown in a "mini-cutscene".
Closing: I can definitely see why this game might be a 10/10 for some sites, as there is just not really many games like it. Unless you've come from the projects of KOTOR, Mass Effect, or some other player-based RPG, this game will seem like a needle in a haystack when it comes to finding originality among other titles.
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