Deus Ex: Human Revolution's bizarre solution to difficulty and incentivisation of stealth...

Am I the only one who dreads this, a bit? I find my sense of connection with a gameworld fragile, at best, and heavily reliant upon my imagination to continually suspend disbelief in the face of a multitude of 'silly' things that remind me I'm playing with a repetitive toy rather than actually experiencing something special.

I now fear I may have to wait for mods, or attempt my own, to correct this issue. That may seem overreactive but this one is special to me.

I don't know about you, but I personally consider myself quite capable of carrying four spare magazines for a rifle without needing to draw smily faces or crude penis shapes on the walls in bullet decals. To be well-equipped is the natural state of an agent within enemy territory who has taken down several foes and looted their barracks, camp or main office.

Having ammunition doesn't mean you need it; i.e. a single headshot should be the optimum method of firearms takedown. Not having ammunition doesn't encourage me to 'scrounge' excessively, or as the case may more likely be; to obsessively loot the level. It merely encourages me to stop using guns at all and focus solely on stealth and melee because it's the efficient option - as it often is in Deus Ex 1 due to the heavily armoured nature of your enemies. The assault rifle and shotguns for example are virtually useless in Realistic difficulty.

... Whereas an excess of ammunition allows for other aspects of combative technique, such as surpressive fire, distraction fire and in extreme circumstances holding down the trigger until the barrel ignites when something horrible that won't die runs straight for you. Never having enough ammunition to use these techniques doesn't strike me as a wise design choice, but more as a lazy quick-fix as the end of the response suggests.

I recall that Deus Ex 1 had a similar attitude, although it only manifested as finding 'boxed' ammo, without any ability to harvest rounds from the dead unless they were assigned an ammo box as a form of loot. It worked but as a method of player-control remains frustrating and spoils a sense of immersion.

I wish they'd made this an advanced difficulty/realism based toggle rather than an absolute... I'll be exploring the world of Human Revolution in depth because I want to, because I like to explore my tactical options before I commit to a plan of attack, and because I like to find out the secrets behind the mission, the reasons and motivations for the violence I inflict in the name of a cause. Not because I have to loot every single individual bullet they've concealed.

For comparison to a game in which this technique was acceptable because it made sense; Metro 2033, anyone?

/frustrated rambling shutdown

 - Jackrage Sleepless