I've started playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution which I'm enjoying a lot so far.

I was kind of looking forward to the first boss fight (which I fought the other night) just to see how bad they really are and to offload all my ammo into it (playing non-lethal is giving me an itchy trigger finger and the weapons look/feel so awesome). But yeah, bad boss fight was bad. It was sort of like "Here's some cover to hide behind, but here's some grenade spamming to make you run out into the boss's crossfire." In the end I just threw fire extinguishers, explosive barrels and toxic barrels at him until he died. I had to restart close to ten times but thankfully it didn't last long and before I knew it I was back in Detroit finishing off a few cool quests before my trip to China. Also, the hacking is amazing and the conversations are great. I'm much preferring it to the original.

Problems: inventory management is clunky and unresponsive. Character animations don't gel well with the rest of the game's sterling production values. Not being able to ironsight behind cover (this is just illogical and terrible if you have reticules turned off), certain weapons don't have any way of aiming without reticules (which is kind of funny at times). Flashbangs can blind you even if Jensen isn't staring directly at the flash, it's based on where your camera is facing which is stupid. And that's all I can think of for now.

Yeah, it's a very accommodating game. I've not felt as if I've 'wasted' any augmentation upgrades yet ie. I haven't not used any of my abilities in one way or another. In that regards it's very well designed. I think you'll enjoy it Kay, just don't lose heart when facing the bosses! They're bad but thankfully short-lived.

One thing that has been bothering me is that the inhabitants of Detroit, Hengsha, and I suspect DX:HR in general, are very tolerant of breaking and entering and blatant robbery. I'm no lethal maniac but I am a pack rat, and I will steal anything and everything if it's not nailed down or being guarded. As it happens hardly anything is guarded. Or nailed down. Lower city Hengsha is just one massive open store front with storage cupboards, credit chips and safes ripe for the plucking. Where the hell are the owners? Do they not care for their precious livelihoods? It's very bizarre.

Another thing is I feel like I'm gaming the game a bit. I mean, taking out targets non-lethally is quantitatively more beneficial than lethally taking them out (more XP, silent, you can sleep easy at night). Only if they're alerted does lethal action have any place. Exploring is rewarded with XP and nearly every air vent in the game doles out an XP reward so I'm damn well going to crawl through them all. Which is fine because that's what I do anyway, but still. The biggest problem in the XP system is that hacking is more beneficial than finding a key code and using it (at least I think it is), which just seems stupid to me. You should get a lot more XP for being resourceful and finding a key code in my opinion. Hacking should be a last resort. I noticed last night that there was an area I could access if I stacked a few boxes and climbed up (no simple task because I needed the heavy lifting augmentation and most boxes were quite some distance away) but once I managed it I was awarded 300 XP for pathfinding, which was nice.

HEATHENS.

I really need to play Gemini Rue. The game itself doesn't mock me, xtal does, as well as his review and his Games of 2011 list. That and... what's it called. Resonance? That looks super. Oh and of course, Primordia. And The Book of Unwritten Tales. Damn. So many.