@ruslik: Pretty much, yeah. I can’t really answer that second question – I don’t know, myself. It’s an addiction, so here I am.

Glad you enjoy the site!

Sal, are you running this site alone? Where do you get the time! Good luck, cause this is my go to site for game news. Thanx for that.

@Adam Meadows: No worries, no need to apologize :)

@rockman29:

Hey. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that it was a crutch! My point was, in retrospect, to suggest that being a vet and a noob to any given series has advantages and disadvantages.

I think, if anything, I was reacting to the use of the word ‘disturbing’, which seemed like overkill at the time. I didn’t intend to come across as high and mighty as I did.

My apologies.

@Adam Meadows: When you’re dealing with an established intellectual property, you’d do well to satisfy your existing fanbase as well as reaching out to new players, especially such influential series such as Deus Ex and Devil May Cry. It isn’t a reviewer’s job to judge a game based on fan expectations; I understand that these are supposed to be impartial. But it makes no sense, at least to me, to see major game reviewing outlets take people who are completely uninitiated to judge these games. (Once again, not talking about this site in particular). It would probably also help to make a complete opinion on a game if you’re at least a little aware of its legacy. Yes, feedback from non-fans can be just as sincere, but it seems completely disrespectful for me to see certain game reviewers say things like, “I didn’t like past Devil May Cry games at all enough to play them much, so it’s good that this one is different,” which is essentially what the Joystiq preview said. Deus Ex is one thing, but you CAN’T tell me that you don’t have someone on your staff who isn’t at least well versed in such a relatively modern series as renowned as DMC. That’s how you lose readers. Especially given a controversial game like the new DmC, I think it would at least be reassuring to have a Devil May Cry fan say, “it’s not as bad as you all think.”

Games like Resident Evil 4 and Splinter Cell Conviction got good reviews because they are, generally speaking, good games. But you can’t pretend that certain fans of those series don’t hate those specific installments, which is essentially what game companies do. Ubisoft in particular likes to pretend that the things they aren’t currently selling never happened. If Chaos Theory couldn’t be milked for one more port on the 3DS, they probably would have forgotten about it entirely. You don’t see other Splinter Cell installments getting such widespread recognition. It’s all about the marketing.

Nintendo was recently baffled that Metroid: Other M didn’t sell nearly as well as they thought it would. But to a lot of Metroid fans, it wasn’t particularly surprising at all. Sure, Metroid is Nintendo’s game, and they can do what they want with it. But if a fan sees something that they don’t like, they aren’t going to buy it. Given that Metroid isn’t Nintendo’s most mainstream, widely-known brand, and given that Other M so blatantly disregards the aspects of the series that fans loved, it wasn’t surprising at all to see it do poorly. The funny thing is, it wasn’t as if it was a bad game. Testimony from fans and non-fans alike showed that the game itself was competent, if not stellar. It was the fact that fans hated how different it was that became its undoing. The game itself was marketed pretty well, and it seems to have been well-made. But it’s not as if the opinions of fans shouldn’t mean anything at all, which is essentially how Nintendo made Metroid fans feel. It was their game; they did what they wanted with it. It doesn’t always turn out so well.

In the end, with major names like Devil May Cry and Deus Ex, I feel like it would be in the publisher and developer’s favor to be a little more delicate and respectful of the properties in question. I have no doubts at this point that Deus Ex is a good game, worthy of being played and praised. But it would have been nice to see a major review outlet assign a Deus Ex veteran to at least offer a minor opinion on the subject. At the least, they could have said, “hey guys, it is like Deus Ex in some ways and it isn’t like Deus Ex in others, but it’s still a great game and it does the series justice.” Deus Ex itself is a tricky brand because there hasn’t been a Deus Ex game in years, but other series aren’t always like that. Because for every radical departure like Resident Evil 4 that does well, there’s a Splinter Cell Conviction that essentially becomes forgotten after it releases, there’s a Metroid Other M that may or may not be a good game but is generally disliked, and somewhere on the horizon there are games like DmC and XCOM that threaten to take a beloved franchise and completely retool it for a different demographic. You can’t just say, “the game’s okay, so there’s nothing wrong with it,” to every single one of them.

@Adam Meadows: Don’t you think you’re taking it a little too far? A reviewer knowing Deus Ex or having expectations based on experience with the series isn’t necessarily going to cripple a review, and neither is not having played Deus Ex. If gold163 said either of those things, you’ll have to point it out to me.

It’s a little silly to say that playing Deus Ex is definitively a crutch to a review since the game is a direct prequel and the fundamentals of the game have not strayed far from the original’s.

gold163 isn’t being nearly as brash as you are making him out to be. Using ‘terms’ like “pre-conception of bias” (which isn’t even a term, and neither should it be, considering how redundant it is) doesn’t help anyone.

The fact is some of us have been around playing games on PC at the time when Deus Ex arrived. It might be desirable for us to have a reviewer who played the original, because we already might share some common ground. Any other extrapolations aren’t our responsibility.

@whiteferrero: There is no new game plus.

Why should it be a reviewers job to judge a game based on how much it matches fan expectations? That effectively limits a title to its name sake, no? Feedback from a ‘noob’ is just as sincere. Far more people in the world will not have played a Devil May Cry or a Deus Ex. I certainly haven’t played the latter.

They CAN do anything they want – it’s their game. By that logic, Resident Evil 4 would have gotten ZEROs across the board – all because they ‘got away with doing what they wanted’. Sal is simply here to judge one thing, “Is it fun to play?”

And if anything, a fresh eye is far more sincere as they aren’t ruined by pre-conception of bias based on past entries :)

@rockman29: Yeah, lol. Fixed that. Missed it in the final edit!

I hear you, man. But honestly there isn’t much I can do about that. I’m pretty much one person running the site and I unfortunately can’t get around to playing all the things I want. Deus Ex and DE: IW are on the list though. ;-)

Sort of disappointed with the shooting mechanics personally. I know cover-shooters are all the rage today, but the version I played on PC was anything but slick. The boss fights are also nothing to write home about… they feel out of place.

Anyhow, I think all these gameplay and graphics issues, as annoying as they are, will be overshadowed by the meat of the game which is the dialogue trees, augmentations, and science-fiction.

“Whether you’re a fan of shooters, role-playing games, sci-fi, conspiracies, or the color gold (that last one was a joke), Deus Ex is for you. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is as golden in value as it is in hue — only much less affordable.”

You sure you don’t mean more affordable, if you’re comparing it to gold? What is it at anyway… must be like 1800 USD an ounce right now or something ridiculous.