gamesandtings

Abandoned.

Hear me out; I did put in a fair bit of time into the game and I am at the last mission. I just have no desire to carry on and see it through.

I know the game was initially received with some criticism because of the fact that it was marketed by appealing to Apartheid specifically; evoking its themes. I actually bought into what it was aiming to say and I think the game tries to make an honest attempt in creating a world where segregation is still enforced. The allegory of the augmented people has a resonance with me considering how groups are still treated in this day and age. I also think this helps to make Prague a success, what could have been just a rudimentary hub becomes a city filled with potential injustice.

This was a game that I started then abandoned some time ago but I thought it would be worth getting back into. Considering the bits that I enjoyed in Prey seemed to revolve around finding passwords and reading people’s emails – I went back to Deus Ex and largely did the same thing. Which was nice.

What has stopped me from wanting to progress is the fact that I don’t really want to do a stealth run anymore but I don’t have the heart to shoot everyone. I haven’t enjoyed the fact that I was whisked away to a retreat in the Alps, where I faced countless gruffs, crawled and climbed my way stealthily to then be greeted with a city under martial law where I had to do the same thing again. Some pause in the intensity of avoiding baddies might have helped – just a change of pace without feeling overly punished for being sighted by an annoying drone.

This is a game that I do want to come back to, probably in a fresh run so I can spec Jensen in different way and force me out of what I usually do.

I thought it looked wonderful and loved the music. There are genuinely memorable missions and characters that I thought deserved more praise or, at least, attention.

So, abandoned it is.

I still don’t know how to hack properly.

7 Praxis points out of 10.