From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

I don't really have to say anything, do I? You know where I'm going
with this post.

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Actually, in some ways, I'd be more supportive of a "Deus Ex" remaster
than many other games that get the same treatment. The first "Deus Ex"
was, even when it was new, already somewhat behind the curve visually,
and its gameplay was a mixture of imperfectly-realized mechanics. It
ended up a classic despite all these problems, but it was a very
rough-edged masterpiece.

So if any game might benefit from a remake, the original "Deus Ex"
would probably be the one to pick.

But at the same time, that lack of polish helped define what the game
was. A full remaster --smoothing out the gameplay, vastly improving
the level design and visuals-- would turn the game into an entirely
new beast.

Not that's what is happening, anyway. Rather, we're getting the usual half-assed job that's become common; upscaled textures, some of the
models have a few more polygons, maybe a slight improvement to the
lighting... but if you didn't know better (and hadn't played the
original since 1999) you might not even notice the difference. You
know, the one that makes you wonder why you've paying $49.99 for a
game you already own.

Anyway, here's the web-page where you can watch the announcement
trailer. https://deusexremastered.com/

Me, I think you'd be better of just playing Deus Ex: Revision. It's a
free mod that does mostly what the official Remastered does, except it
takes things a little further. I'm not crazy about some of those
enhancements, but at least it shows some effort. https://store.steampowered.com/app/397550/Deus_Ex_Revision/





--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

I don't really have to say anything, do I? You know where I'm going
with this post.

I was originally excited when I saw the post on Blues News. When I got
to the steam page I was a bit disappointed. The remaster of SS1 was
superb, although it was also a re imagining.

The remasters of The Thing and System Shock 2 were a bit
disappointing. It seems as if the Deus-Ex remaster will be in the same
category as the latter two.

We had the SS1 remake which was well worth the price, The Oblivion
remaster was one level down and arguably overpriced.

It looks as if the DE remaster is £25 but has a small discount for pre-purchasers. I may actually pass on it and play the modded
versions again as you suggest,

DE is still my greatest ever PC gaming experience, closely followed by
HL1. The latter got the dreadful port to the Source engine and was
followed by the excellent Black Mesa. I would have hoped for something
similar for my all-time favourite PC game.
--
Rob
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

I don't really have to say anything, do I? You know where I'm going
with this post.

I like remasters when they are done right. Bard's tale 1-3 from InXile
is a remaster done right. As is System Shock 1 and Age of Empires 2
DE.

It looks like Deus Ex is going the System Shock 2 route for remasters
which is the wrong way to do them.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 00:00 this Thursday (GMT):

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

I don't really have to say anything, do I? You know where I'm going
with this post.

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Actually, in some ways, I'd be more supportive of a "Deus Ex" remaster
than many other games that get the same treatment. The first "Deus Ex"
was, even when it was new, already somewhat behind the curve visually,
and its gameplay was a mixture of imperfectly-realized mechanics. It
ended up a classic despite all these problems, but it was a very
rough-edged masterpiece.

So if any game might benefit from a remake, the original "Deus Ex"
would probably be the one to pick.

But at the same time, that lack of polish helped define what the game
was. A full remaster --smoothing out the gameplay, vastly improving
the level design and visuals-- would turn the game into an entirely
new beast.

Not that's what is happening, anyway. Rather, we're getting the usual half-assed job that's become common; upscaled textures, some of the
models have a few more polygons, maybe a slight improvement to the lighting... but if you didn't know better (and hadn't played the
original since 1999) you might not even notice the difference. You
know, the one that makes you wonder why you've paying $49.99 for a
game you already own.

Anyway, here's the web-page where you can watch the announcement
trailer. https://deusexremastered.com/

Me, I think you'd be better of just playing Deus Ex: Revision. It's a
free mod that does mostly what the official Remastered does, except it
takes things a little further. I'm not crazy about some of those enhancements, but at least it shows some effort. https://store.steampowered.com/app/397550/Deus_Ex_Revision/

IMO, remakes shouldn't get $60 pricetags unless it actually adds new
content, or its multiple games, or it does SOMETHING notable. It's
getting ridiculous.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 18:10:02 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 00:00 this Thursday (GMT):

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

I don't really have to say anything, do I? You know where I'm going
with this post.

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Actually, in some ways, I'd be more supportive of a "Deus Ex" remaster
than many other games that get the same treatment. The first "Deus Ex"
was, even when it was new, already somewhat behind the curve visually,
and its gameplay was a mixture of imperfectly-realized mechanics. It
ended up a classic despite all these problems, but it was a very
rough-edged masterpiece.

So if any game might benefit from a remake, the original "Deus Ex"
would probably be the one to pick.

But at the same time, that lack of polish helped define what the game
was. A full remaster --smoothing out the gameplay, vastly improving
the level design and visuals-- would turn the game into an entirely
new beast.

Not that's what is happening, anyway. Rather, we're getting the usual
half-assed job that's become common; upscaled textures, some of the
models have a few more polygons, maybe a slight improvement to the
lighting... but if you didn't know better (and hadn't played the
original since 1999) you might not even notice the difference. You
know, the one that makes you wonder why you've paying $49.99 for a
game you already own.

Anyway, here's the web-page where you can watch the announcement
trailer. https://deusexremastered.com/

Me, I think you'd be better of just playing Deus Ex: Revision. It's a
free mod that does mostly what the official Remastered does, except it
takes things a little further. I'm not crazy about some of those
enhancements, but at least it shows some effort.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/397550/Deus_Ex_Revision/

IMO, remakes shouldn't get $60 pricetags unless it actually adds new
content, or its multiple games, or it does SOMETHING notable. It's
getting ridiculous.

No argument from me (especially since I find it increasingly hard to
justify buying even a Brand New Game for that price these days, too).

But a lot of the recent remasters --including this one-- are pretty
lazy. There are, I think, four parts to a game: it's design
(game-mechanics, pacing, overall concept), its artistry (levels,
textures, etc.), its narrative (world-building, characters, dialogue,
story), and the technical back-end (the engine).

Too many remasters these days focus only on the latter: getting the
game to run on modern hardware, maybe adding quicksave, widescreen-
and controller-support. Often this means they just port the game to a
more modern engine (e.g., Nightdive Studio's KEX, or --like Bethesda
did with Oblivion-- wedging the Unreal rendering engine into Gamebryo.
A little bit of work goes into the 'artistry' side of things: they
upscale the textures a bit, maybe clean up the models, and flip a
switch on the engine so it automatically gets cleaner looking lighting
effects.

But no work goes into the authorship or design. This means there's
relatively little actual effort put into these remasters. You run the
textures through an AI upscale program, and a lot of the technical
updates come 'free' by porting it to a new engine. I won't say its
easy, but it is cheap and requires a hell of a lot less effort than,
you know, making a new game.

A few games take it further, of course. It can be as massive as the
2007 remake "Tomb Raider Anniversary", or the 2023 "Dead Space"
remake, which rebuilt the game entire, except for the narrative
aspects (and even those got some significant changes). The 2024
"System Shock 1" remake was similar. Those might justify higher prices
because huge chunks of the four 'components' of the game were remade.

But stuff like the recent "DOOM+DOOM II" remasters, or the 2024 "Dark
Forces" remaster? Honestly, they feel like a waste of time and
resources. If you're hard-pressed to see the difference between the
original and the new version, why even bother?

Unfortunately, the "Deus Ex" remaster looks like it will fall in the
latter camp. If you watch the trailer, they do one of those
'transitions between old graphics and new' and I couldn't even tell
what had changed without rewinding the video a few times.

It's not worth the $30USD price they're asking. Especially since, as I
said, you can get free mods that do it as well or better.





--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Some of us are ever optimistic that you will stop saying "Get off my
lawn," so I desperately cling to the illusion that I do NOT know where
this is going.

(*sigh*)
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 18:10:02 -0000 (UTC), in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, candycanearter07 wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 00:00 this Thursday (GMT):

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

I don't really have to say anything, do I? You know where I'm going
with this post.

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Actually, in some ways, I'd be more supportive of a "Deus Ex" remaster
than many other games that get the same treatment. The first "Deus Ex"
was, even when it was new, already somewhat behind the curve visually,
and its gameplay was a mixture of imperfectly-realized mechanics. It
ended up a classic despite all these problems, but it was a very
rough-edged masterpiece.

So if any game might benefit from a remake, the original "Deus Ex"
would probably be the one to pick.

But at the same time, that lack of polish helped define what the game
was. A full remaster --smoothing out the gameplay, vastly improving
the level design and visuals-- would turn the game into an entirely
new beast.

Not that's what is happening, anyway. Rather, we're getting the usual
half-assed job that's become common; upscaled textures, some of the
models have a few more polygons, maybe a slight improvement to the
lighting... but if you didn't know better (and hadn't played the
original since 1999) you might not even notice the difference. You
know, the one that makes you wonder why you've paying $49.99 for a
game you already own.

Anyway, here's the web-page where you can watch the announcement
trailer. https://deusexremastered.com/

Me, I think you'd be better of just playing Deus Ex: Revision. It's a
free mod that does mostly what the official Remastered does, except it
takes things a little further. I'm not crazy about some of those
enhancements, but at least it shows some effort.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/397550/Deus_Ex_Revision/

IMO, remakes shouldn't get $60 pricetags unless it actually adds new
content, or its multiple games, or it does SOMETHING notable. It's
getting ridiculous.

Yeah. That sh!t is $29.99 at best. And I'd wait for the 50% off sale. And
only to feed The Number. (BTW, do remasters even count? What does the Magaesterium Numerus have to say about it?)

The pricing is what's really galling about it. Aspyr is constantly
releasing shitty Switch ports too, and they charge too much. SW Bounty
Hunter was a joke. Pod Racer has two control schemes, one that doesn't
even have the boost button. KoTOR 2 has an honest to God hard lock
scripting bug in it. You can't complete the game.

KoTOR was okay on Switch, but unremarkable. My opinion is Aspyr can go
suck a fat one.
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:08:36 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Some of us are ever optimistic that you will stop saying "Get off my
lawn," so I desperately cling to the illusion that I do NOT know where
this is going.

Tell ya what; if the publishers stop making endless shitty remakes,
I'll stop bitching about the endless shitty remakes. ;-)


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 26 Sep 2025 09:04:14 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:08:36 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

[For those of you who don't, first of all, welcome to
the newsgroup because you're obviously new here, and
secondly, in short I don't like remasters. I'd prefer
if publishers put their resources towards making new
games instead.]

Some of us are ever optimistic that you will stop saying "Get off my
lawn," so I desperately cling to the illusion that I do NOT know where
this is going.

Tell ya what; if the publishers stop making endless shitty remakes,
I'll stop bitching about the endless shitty remakes. ;-)

Hey, you're an old kvetch. I get that. No problem.

But I do hope, each and every time, that you'll find something better to
do with your substantial writing and analysis talents. ;^)
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

Heh.

The recommended system requirements demand an Nvidia GeForce 2080 (or
faster) and 16GB RAM (although the minimum is a GeForce 620GT).

Also, 20GB hard-drive space.

This game. https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/deus-ex-remastered-screengrab.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2

Yeah.

Just for comparison, the original needed 150mb of disk-space (although
it streamed data off the CD-ROM, so let's be generous and say it
needed 1GB storage total), 64MB RAM and a "3D Accelerator with 16MB
VRAM" (at the time, I found that my Voodoo3 was sufficient).








--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:40:39 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:00:21 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

So, they're doing a "Deus Ex" remaster.

Heh.

The recommended system requirements demand an Nvidia GeForce 2080 (or
faster) and 16GB RAM (although the minimum is a GeForce 620GT).

Also, 20GB hard-drive space.

This game. >https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/deus-ex-remastered-screengrab.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm....

(*crickets*)

Yeah.

I second this "Yeah."

Just for comparison, the original needed 150mb of disk-space (although
it streamed data off the CD-ROM, so let's be generous and say it
needed 1GB storage total), 64MB RAM and a "3D Accelerator with 16MB
VRAM" (at the time, I found that my Voodoo3 was sufficient).

Well that's a sad story. I guess if you have all that hardware to write
for, you no longer need to give a f__k about optimizing your sorry sack
of code. Developers always find a way to slow our computers down, it
seems.
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

Me, I think you'd be better of just playing Deus Ex: Revision. It's a
free mod that does mostly what the official Remastered does, except it
takes things a little further. I'm not crazy about some of those enhancements, but at least it shows some effort. https://store.steampowered.com/app/397550/Deus_Ex_Revision/

Thanks, I had no idea. For once, a mod that's just a click-install on
Steam! I had no idea such a thing even exists. Listened to the title
screen song, not a good start since that title song is legendary. The
intro movie was strange, extremely fuzzy humanoid figures talking. Makes
me wonder if it was always like that or is this with extra fuzziness.

I have to say I'm not sure I want to replay Deus Ex for the zillionth
time. Or even how to play it, it's been a while since the last
playthrough. Just fumble through like it's 2000 again or go with a plan?

So I could just go at it like the first time way back when or try to do
stuff in some optimized way. Keep your "brother" alive or not, get
effective with a rifle early or not, dig into all the conspiracy stuff
or not... Could try to do it in a fun way, like go with the rocket
launcher from the start and blow every security bot to junk. In fact,
going with mini crossbow+pistol+rocket launcher was probably the best playthrough I did.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2