Deus Ex - Invisible War Demo Released

revmoo writes "The long-awaited demo for Deus Ex: Invisible War has finally been released! Blue's News has a comprehensive list of mirrors for the 224MB download, including BitTorrent via GameTab and another Torrent from FileRush." Initial feedback seems mixed, with echoes of the recent interview in which Warren Spector agrees with the observation that "complexity is not the same as depth" for this 'streamlined' sequel design.

Comments

Petition

[Sepherus]

There's a Petition asking them to fix some of the more important problems before release. I hope they pay attention to the fans.

Mouse vs. control pad

[Henry V .009]

This game might be really neat with a console controller. As is, mouse and keyboard don't really fit it.

Advice to anyone trying this demo:

[Black Hitler]

First, go into the main folder, select the "User.ini" file, and deactivate "read-only." For some reason this file was set to read-only by default and this prevented the demo from saving your personal settings when you entered a new level or restarted the demo.

Then open User.ini and find the four movement speeds ("W=Move*=1.000000"). Change "1.000000" to "0.800000." This helps with the floaty mouse control and brings movement speed more in line with the original DX (you can, of course, change "1.000000" to another value if you so wish).

Then go into the Default.ini file (in the "System" directory) and change "FOV__d=61" to "FOV__d=68" (or 69 or 70). This will place the HUD closer to the edges of the screen; it turns out the default setting is for the Xbox version, where the HUD is further away from the edges so as to avoid getting cut off by TV overscan. Since this isn't so much an issue with PC monitors, change it ASAP. It's a lot better-looking. Change the settings for Volumetric Lighting and Trilinear Filtering from OFF to ON and change "CacheSizeMegs" from "1" to about 20. Change "MouseLagThreshold" from 75 to 0. Change "Use32BitTextures" to "TRUE" (if your card can handle it). If you want more realistic damage (including one-hit-kill headshots), find the "Difficulty" section and change the values for "Difficulty_AI_Damage_[insert difficulty level here]__d" to about 5.0.

You can make these adjustments with this tweak tool if you prefer (the site is in German but the download links aren't hard to find). The above fixes will address some of the main complaints about the demo; you can also play around with some other settings if you like (there are also settings for player damage, physics, and the font used for in-game text). Unfortunately the new inventory management system and the goofy unified ammo system can probably not be fixed by a mere .ini tweak.

Re:Mixed reviews are right!

[t0ny]

Never, ever, ever buy an MX card. Hindsight is great, of course, but you would have been better off getting a GF3.

Re:WineX?

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Doesn't seem to - it starts, but crashes immediately (opens an exception window). This is wineX 3.2 compiled from source, ymmv...

flamin' rampage

[Bansuki]

I played through the demo once using my typical play style: mix of stealth and well-placed explosives. And it was okay. Today I went back to the demo and played for crazy kills. Walked up to guard and just started knifing him. Amazingly enough I killed him and he only fired one or two rounds - right as I knifed him for the 7th or 8th time. Weird. So I pick up his flamethrower and attack all the guards. Guess what? They all burned to death and I beat the demo without a scratch. WTF? That "unified ammo" system let me expend half and flame half a dozen guards with no trouble. This can't be right. http://www.petitiononline.com/DXIWDemo/petition.ht ml