This has been linked around online about gamestop opening copies of the game to remove an Onlive coupon.

I downloaded it from steam and just finished downloading it at work. I'll be playing it tonight.

My brother has, I watched a little of it, its about as faithful to the deus ex franchise as you can expect from modern day game. The review scores are pretty accurate.

the only downside being that you are forced into the boss battles which breaks immersion for those that have been playing all sneaky-like
[/quote]

You couldnt avoid killing the key figures in the original either. Although there were glitchy/rare/tricky ways around that.

I'm quite curious to hear some stories about the abnormal usage of objects.
[/quote]

Nothing really abnormal about the object use, the distraction stuff has been done in thief and the original deus ex.

It feels a lot more like the original Deus Ex than it does Invisible War, which has me pleased. There is a ton of exploration and side quests to be had if you know where to look, as well as multiple approaches to completing any given objective in traditional Deux Ex style. Stealth is a major part of the game, and you can tell they put a lot of effort into making it work well. Moving in to, out of, and between cover is very fluid, and the enemies realistically detect you and remember your last position (none of that omniscience bullshit). However if you chose to go in guns-blazing, that's certainly a viable option as well since there are more than eough supplies strewn about. This game also has, by far, one of the best hacking minigames I've seen in a very long while. It's tons of fun, never really gets old, and involves some real strategy in order to hack the more difficult devices. With a little work, you could probably even turn it into a small, standalone, 2-player indie game. The augmentation system has been simplified so you no longer need physical canisters or robots to apply those canisters -- you simply go to an upgrade menu and apply "Praxis" points (accumulated by gaining XP or purchasing) towards adding new augs or upgrading existing ones. There is a very wide range of options and upgrades to suit any playstyle, however I would personally max out your hacking rank first because all the cool stuff is locked away!

However, I do have a few gripes. First and foremost, the load times are quite long, even on my beefy machine. "Quick" load is quite the misnomer since it feels like they're reloading the whole damn level every single time you load a save. Perhaps I'm just impatient, but I play enough games to know what a decent load time should be, and Deux Ex: HR exceeds that by a wide margin. Considering that I tend to load a lot... well, a very large portion of my play time is spent reading those canned hints that rotate on a load screen I'm also not a huge fan of how they handled bioenergy this time around. Every non-lethal takedown uses a full battery (you only start with two), and only the last battery automatically recharges, and at an incredibly slow rate without upgrades. The item that replenishes this energy is relatively rare considering how often you use energy on takedowns and augs (you get more than twice the XP for a non-lethal takedown than you do a kill), so I've found myself spending a lot of time in hiding, just waiting for my battery to recharge so I can perform another takedown or cloak away. However these are very minor issues given the overall quality of the game.

If you liked Deux Ex, then there's also plenty here for you to enjoy as well

*mumble* regional restrictions *mumble* *mumble*two days *grumble*

[...]

So far I've managed to stealth through everything and have not fired a single shot (I will once I get silencers!). Figuring out the best enemy take down order is a nice puzzle to solve. I agree that the hacking is great - I do it just for the rush but for practical purposes it's best to hack now to get data node rewards and the XP - although you can find passwords still for all the important machines if you're not into hacking - just one of the many examples this game caters well to various play styles like the original.

[...]

I talk to everyone until they repeat themselves, read all the eBooks and newspapers and computers, find all avenues of approach for a mission (instead of just taking one path - more XP!), do all side quests and kill everyone without direct firefight (silenced rounds/takedown) - I'm going to be playing for quite a while

[...]

Yep, I've also been hacking every device regardless of whether or not I have the password just to get the XP and rewards, and exploring every path to get the XP (lesson learned from the original). I try not to use my pistol even though it's silenced now because you don't net nearly as much XP as a non-lethal takedown, but sometimes it's unavoidable or simply much faster. However being detected or setting off an alarm is a definite no-no given the generous amount of bonus XP you'd lose otherwise.