Deus Ex: Invisible War

The Good
Ok, let's have it first. The graphics are incredible. This is a complicated statement (Read below) but I managed to get it to work smoothly at 1024 and wow. It's gorgeous. The lighting is good, although they frequently show off their engine. I constantly found myself walking just so that the world would go by slower. The sound likewise is great. I feel the music was better in the first game. That said, there's nothing wrong with this game's sound. The effects are great, though at times a touch odd (e.g. your gun "beeps" when you draw it). The audio is very immersive as well. As always, I recommend playing this game on a set of good headphones. The combined ammo is a nice touch, as is the design of the biomod system. It tends to prevent you creating as powerful character as you could make in the original. The plot is also great, although much shorter than the first. I was expecting 15 hours or so and I got 10. There is great replay to this game, however, since quests are often mutually exclusive and you can re-customize your biomods. The nods to the first game are also a cool feature. It is a slick, engaging, immersive, graphically incredible romp through a conspiracy theorist's dreams.

The Bad
It is marred by the same problems the original had, and one more major new problem. Much as in the original, the AI is stupid. Not only that, but strange events seem to happen sometimes that cause NPC's to switch allegiances. Nothing a re-load won't cure, but it's noisome. Also as in the original, the environments are somewhat drab. I don't hold as negative opinion as PC Gamer or gamespot do, I'd note the antarctica section as a good exception to this. That said, blue and gray tend to dominate the color palette in this game. A MAJOR flaw with this game is performance. Many users with HUGE systems have trouble running this game at 800x600 smoothly with all graphical options off. This is after a patch. I by some strange coincidence managed to get it to run at 1024 with a great framerate, even though my system is a year old or so. Clearly that's not how it's supposed to work.

The Bottom Line
Overall, the weaknesses are offset by the strengths, though not nearly so much as in the first game. This game has all the flaws of the first game as far as graphical listlessness and AI go, but non of great RPG elements that made the first so fun. I would recommend this game, but not with nearly the strength I do the first Deus Ex. It could have been so much better.

The Good
Deus Ex 2, along with games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3 were some of the most eagerly awaited sequels ever developed. And boy did Ion Storm have a lot to live up to. After all, Deus Ex is one of the highest rated games of all time (second only to Half-Life in the first person shooter department). But did Invisible War deliver? Well, yes and no. Invisible War is most certainly Deus Ex, but there are such gigantic "WTF?!"s in this game that it's simply perplexing...it's mind-numbing...it's pure insanity!

However, there is much much good in this game, and let me tell you about it.

Let me just get this off my chest: best graphics ever. I don't get the chance to be so blunt about this sort of thing, but yeah, I'll just say it. I'll say it again: best graphics ever. Deus Ex 2 has set a new standard for graphics in a first person shooter. Usually when I play games, gameplay always comes far before graphics in judging its worth. Take Nethack for instance -- NO graphics, but it's one of the best games ever made (in my humble opinion). The graphics in Deus Ex 2 are so good that it alone almost makes up for the gameplay faults. Yeah, it's that good. The lighting is absolutely magnificient, the characters are very detailed and realistic, all the little details from chairs to trays to lamps to books are all detailed and behave as actual objects, each that reflects light and which shadows can be cast upon, each that obeys the laws of gravity and can be manipulated by throwing around the room, watching them slide down or off objects, etc. etc. etc. And the "bloom" effect causes the world to look very ethereal, and it kicks the ass of any anti-aliasing I've seen yet. The graphics, the physics, the lighting, the shadows, the world in Deus Ex: Invisible War will immerse you in this game like no other.

I wouldn't so much call Deus Ex a sequel as I would a follow-up to the original story. As you might know, you don't play as JC Denton, but as Alex Denton, a clone of JC's. Invisible War takes place twenty years after the events in Deus Ex as the world is recovering from a massive breakdown called the "Collapse" -- an event which was triggered by one (or all? none? it's hard to tell, really) of your choice endings in Deus Ex. As you do missions for either the WTO or Order, more is revealed of the state of the world and of the factions that influence it, both open and secretive, as well as JC and what happened to him after the incident at Area 51. Expect interesting plot twists, mission diversity, and plenty of non-confining decisions throughout the game. As with Deus Ex, you can do most missions any way you want them. You can hack a security terminal, causing all the bots and turrets to switch their alliances, or you can sneak through using stealth as your weapon, never being spotted. Or go in guns-blazing, blow everyone to hell. Your choices of weapons can even include anything you see in front of you. With strength bio-modifications, you're a deadly weapon with a chair or a jar. And beware the man that wields a bench, for he is a formitable opponent indeed! The choices can be endless.

It was also great to see characters from Deus Ex appear in the game, and to see what they've been up to in the last twenty years and how the Collapse has shapen them. It is especially interesting at the very end! Without giving anything away, the few levels of the game give a whole new perspective on Deus Ex. Also: multiple endings is awesome.

The Bad
Whether or not the amazing physics, graphics, lighting and shadows, great storyline and nonlinear gameplay make up for the bad part of the game is really up to you.

Deus Ex has a gigantic fanbase. For many, many people it is hailed as the best game ever made, and I can certainly see why. Fact is, Ion Storm could have made the most mediocre game imaginable and plastered "DEUS EX 2!!1" on it and it would have sold like murder. But it is obvious they wanted to make a great follow-up. And as much as they succeeded, I just can't, for the life of me, understand some of the ridiculous changes they made. It just doesn't make sense.

No stats. That's right, none. No longer are you rewarded with experience points for completing tasks for which to use on your pistol skill, your hacking skill, etc. Instead, you are as good as you'll ever be with your sniper rifle (which is pretty damn good if I do say so!), same with pistol, melee weapons, etc. That alone is a HUGE drawback to this game. I've heard countless arguments about how Deus Ex shouldn't be considered a first-person shooter because it is really an RPG. Well, there won't be any argument about that with this game -- it is a first person shooter no matter how you look at it. And without any experience rewards, you'll probably be passing up many interesting side-quests. Unless you're really into the game and want to know more about little tid-bits here and there, I don't see any reason to bother, since the rewards are all pretty mediocre (usually money or biomods, both of which I had a truckload more than I needed by the end of the game).

No headshots. This isn't entirely true. A sniper rifle shot to the head usually kills in one hit, and if you've the proper weapon modification or strength bio-modification, you can kill with one hit to the head. But otherwise, it's a pointless effort, even on "realistic" mode which is anything but. It is simply too much effort to play as a stealth "silent assassin" in this game. I think that type of gameplay SHOULD be difficult, but not for these stupid "har har you shot me in the face four times" gameplay elements. How the hell ARE you supposed to play as a silent assassin without a silenced sniper rifle? If it takes two shots with the pistol to kill a soldier, that's one shot too many as alarms will be alerted before you get your second shot off. There are ways to do this, certainly. Hack a computer, sneak up and whack'em with an energy blade, whatever. But this "no headshots" bullshit is just inexcusable.

Unified ammo. Only one ammo type. Rocket launchers, machine guns, pistols, railguns, etc. They all use the same ammo. It has something to do with nano-robots morphing into ammo type or something STUPID LIKE THAT WHO CARES it's a DUMB idea. I read in an interview with one of the lead developers who was talking about this -- he went on saying how this system is better because the other way, the traditional way, players would get angry when they got a fancy new super-weapon but only had one or two shots with it before they would have to give it up until they found more rare super-weapon ammo. Well, with this new system, every weapon takes the same amount of ammo, but more powerful weapons take more ammo. Let's do the fricken math, shall we? If super weapons take super weapon sized ammo to fire, then we're STILL only getting a few shots off of it and then -- oh shit, we're out of ammo for all our other guns! This new system doesn't work, it's a DUMB idea, it kills a whole aspect of Deus Ex, and it's a STUPID idea. STUPID.

No injuries. In Deus Ex, there was a whole interesting aspect of keeping sections of your body healed. Get injured in your legs and you'll be crawling on the ground, lose your arm and your aim will be shit -- if you can even hold the weapon anymore, and so on. Invisible War got rid of that system for the ol' traditional "this is your health and when it reaches 0 you die" boring system. Oh well.

Worst interface ever. No joke. Deus Ex had one of the BEST interfaces I've ever seen. Everything was right there for you. Your inventory screen, your stats screen, images, conversations, codes, etc. It recorded everything for you and was easy to reach. It took no time at all to get, it was well organized...it was great. Invisible War's interface looks like something from Mega Man or something. Your inventory is now divided into numbered slots. Now your rocket launcher takes up just as much room as your medkits. Also, datacubes no longer look like a datacube, but just another gigantic-texted message on your inventory screen. It no longer records conversations, your notes are pretty vague and hard to follow (and I never even used them as they appeared quite useless to me), and besides that, you'll always see the big ugly interface on-screen while playing the game. It has something to do with a "retinal interface" something STUPID BULLSHIT I DON'T CARE IT'S A STUPID IDEA. I don't WANT to see the fugly interface while I'm playing the game. I want my interface from Deus Ex. It was never in the way and it was still a hundred times more efficient, more informative. Also, you no longer have to remember codes, logins, etc. when accessing locked objects and what-not. Once you've read the ugly datacube that contains the information, you just open the door. I suppose it's more convenient, but hurts the immersion quite a bit.

There are some bad storyline elements as well. There are two plot-twists that occured in the game that I had always assumed Alex D. knew all along. Not that he appeared altogether surprised when he found out, but he still denied knowing it. I find it hard to believe as, one of these particular plot twists (won't say what it is) is right there on the back of the box! This just confused me, really. How could Alex not have known -- and why isn't he at all shocked upon finding out? Perhaps he's just a little slow.

Guard AI can be pretty fricken stupid, yet omnipitent at other times. I can kill a guard right next to the other guard, then proceed to fling the dead guard's body around, loot its corpse, smash windows with it, throw it at the other guard and fire a few rounds into it and the guard won't mind at all. Yet, I can be hiding in the shadows a mile away from any sort of detection, smash a window (setting off the alarm) and every cop in the city will know it's me.

Also, the game chugs. I've recently spent a thousand bucks or more on upgrading my computer, and I still get 15 frames per second or lower in some spots. People with much better computers than me get the same problems -- if they can even get it to work. For me, it was an effort to even get this game to run at all! I had to download a .exe tweak, and even then I had to run that in compatability mode to keep it from crashing during loading screens. Also I downloaded a modified .ini file that shrunk the interface and text so it didn't look so Sesame-Street goofy/ugly.

Over all, the game has a very bad "quick console port" feel to it. I don't care that Ion Storm wants to appeal to a larger range of players with Deus Ex 2, PC should still have gotten top priority. As with the route they took, they brought us an almost unfinished heavilly bugged nearly unplayable console game with terrible controls and atrocious interface and goofy game "features". Not all this has to do with it being a console game as well, of course. I'm just really, really pissed about it.

Other things are particularly awkward and bothersome, such as the loading times which seem to take way too long to load a level that's only a fourth of the size of an average level in the original Deus Ex 2. Also, a lot of people seem to temporarilly "crash" to their desktops during a loading screen, only to be thrown back into the game a moment later. I didn't experience this, however.

The Bottom Line
If Ion Storm had used Deus Ex's original interface, all the RPG elements, damage system, biomod interface, then I have no doubt that Invisible War would have been the best first person shooter every created. But for whatever whacky creazy acid-tripping reason they didn't...well, Invisible War is still a great followup to an excellent story, and if you can forgive the insanely terrible interface and lack of...so, so very much from Deus Ex, then you've got a great game on your hands.

Besides, killing children by flinging burning barrels at them is great fun!

The Good
Many of the great elements of the original game survive in the sequel - the strong story, real player choices, an interesting setting with a lot of intrigue which the PC must discover for her/himself. Like the original, you can approach the game in various ways - pure personal stealth, pure action combat, sneak and snipe, or various combinations between. Some of the changes for console compatibility, like the modified inventory system first used in the PS2 port of the original, work just fine.

The Bad
Sadly, the game does feel a little "dumbed down" for console compatibility. Removing the skill point system in particular bothered me, both because it seriously reduced the amount of character customization you could do and because it removed the ability to have small rewards for exploration; combined with the limited map size to fit in console memory, there are very few of the nifty little cubbyholes that were so fun to find in the original.

There are also terrible problems with PC graphics performance, resulting in jerky mouse response at any resolution and making resolutions above 800x600 look no better than 800x600 does. Finally, the choice to invoke the 20 second CD copy protection check on every level load, when the actual loading is only 5-10 seconds, was particularly stupid given the new small map size. It can take 2 map transitions to get back to a known repair or medical bot while you are conceptually on the same map (in the same building, etc.)

Finally, the game is a little too short. Even exploring every inch of every map and completing all possible side missions, I finished in about 20 hours of game time and perhaps 24 hours of total playing time. The original took at least twice as long to finish. By another metric, the original had about 14 mission locations (counting each visit to Hell's Kitchen separately because you have stuff to do and meaningful new encounters each time) while the sequel has only 8 (9 if you count the second visit to a particular city, where nothing much happens).

The Bottom Line
I was very disappointed in this game because I was expecting an improvement on the original. Since the original was so great, any net improvement at all would have made this one of the greatest games of all time. But setting that expectation aside and simply looking for a great game comparable to the original, I've really enjoyed it - and I did start playing through a second time immediately after finishing the first.

The Good
- Graphics are good and fitting for a game coming out late 2003.

• Sound and music are appropriate for the game. The Main Title Theme is the best as it pays tribute to the original Deus Ex theme.

• Voice acting is done well, except for a couple of poorly done foreign accents.

• You get to meet up with many familiar faces from the original series (but no Smuggler :( )

• Combat is simplified which makes it much more accessible to gamers at large.

• All the wonderful plot twists and conspiracy theories that made you love the original Deus Ex.

• Multiple endings depending on the decisions you make, like the original
  
  The Bad
  - The RPG element that was existent in the original Deus Ex, has been taken away in this one. This makes it less fiddly (e.g. no need to mess around with an inventory determined by a grid) but it also gives the player less choice in making their character a sneaky back-stabbing spy, a gung-ho rocket gunner or an elite sharpshooter. The customisation in your character is now limited to just the biomods available. In the end, Deus Ex 2 feels more like a true FPS than the original. This may appeal to some, but not me.

• The maps are way too small - even the first game had larger maps. I think this may have something to do with the fact that due to the limitations of the Xbox, the levels had to be reduced in size - so this means lots of pre-loading of maps!

• Universal ammo: All ammo types are the same. This I assume was another aspect that was simplified to make the game less fiddly (and less like an RPG). You're able to modify the weapons somewhat but every weapon uses the same ammunition. That means if you're running out of ammo you won't be able to use ANY gun rather than just a particular one.

• Smoking 10 cigarettes in a row isn't as entertaining anymore.

• Dying sequence is not as good as the old one :P.

• JC was just cooler :).
  
  The Bottom Line
  For those FPS players that want to try something different, consider Deus Ex: Invisible War. It's got an interesting sci-fi/cyberpunk/conspiracy theory storyline and a really immersive world (our own one in a dark future). For the RPGers that gave Deus Ex 1 a shot and liked it, you'll probably not be as satisfied with the sequel.

Overall, Deus Ex: Invisible War is a good game. It has a great storyline, great graphics, memorable characters, ambient music that sets the mood and it's fun to play. When stacked against the original though, the original still comes out on top. However, the game is still Deus Ex and IMHO is a much better game than any of the ones out there at the moment :).

The Good
Note: I played this game with the 1.2 patch installed. I highly recommend patching it before playing the game.

As a big fan of the original, I am unable to review it without comparing the 2 products.
The graphics are a major delight. While not photo-realistic as compared to Max Payne, the NPCs look more realistic. You can even see the garish eye shadow on some of the games female characters.

The detailed architecture of the levels shows that the developers did create an atmosphere using stagecraft. The levels unwind themselves in ways that are both realistic and immersive. I found myself almost smelling the tainted air in the Cairo level. The eye candy is everywhere.

The music is greatly improved. Its more atmospheric, less distracting and certainly more fitting than the original. The minimalist themes worked well, slightly reminiscent of themes you’d hear in Anachronox. (Not surprising, they’re both from Ion Storm.)

The game play is very similar to the original. If you played Deus Ex, you can leap in to sequel with little or no training. The non-linear nature is here as well. For each level, you have primary and secondary tasks. The primary tasks often are issued by opposing forces, so you can align yourself with either party by choosing one task over another. You gain knowledge, products or credits by performing secondary tasks. The Secondary tasks are not essential to the game, but they add to the fun and can make other parts of the game easier.

The voice acting is pretty good too. Nothing extraordinary, but well with the nature of the game.

The characters are actually very well written. The interaction is pretty cool and fairly deep in discussing real world politics and policies. You find that all the leading parties have similar intentions but very different ways of accomplishing their goals.

Some of the dialogue choices can get you benefits or in to a firefight. So you can at least play diplomat or gunner, depending on how you want to play.

The rag-doll physics did add a nice touch to game play. More intriguing were the environmental physics. You could bump items out of the way, uncovering vents and doorways.

You can also choose genders and skin colors. The choices do not seem to affect the game play very much, with the exception of a randy helicopter pilot.

The playing style can still be varied, and is improved by using biomods of your choice. You can become a killing machine or someone who sneaks around. The biomods let you build a character of specific strengths and weaknesses. Contrary to what reviewers have said, I find the choices do offer a very subtle element of RPG.

The weapons mods can add a little more fun as well. You can install 2 mods per weapon, changing its usefulness and nature of destruction. A machine gun with an EMP damage can pretty much trash anything. And the ammo is universal, so locking and loading is fairly easy.

The choices of endings are pretty cool. They tend to range from easy to impossible.


The Bad
The audio quality was less than stellar. At times, it was worse than the original. The compression used unequally throughout the game. It was not unusual for a dialogue to lose and gain fidelity due to a change in recording/compression quality.

The long load times. Gahh….

The overuse of the same stock body motion captures. It was actually funny to watch women conversing and derisively rocking their upper torso in tandem. The men still look like they have no flexibility in their spinal columns. When the men talk, they actively wave their arms around, looking like the robot from Lost in Space.

The overuse of the same models. With the exception of the main characters, All the NPCs look the same. You’d killed a NPC in one level, and run in to her identical twin in another level. And you keep running in to identical twins, everywhere. And the twins would wear the same identical clothes with the same identical stains. I realize that its standard practice to recycle, but it’s messes up the immersive perspective a bit.

The targeting of items you want to pick up is erratic. You can pick ammo and supplies from the recently dead. But you have to move them first. And then, you have to move the unwanted items away before you can convince the targeting site to point the item you want.

Unlike the last game, your reputation is consistently neutral. You can kill goons and have their leader plead for your assistance in another level. The game becomes more indulgent and less fun because you can do what you want and still have a relatively clean slate with everyone.

The wish is for more RPG elements in actual Role-playing. It would be extremely cool if your choices were reflected in more depth in your NPC interactions. But then again, I wasn’t expecting Fallout, so I’m ok with this part.

And unlike this ghastly long review, IT’S TOO SHORT!

The Bottom Line
Fun, pretty, and with snarky bits of political education. But not as fun as the original.

The Good
20 years after the events of the original Deus Ex, most of the world is under direct control of two organizations: The commercial and governmental WTO and "The Order", who reject materialism and genetic augmentation. You play a young trainee at the shady "Tarsus" military academy, who finds himself between the fronts of an "invisible war" after a devastating terrorist attack wiped out Chicago. You travel various locations such as Seattle, Cairo and Antarctica. As the game progresses you can choose your allies, find out more about the main organizations, the mysterious cyborg race of the Omar, virtual holographic pop-stars... or the fierce competition between two rivaling coffee chains. There is no distinction between "good and evil", just choices - and consequences.

Yes, you can feel the talent of the original DX team in "Invisible War". The strong backstory can hold its ground and gives the gameplay some purpose. A variety of side quests and places to explore keeps you interested in a science fiction world which happens to be eerily plausible, once you look behind a surface tailored towards FPS gameplay. The action/stealth/diplomacy/hacking mix is still there, once again mixing FPS action with various RPG elements.

Music and voice acting is pretty solid. And the state of the art physics engine makes objects in the game world move a little more smoothly and realistically.

The Bad
But something is missing. And the more you look at it, the more you realize that about 2/3 of the game mechanics of the legendary predecessor have simply been cut without replacement - to make the game work on an Xbox.

That isn't just blind and paranoid jealousy towards a new platform. No, the developers were quite frank about how the memory restrictions of the console caused significant limitations which show in the ridiculously small level size, for example. While the first Deus Ex sent you on a mission on a life-scale rendition of Liberty Island, most of the levels in DX:IW consist of (literally!) 3 rooms and a connecting corridor. It just feels cramped, linear (yet you still get lost all the time!), claustrophobic and... unimmersive. Plus the prospect of seeing a loading screen every 25 meters gets annoying quickly.

Then there is the horrible interface. Let me try to explain it in pain inducing detail:

It starts with the HUD taking up 40% of the screen in a most annoying, circle-style layout. Text is in 24pt headline-size, so even small paragraphs of text which pop up frequently throughout the game go over multiple pages in tiny windows with huge, circle-shaped decorations on the side when they could as easily be of a smaller, more comfortable size appropriate for reading on PC monitors. Then there is the complete ignorance towards the possibilities of mouse input. No scroll-bars, no buttons to click for even the most obvious of tasks. Sometimes, the intro screen doesn't recognize mouse clicks and you have to navigate using Arrow Keys, Enter and Esc (that would be the 2 button + joypad controls the interface has clearly been designed for).

There are no quick save/load keys. Apparently, you cannot even change binds for items and augs for both of which only 6 slots are available anymore. The inventory has been reduced to 12 (maximally 15) indiscriminately-sized slots which individually do not distinguish between, say, a flame thrower and a soda can. Clicking stuff in the inventory and clicking another item makes the positions in the inventory switch instead selecting the next item. Drag and drop? A foreign concept to DX:IW. Annoying, to say the least. To bring up weapon modifications, you have to press the tab key(?!?) while having selected a weapon. Otherwise the tab key just throws stuff away. Because of the ridiculously big text and window-decorations, information for each item is reduced to a single sentence and ugly icons planted thoughtlessly into the middle of the screen. The rest of the space is used for permanent key-mapping info (because honestly, who would think of pressing the tab key to install weapon mods?). Every icon looks a slight bit too low res on every resolution above 800x600. Did I mention that I hate the "Neuropol" font? Normally, I wouldn't even bring that up, but it simply fits the whole story of one aimless and over-styled interface that singlehandedly manages to destroy a large part of the game's look and feel.

It doesn't stop there, however. DX:IW does not support wide-screen monitors, among other graphics-related bugs. The field of view is reduced to a smallish 68°, yet another thing to make perspective look more natural on far-away television screens - and bloated on PC monitors. Occasionally auto-aim switches on for no reason. Huge, white sparks fill the screen when punching a wood crate with a baton, adding to the Street Fighter style of graphics FX. I could go on.

To be fair, various of these issues have been addressed with a patch, but the list simply goes on and on and there is a philosophy to the game's design that simply cannot be fixed: This is a game built exclusively for the Xbox... and then ported to PC.

In order to make the gameplay more streamlined, everything but the most vital game mechanics were cut. Skill points? No more. Just genetic nano augmentations, most of which are identical to DX1's. The concept of settling for specific augmentations being a tough, one-time choice has also been removed by making them replaceable. Weapon mods are still available but now a pistol cannot shoot further than 20 meters without a "range modification"? And did I mention that there is only ONE TYPE OF AMMO FOR EVERY WEAPON?

What is really unfortunate is that they weren't even able to truly improve on the graphical issues that already plagued the first Deus Ex. DX:IW might indeed have been the first game to support real-time stencil shadows, yet the game makes no aesthetic use of it. The walls look as bland and gray as in IW's predecessor. And thanks to the unnaturally sharp shadows and emotionless faces, characters still look as if they were made out of plastic.

The Bottom Line
I remember the shock from playing the DX:IW demo for the first time. This was supposed to be the sequel to one of the best games of its generation?

I only picked up the full version for a bargain bin price, years later. Admittedly, like the first one, the game becomes better after playing for a few hours, yet it still feels disappointingly small compared to its predecessor. So many gameplay options were simply cut without any new, innovative features to replace them. It's a game designed around limitations instead of pushing the limits. It feels like a game so afraid to overexert players, it decided to rather bore them instead.

Worth getting if you keep your expectations low - but certainly not a game worth the Deus Ex title.

The Good
I consider the first Deus Ex one of the most important games ever made. Like many other fans of that Warren Spector masterpiece, I was impatiently waiting for the sequel; when I laid my hands on it, it made me shrug my shoulders more than once, until I decided it was not worth my time. However, I found myself coming back to the game in my thoughts; eventually, eight years later, my interest having been revived by Human Revolution, I gave it another chance.

All the annoying simplifications aside, the core gameplay still retains some of that special Deus Ex magic.The abundance of stuff to find brings back fond memories of a game that can become a giant scavenger hunt; even though they went over the top with that (thorough exploration rewards you with way more items than you'll ever need), it is still fun. I love collecting items, sometimes just for the sake of it, and Invisible War does satisfy that instinct somewhat.

Each level has branching paths accommodated to different styles of play. Don't want to spend multitools to disable laser beams? Maybe you could crawl through a nearby vent; but beware of spider bots. Any given area can be tackled by using different means - not necessarily by seeking out alternate routes. Tired of all this crawling? How about walking in gun-blazing, and dispatching of those giant robots with the EMP secondary fire of your mag rail? Be my guest. Think it would be too challenging? Activate a biomod that makes you invisible to robots, and quickly run past it. Every approach has its obvious advantages and disadvantages, but the bottom line is that the player can switch gears at any time, allowing for fluent gameplay. This cardinal aspect of the original Deus Ex was carried over to the sequel - though I must say that at times it felt like mechanical copying.

The world of Invisible War is fully interactive. Objects will physically react to your actions; you can move, knock down, throw, destroy, and interact with pretty much everything you see. Every single item, no matter how unimportant it is, can be picked up and put elsewhere. Moving items sometimes rewards you with a discovery of an alternate route, and throwing chairs and crates at enemies (with an appropriate biomod installed) is very cool.

The Bad
Why the hate? This is a sentence I've encountered on more than one website dedicated to the series. Many fans of the original Deus Ex loathe Invisible War; while I do not quite share this sentiment, I can certainly see where the hate comes from.

It's all been discussed many times before: removal of role-playing elements, unified ammo, dumbed-down interface, claustrophobic hubs. Side quests are always great, but the player needs to be rewarded for completing them. Without experience points, money would be the only reward; however, money is useless in the game. You cannot buy anything except food, and you don't need it. Even if you could buy other items, you wouldn't need to: everything is plentiful. Biomod canisters, in particular, are as common as bread loaves. I'm actually glad they removed shops because those would have made the game even easier. But of course it would have been better if they balanced all this without cutting out anything. And of course, there is the console habit of imposing limitations on everything.

Unified ammo - there is no way around it, it's not a good idea. Yes, I found myself rejoicing when I realized I will never run out of sniper rifle ammo. But that ruined the whole "you must survive with whatever little you have" aspect of the game; it went contrary to the concept of using different means to solve problems.

The interface bothered me enormously until I realized I could turn off the item display in the HUD by making it completely opaque. Wandering around in cities that consisted of a few narrow corridors was even less agreeable. Seriously: no city feels like one; in some places the cramped design borders on ridiculous, literally squeezing you into straight paths you can not deviate from. Add to that the painful loading times: minuscule locations are separated from each other by loading screens announced with an ironic "do you want to travel to..." greeting. Travel? You call opening a door and stepping through it traveling?

There was also something less tangible - a certain aspect of design and presentation that kept bothering me. A feeble, but constant unpleasant feeling relentlessly accompanied my playing sessions. I disliked the game's cold, calculated nature. It is as if somebody took some cool aspects from the first Deus Ex and carefully combined them together without infusing them with passion. I could never shake off the impression of artificial, deliberate planning.

Invisible War did nothing to correct the flaws of the original game. They bothered me more in the sequel than they did in the predecessor: three years have passed, and the second game lost a lot of what made the first one great, so I expected that they will at least address the weaker aspects of the original. Bad voice acting and moronic AI are still there. Hostile areas still tend to be monotonous and abstract.

The Bottom Line
Invisible War is a curious product. It's a terrible sequel, but I wouldn't call it a bad game. Even in its butchered, mutilated state, Deus Ex manages to elevate itself above the crowd.

Another reviewer passed the following verdict on Invisible War: "it's by far not as good as the first game, but it's still better than a lot of that crap out there". I think there is much truth in this statement.

The Good

The Bad

The Bottom Line
The original Deus Ex threw the first person genre into a loop, rather than conforming to established methods, it combined role playing, stealth, shooting, and adventure gaming into one neat little package. It had a very cool story which dealt with government conspiracies and changed around as you played. It was one of the few true "choice" systems that actually managed to conform to your playing style and keep you fully immersed rather than asking you to make a junction with a limited choice set.

I missed out on much of the last generation of gaming, but I did play Deus Ex and I loved it. Yet everyone kept telling me how terrible Invisible War was, but regardless I wanted to at least play it. And I have to ask... why all the hate? No, its not the sequel it could have been, but its still a very cool game with a heavy adventure element.

The story takes place 20 years after the events of the first game. After the destruction of Area 51 and the death of the man in charge of the Majestic 12, the world's government falls to pieces and leaves the world in an economic depression known as the collapse. Like in the first game, terrorism is seemingly common place now, no one is truly safe and no one is truly trustworthy. Global fear and panic naturally ensues.

Meanwhile, the augmentation project from the first game has taken a step up, able to genetically alter humans. This too causes unrest, people afraid of what an augmented human can truly do when the sky is practically the limit. The game begins with a terrorist attack on Chicago, and focuses on a corporation known as Tarsus. Relocating to Seattle, you are young Tarsus Academy student Alex D. Even there you are not safe as the Tarsus Academy is attacked, but the veil is slowly lifted when Tarsus is truly treating its students as lab rats for even further human augmentation and breeding genetic soldiers. This is where the game leaves you with the questions and as you progress, the story will take you for many twists and turns, much like its predecessor.

It also helps the story that the developers have expanded the games universe more. Although some things seem a little too high tech for a global depression, it does have a nice art design and there are many new facets of the series' universe which make it a richer and more diverse one. The story is a little easier to follow than its predecessor, even if it doesn't carry the same impact. My biggest flaw with the story here is that a plot point the game treats like a twist later on is made obvious right at the start. Your characters name is Alex D. What "D" stands for is a little too obvious to anyone who has played the first title.

The gameplay from its predecessor is largely intact, save for one element. While the Stealth, exploration, and shooting are all here in pristine condition the RPG elements have wandered off somewhere and are rarely heard from. You do not gain experience or skills, augmentation canisters are more common and save for black market or "professional" mods, they let you pick any augmentation you want right off the bat rather than having each augmentation canister have a unique trait. Upgrade canisters are gone as well, with upgrades available with each augmentation canister. The game also takes away your notes and makes keypads and other such devices instant use, provided you found that datacube. This does fracture the immersion some, and while the game is still highly immersive, it will not keep you glued to your chair as long as its predecessor due to this.

The dumbed down RPG elements are the weakest element of Invisible War and I too, was pissed at first and ready to condemn it like most other fans of the first game. But don't be so quick to condemn it, once you simmer down and have explored the world a bit, you will be hooked. At least I was. Once again, an important element of what made the first game unique shows up here: Exploration and adventure. They did not dumb this element down, and exploring the rich world is just as rewarding as it ever was. The adventure elements, like its predecessor, actually conform to your gameplay style rather than providing simple junctions like most games with a "choice" element. Granted, there are some exceptions here where you do make crucial choices from a tree, but they only open up separate possibilities and this element is really just to choose which faction to side with. The game will still evolve as you play, which keeps it a replayable and fresh experience.

The graphics, like its predecessor, are... well, "Meh." The Unreal 2.0 engine is used this time, and similar to how the first game failed to use the power of the first Unreal engine, this game doesn't make use of its powerful engine. Characters have creepy faces that stare with an occasional sprite blinking for them and they animate minimally. Textures are extremely low resolution. About the only thing the graphics really have going for them are some terrific lighting effects. The lighting is great and shadowing is realistic. Apparently the lower res graphics/textures were used to facilitate the Xbox, but that is not an excuse. Doom 3 had an engine tailored for the PC and the Xbox, but the PC version still took advantage of any extra hardware.

Another problem with the graphics are the framerates. Due to some very sloppy code, the game has performance issues up the butt. Sometimes, even on a modern computer, the framerate can dive and jitter. The games simplistic system requirements are misleading, and when I first bought it I was going to install it on the laptop I bought 2 years ago and play it on a roadtrip, and despite that Laptop being able to play some notorious system hogs such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but with the shadowing on the game ran at an unplayable 6 frames per second and with those effects off, 14 was an improvement but still pathetic.

I didn't have too much problem running it on my Desktop, but there were still dives and jitters and apparently everyone had these problems. Its one thing to neglect visual detail to facilitate a console, but you shouldn't neglect solid coding to facilitate a console instead.

Regardless, the game world is still highly immersive and fun to explore and will take you to many locales through the course of its story. The game is noticeably shorter than the first game, whereas the first game could take a solid 28+ hours to complete, Invisible War clocks in around 18. Granted, that's not bad and there is so much to see and do that that number would be higher if I were including side quests and such, I am only focusing on a dry run of the main plot length to gauge that number.

The music is really cool. Like its predecessor, the sound has a techno-ish vibe that fits the Cyberpunk style like a glove. There are lots of cool highlights, and the game also has one of the best fictional artists I've heard in awhile. What I mean by this is that there is a female techno/pop rock artist who exists solely in the games universe, but her music appears in the game universe and it ain't half bad. I'll admit that I pretended to dance to one of her tunes at the club where you first hear them. Granted that style of music may not be for everyone, but I certainly dug it.

The games shooting elements are base, but they work and can be expanded. You can still modify your guns, and the modification is a bit more balanced this time. In the first game, I had a pistol with a scope, 5 accuracy upgrades, 2 clip upgrades, a laser sight, a silencer and armour piercing bullets. Although it was kinda cool crafting a unique pistol through the upgrades, that pistol was overpowered as hell. About the only other fictional handgun I can think of that could beat that pistol is Dirty Harry's infamously awesome .44 Magnum. Here, each weapon can only hold two weapon mods. This keeps them a bit more balanced and the action a bit more even, along with the fact that this game is a little more forgiving at times then its predecessors. You won't turn into a bloody block of Swiss cheese within the first 5 minutes like you did last time.

The weapon mods are also a bit more diverse and offer a wider variety of changes. Some are rarer and have unique effects, such as glass destabilization, which can actually melt glass. I had a pistol with that mod and a standard silencer mod and it was perfect for silent take downs as well as robberies. I do have to admit, it was fun, one time I snuck into someones home to rob them and rather than kill them, just knocked them out and I was thinking "What if he wakes up and hits that alarm?" and I noticed a ventilation shaft above the room and tossed his body there and shut it. Later I heard footsteps, and he was standing in the vent running towards the alarm but obviously couldn't get out. I also got a pretty nifty energy sword out of this with m handy glass destabilization mod.

Shooting this time also uses a unified ammo system, which is efficient, though it does have its con. You never have to reload per se and you never have to worry about a gun taking 3 hours to reload like some of the ones in the first game. Every weapon in your arsenal uses this ammo, although some drain more ammo than others. As I said, it is an efficient system that keeps the action fast paced. Its biggest con is that you don't get alternate ammo types in their proper form. Here, they take the form of weapon mods, meaning you can't switch between them once you've modded a weapon with the alternate ammo and I often feel its a waste of a weapons' modification slot.

As a whole, Invisible War is, in my mind, heavily underrated. I understand that more often than not, video game sequels are arguably the only form of sequels that can be better than their predecessors, but I do not understand why one slightly inferior sequel should be condemned when what content is here is in top shape. I had a lot of fun and loved the story, characters, universe, and gameplay. Isn't fun the primary objective of a game? To each their own, but I recommend Invisible War to fans of shooters, stealth em' ups and adventure fans; and I wish for Deus Ex fans to give this one another chance with a clear mind.

The Good
Unlike the original Deus Ex, this game starts pretty interesting right from the start, and then as it gets more and more complicated and everyone turns their right face in the grand final, it turns out to be just another regular sequel with nothing new to offer but graphical goodies due to a time difference. However, this game holds a strong point over its originator, and that is that certain places are so well made it almost reaches the worlds created in Anachronox in its intriguing exploration and citizens. Well, far from Anachronox, but still, it poses a touch of creative design.

Unlike what other have said, I find the graphics to be quite good (after seeing how character looked in original, I can't say I expected them to be anything too great, but they are fine nonetheless), and game does support higher resolutions, so whether this is an Xbox port or not, it may be questionable. Whereas Deus Ex put you in a role of JC Denton without giving you so open choice over your freedom, this game quite vividly forces you vast selection of choices on every corner. It is neat to pretend to work for everyone's cause yet working against them all, while still trying to spare certain people you may care about to stay alive.

Physics are something I totally forgot from the first game. I expected that from Half-Life 2, but never have I thought they'll be so cool to utilize in here. I remember how cool it was the fact you could carry enemy soldiers and put them somewhere in the shadows or such unspottable places, but here, you can toss them further than those guys toss discs and spears on the olympics. The whole tossing issue puts a great deal of fun to this title, and it's done pretty well. This is definitely a much more interesting game then I ever imagined it'll be due to all those cons, it's as addictive to rid me of my sleep for the past couple of days, really driving you on.

The Bad
JC Denton looks like crap in here, I sure don't remember him like that. Not just his attitude because he's merged with Helios now, but the whole extern appearance.

Also, there's a crappy bug about the savegames, I reached the ending map, just to later figure that savegame can sometimes be buggy and drops you right back at your desktop, so had to replay the past four hours since the previous valid savegame file. Tsk tsk tsk, seems they had some serious lacks in the code, and the sound starts to crackle after some time, maybe it's not their fault, but of Microsoft's DirectX, so I guess I should look pass it, it wasn't the first game to have sound problems like that.

Also, there is some serious AI balance on the loose. For example, certain leader and his surrounding troops are not firing at me, but any other of his will be. Kinda weird to take it serious when he asks from my allegiance then, wouldn't you say? Also, there was a scene when some bum accidentally caught a fire and started yelling and running all in flames. Soon after, one bumped into another, and then that one into the third one, and they were all on fire. Kinda strange to observe, so I didn't have a choice but to put their pain to an end with a bullet through each one's head. Also, it's not good when nearby people won't talk with you after some shootout, they seem either to be afraid or just want to relax for some time but, it's strange, and not likely, especially if they're on your side and even more, if you came to rescue them.

The Bottom Line
All in all, very addictive game from the moment you start playing it. It made me appreciate a PC after long period of time of preferring console games. Sure, this game exists for Xbox as well, but still, it just ain't the same feeling, not to me anyway. Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War are two great games on their own that deserve a certain percentage of respect no matter the odds, and they aren't just a mindless shooters in a true sense of FPS way, so you guys stalking over another masterpiece called Half-Life, don't go into playing these games unless you're ready for some dialogues and a bigger story.

The Good
After the global Collapse, the WTO established safe enclaves for the best and brightest citizens of the world. In these enclaves commercialism flourishes. WTO troops and private sector security forces guard commercial and housing districts, while corporations have free reign to raise and educate their future employees. But all is not well. The Order Church have stepped up their anti-WTO activities. Chicago is decimated by a nanotech bomb, an Arcologist compound in Cairo is under siege, and the Panzerwerks factories are crippled by saboteurs. And lurking in the background is the revitalized Knights Templar, whose neo-luddite rhetoric has taken on religious fervor.

Deus Ex: The Invisible War begins with an Order raid on a Tarsus Academy in Seattle. The player’s character, Alex D—a Tarsus student, finds him- or herself under fire and unable to trust the WTO structure he’s been raised in. While the Order is clearly in the wrong, events suggest that Tarsus had ulterior motives regarding his education. Alex finds himself pulled between the WTO and the Order, with both sides recruiting his friends and attempting to sway his opinion. Starting in Upper Seattle, the player is quickly immersed in the gray morality that is the world of Deus Ex.

Invisible War is an action RPG presented from an FPS perspective. The game presents the player with a series of choices in terms of quests and goals. The choices are often conflicting and usually weigh a stack of credits against Alex’s code of ethics. The owner of a nightclub will want someone killed but the mark could double your money. Killing a fighting greasel might improve your gambling luck. Small choices lack the larger repercussions found in the original game, but you can cater to the several factions vying for your favor.

While much of the game can be played over the barrel of the gun, stealthy players can complete the game with few, if any, kills. Like its predecessor, Invisible War is customizable. Through the use of legal and black market biomods, players can upgrade their character, concentrating on creating a covert ops hacker or a killing machine. Basic upgrades allow for health regeneration, increased strength, and increased speed. Illegal modifications let players hack ATMs, take control of security turrets, and drain life from unconscious enemies.

Invisible War doesn’t have to be combat intensive, but there is a decent amount of weaponry to be found. Ranged weapons include the typical lethal pistols, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers. A poisoned dart boltcaster can knock out opponents from a distance. You can get up close and personal with a combat knife, energy sword, or various baton types. There is also a wide array of explosives for various user needs.

Of note, all projectile weapons draw from the same ammunition pool, but at a different rate. So you might not be able to send any more rockets flying at a Templar in full armor, but you can switch over to the pistol and fire off a few more rounds. Weapons can also be modified, but can only take two upgrades and can’t be downgraded if you change your mind.

The world of Deus Ex is still populated with interesting characters, some of whom return from the original game. The world is littered with books and datacubes, coming nowhere near Morrowind’s word count, but still filling in the gaps and explaining things like why all guns take the same ammunition. This entry has fewer locations than the original (and smaller levels), but there is still a bit of globetrotting to be done.


The Bad
Invisible War, aside from its weaknesses as a Deus Ex game, is a fun, largely open-ended excursion. Its ten hour playtime doesn’t provide enough time to develop characters or explore the storyline and players just coming to the franchise might prefer if characters just shut up rather than droning on about myriad conspiracies and organizations. Still there’s a lot to like here.

Most of what I didn’t like involved design choices. The HUD is clunky and crowded. Resembling an iris, good chunks of Alex’s peripheral vision are taken up with inventory and biomod information. You still have to enter an inventory screen to manage inventory, so it really isn’t time saving—especially since you can use the scroll wheel to move through active inventory items.

Levels look similar regardless of where they are geographically. I guess the proliferation of WTO technology is part of the problem, but I was really dying for something organic towards the game’s end.

Finally, aside from a rendered opening and four rendered endings, nothing happens outside of a game level—i.e., taking a helicopter from Cairo to Trier means clicking on a helicopter in Cairo and then magically showing up in Trier. A few transitional scenes would have been nice.

The Bottom Line
There’s an interesting conspiracy theory that Invisible War is smaller, simpler, and shorter than the original in an effort to make it more console-friendly. I’m not sure I buy it, but you have to wonder: in an age when sequels are bigger and better, why is Invisible War so scaled-down?

Let me step back, when I first played Deus Ex I was singularly unimpressed. As a first-person shooter, it was just average and lacked any sort of robust AI. As a first-person sneaker, I much preferred the Thief series. What I liked on my first play through, was the amount of character customization and the conversation options. And the fact that I had choices to make. Choices that seemed to matter.

The second time I played Deus Ex, I realized how brilliant the game was. Based on the choices your character makes, killing Anna early on or saving Paul, the game feels completely different. There’s an incredible level of branching, which I missed the first time out.

Back to Invisible War, I’m not sure that anything I did, up until the last half hour of gameplay, had any real effect. It’s that last half hour that determines which of the four endings you’ll get. Unfortunately, the previous 9-1/2 hours haven’t directed you towards any particular outcome. Are the Illuminati better than the Templars? Is the WTO’s vision of utopia more convincing than ApostleCorps’? Does any of it really matter?

The Good
The story has a lot of twists, the graphics are very atmospheric, the biomod upgrade system adds a lot of strategy and depth to the game, the speech is great, the gameplay is non-linear.

The Bad
Most of the models have been heavily reused through the game, the story has more twists than required, You can't use more than 6 different upgrades at a time.

The Bottom Line
Deus Ex 2 is simply a breathtaking joyride through a dark world of corruption, lies, heroes and demons, with a lot of story twists. You start as Alex D. (either male or female depending on Your choice at the beginning of the game) and are about to uncover that the fate of the world is not decided by the people, but by 4 groups which have different interests and aims, and You are just a puppet in a big conspiracy game.... Since this is a mixture between roleplaying game, FPS, adventure, You have a lot of choices on what You will do and who You will work with. You meet a lot of friendly or neutral NPCs who will give You jobs, ask for or offer help, want to trade with You, like in any good RPG. The nice and immersive thing is that You can accept jobs from different parties resulting in changes of how the story evolves. Sometimes You are told to kill someone by one fraction and ordered to save him by another... There's also quite a nice variety of real-world weapons, like flamethrowers, missile launchers, knifes, swords etc. Besides that, there is the biomodification system, that offers You slots (body parts) to be "enhanced": You can modify the brains (to hack computer systems via a neural port), the eyes (better sight, remote control killer drones...), the body itself (becoming invisible...), the legs (faster, higher jumps, safe landing from high altitude, sneaking...), the arms (more strength, built-in bioweapons...).... In each slot, You can only have one modification, but the choice between three different ones (including mods called "illegal"). The best part is that You can play Deus Ex 2 the way You want.Each problem can be solved in different ways, You can infiltrate buildings via the ventilation system, by using "multitools" (a kind of digital lockpick key set), by using a weapon (missile launcher), by getting a code card....that code card could be obtained through a dialogue, by stealing it, by finding it in a chest....it happened to me to actually reload the game several times to try different approaches, and in almost any situation, You can find a non-violent way to solve a problem. There's always the option to fight Your enemies with bio-toxine which will render them unconscious, instead of having to kill them. Or, like in Splintercell, You can just try to sneak by (using Your biomods to become invisible for as long as the bio-battery holds...). Plus, there's multiple ways to combine Your bio-modifications, so at the end of the day, Deus Ex 2 offers a tremendous amount of non-linear ways to play the game and experience it YOUR way, and it has real lastability, because You would find new ways to play it even when playing it for the third or fourth time. Add to that the four different endings depending for which party You eventually finish the game, and You have another classic game made by the awesome folks at Ion Storm.

The Good
Deus Ex (the original) is one of my top five games of all time. It's everything I want in a game: first person view, RPG elements, a great story, great characters, great weapons and large, well designed levels. Deus Ex: Invisible War still has some few good things left, like interesting weapons and a first person view. I liked that. Unfortunately there's not much else left to like about it, as I'll explain in the next paragraph.

The Bad
There's so many dumb decisions and failed motives baked into this game, I hardly know where to start. First of all: there are no RPG elements left in the game. They're all gone. Augmentations turned into biomods that are extremely easy to max out. Most players did it within the second level of the game. The levels are small, cramped, uninteresting and plain ugly. The loading times between levels (and there are a LOT of loading going on) are ridiculously long. The performance of the 3D engine is abysmal. Even a system with 9800 XT and 3000+ Mhz CPU can't make it run smoothly above 800x600.

The AI on the NPC:s is so unbelievably dumb it's not even funny. You can stand 2 feet away from them and throw barrels in their heads and they won't react. Another extremely stupid decision made by Ion Storm was the unified ammo. All weapons in the game uses the same ammo! How's that for strategic planning?

Healer bots now heal you automatically and they're everywhere. You get tons of money but no shops. The biomods are almost all automatic so you don't need to worry about them. The weapon are still modifiable (although you no longer have any skills so you're a master sniper from the start) but only by 2 different weapon mods. Both of which are useless.

The worst thing about this game, though, is that it was clearly made for the Xbox. It runs GREAT on that 733 Mhz Geforce 3 machine, but almost refuses to run on my 2800 Mhz Geforce 4 Ti 4600 PC. Nice optimizations, Ion Storm. Not only that, but most of the settings in the PC version of the game are still Xbox optimized! Even the ingame-UI was accidentally left in Xbox-mode. The dialogue text is optimized for TV-screens. Nowhere in the game do you need a mouse pointer anymore, to make it easy for the Xbox people.

The sad thing is I really wanted to love this game, I tried really hard to at least like it, but it's impossible. It's such a blatant sellout to the big Micro$oft machine I can't even stand to look at it any longer.

The Bottom Line
If you want an extremely simple, short game that can't decide if it wants to be a bad FPS or a bad adventure game, then this is what you want. But you got to love long loading times, stupefied gameplay, awful performance and lots of bugs to be able to enjoy this title fully.

The Good
The long anticipated sequel to one of the most satisfying PC gaming experiences, Deus Ex: Invisible War, was released for the PC and Xbox. The sequel does not live out to the original, but that is not surprising as this sort of thing often happens, when a game is just too brilliant.

In Deus Ex 2, you are Alex D. Deus Ex veterans will almost immediately know that the “D” stands for Denton. As either a male or female, you are a student at Tarsus, an academy that trains biomoded agents. 20 years after the events depicted in the first game, the world is just recovering from the brink, and once more many groups have interest in taking control.

Once more it is up to you to choose sides, and change the world, either for the better or for the worse. So Invisible War, has an interesting plot, maybe not as much as it’s predecessor, but the real problem here is that there are two many plot-holes and other glaring problems for the game to achieve the level of greatness of the original game. More on that later.

The graphics are excellent, and state of the art, unlike the first game. The lighting effects are so realistic, it will blow your mind. If Graphics made the game, then this would be a much better game.

The sound department fares well, the VO’S are excellent, as we have come to expect from Ion Storm. The sound effects are great, as is the music, thought the OST is not quite as good, as the original.

The Bad
The Bad& The Ugly: Well, as I mentioned above, the plot is good, but not great. There are just to many plot holes, and inconsistencies in it to keep it from “godly” like the original. For starters, the plot assumes that at the end of Deus Ex J.C. got all three endings, not only is this impossible, but just plain stupid. How could he merge with Helios, and at the same time, join the Illuminati, and, destroy the Area 51, thus starting the new dark age, and not be killed?

Plus, the Alex D, thing does not add up. If J.C. blew Area 51 to hell then, would not Alex have been destroyed? Furthermore Alex D? Who the hell’s surname is “D”. Aside from maybe Captain D.( You know the proprietor of the famous fast seafood restaurants;)

Some of the gameplay is often just poor. Deus Ex 2, introduces “Universal Ammo Clips”. This is pure idiocy. For some reason, all the weapons of the game be it a pistol, shotgun, or rocket launcher, use the same clips…WTF? Any astute gamer will have to question how it is possible for a civilization, that just came back from the brink of oblivion managed to not only catch up with the old world, but surpass it. Not only is this jackass from a plot point of view but a gameplay one as well. It in one fell swoop defeats the purpose of collecting multiple weapons. In most games when you deplete ammo in one gun you switch to another, in DX:IW, you cannot do this, if your ammo supply is spent than all weapons are useless.

Ion Storm claims, that the reason for the UA, is that gamers complained that in the first game that ammo was often scarce, yet it really was not, if you actually used the weapons properly, the only time in the original I ran low on ammo was towards the end, and did DX2 prevent that from happening? HELL NO! So a note to game developers, do not heed stupid complaints that have no basis in what I like to call reality.

As stated above the graphics are good, but it also comes with draw backs. Such as the smaller areas. All the hubs are too small, Seattle, Cairo, and Germany are tiny. Hell’s Kitchen, alone in the first game was bigger than most areas in this sequel. The mission areas are often small as well, with perhaps the exception of the final area in the game. You also do not travel to as many varying places as in the original. What happened to London, and Sydney, that according to early previews were in the game?

Finally, this may seem like I am nitpicking, but none of the 4 different endings are that great, there is no closure, compared to the first game, which only had 3 endings, but all of which were cool.

The Bottom Line
Overall, I am glad that we got to see a sequel to Deus Ex, yet like many sequels to brilliant games, it often stumbles and falls, where the first game soared. And I would be lying if I said, I did not have fun playing this game. Yet not nearly as much as I did with the original stellar PC hit. If you want to see a better Ion Storm game on Xbox or PC, I recommend the excellent, Thief III: Deadly Shadows. As for DX:IW, I can really only recommend it to die hard Deus Ex’ers, and even they may be disappointed as I a was.

The Good
This game is pretty wicked. Having not played the original and listening to others speak about it I was prepared for a game which gave you choices. By choices I took to mean the fact that beauty of the game would be in delivering a different story for each person playing it depending on the choices you made. Wrong. The choice you are given is which playing style you wish to adopt to complete a quite linear story line. The objectives can vary depending on which factions orders you wish to follow. Achieving these objectives could take the form of basically shooting the enemies, talking your way out of situations or stealth. The beauty of the game lies within the range of methods to play the game the way you want. For instance, you may choose to sneak past a camera using your thermal masking bio-modification, or disabling it with an EMP grenade, or shooting at it with an EMP modified weapon, or destroying it with your 1st person controlled Spy Drone modification or maybe just finding an air vent and seeking an alternative route.

The Bad
The expectancy it created, although to some part by word of mouth. It isn't what I expected as I said because I thought that choosing to do certain objectives and saying certain things would effect the story line of the game but it doesn't, it affects the path you take to the final and only real interactive choice in the game, the end. I found it hard not to do all the objectives I could in my goals list, which meant following multiple factions wishes, which seems to be against what the game is trying to achieve, I think. Also I thought the story was overcomplicated. Many people will probably love this, but I couldn't be bothered to take in all the long winded, long words that some of the characters spout.

The Bottom Line
A unique 1st person game which expands the genre nicely.

The Good
This game's gritty style and customization drew me in, and it's sidequests and civilians supply many chances for entertainment. Also, I have had many fun experiences with hunting down every last weapon, just cuz I'm a completion nut. The time it took to do that added a good 5+ hours to the game, and because of multiple pathways, Deus Ex: Invisible War has great replay value

The Bad
I found that I had to crank up my TV's brightness to see what was going on sometimes. However, this is a small price to pay for greatness.

The Bottom Line
This game is a sci-fi shooter's dream.

The Good
If you forget all about Deus Ex one game (which I consider to be the best FPS I played) and judge Deus Ex 2 for what it is, you might say that it has a good graphics engine. It's not your regular FPS because adds some elements from RPGs and even has a decent story.

The Bad
Where do I start? The GUI is to large and annoying. The universal ammo is a terrible idea that ruins the fun of having different weapons.

The story does a great job burning up everything the previous game strive to set. You pile up missions in one level up to a point you can't decide what to do next. Without the patch I has problems running in most machines. I guess I can go on and on forever.

The Bottom Line
If you Liked Deus Ex then stay the hell away from this abomination I mean it. It is painful to see what a misguided story and destructive set of ideas can make to a classic.

And to think they even wanted to make a film from the franchise. That's one movie that I regret you wont see anytime soon.