Deus Ex: Invisible War

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
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
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.