Deus Ex: Invisible War

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
- 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
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.