Deus Ex: Invisible War

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
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
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.