Deus Ex

The Good
I loved the different locations. Hong Kong was my favorite. I liked the music for the most part. It looked nice, consistent. It was a very fluorescent game. It was cool how you could hack your way through, sneak your way through, or just blast your way through, depending on your mood. You get to blow stuff up! A lot of stuff! The Vandenberg showdown is the single coolest moment in the game, where you hijack a couple of big bots, who start blasting the bad bots, and they're shooting each other for about five minutes. That was at Vandenberg, right?

The best thing about the game was the storyline. The story and dialogue, for a video game, were rich and interesting, and the continuity was nice. You meet interesting people with personality. You travel around the world, learning the truth of conspiracies. I'm kind of a conspiracy fan, so I ate it all right up.

The Bad
There are some nit-picky items that bothered me. The characters acted spazzy and ran around all crazy. It was somehow unsatisfying to fight with standard guns, at least until your skill improved. The ability to blow stuff up with GEP guns and HE20mm and LAMs compensated for this in a big way.

The Bottom Line
This is just fun. It's kind of an intelligent game, so it may turn you off if you're not down with all that fancy book-learning. If you're looking for a game where you just kill your way to the end (and who isn't?), play Half-life. If you're willing to immerse yourself in an interesting story and read a lot of e-mails and such, You'll be rewarded.

The Good
What is there to like about this game? To be frank - everything. Each element of this game has been brought together with such verve and flair that the result is something that totally transcends the concept of what a game should be. Deus Ex is a truly unique thing - this is not merely a 'game', this is so incalculably great it's more of a one in a lifetime experience. No, really!

When people traditionally think of an FPS game with a strong plot, many would be inclined to name Half-Life. Yet when you analyse Half-Life's plot in some more detail, you realise that effectively it's identical to that of Doom - scientists accidentally open portal to another dimension, aliens appear and try to take over the world blah blah blah. Add in some friendly scientists and security guards along the way, and have them robotically tell the player what to do, where to go next, and suddenly everyone thinks it's the second coming. For example, the usual dialogue in Half-Life involves some bored security guy with lousy AI informing you that the next section of the game you encounter will involve riding a train. Or going down a lift. Or ducking under some pipes. Yawn. And people even nowadays mistake this for a plot! Enter Deus Ex...

The plot of Deus Ex is such that it's a bit like starring in your very own sci-fi thriller movie; A sort of combination of The Matrix, Blade Runner, X-Files, and 007. This is not simply 'fun' or a diversion, this is so totally immersive and the characterisation so well done that the player is drawn into the game world like never before. The level of interactivity with what you can see is unparalleled. Essentially, if you can see it, it can be interacted with.

Although the game is largely linear in structure, each objective can be completed in several different ways, giving the game massive replayability value. This is one of the few games that has captured my attention so completely that I had no choice but to complete it - but that wasn't enough. Thus far I have played it through a total of 7 times, each time discovering new places, or consequences for different actions. For example, in the first mission where terrorists are holed up in the Statue of Liberty, you can either hack the security terminal and go in the front, or find the UNATCO informant and get a key to the front door, or take the long route round the back way up the gigantic stack of crates. Another example is where you are protecting a certain injured NPC in a hotel room when your apartment is raided. Either you can escape out the window and save yourself, leaving the NPC to die. Or fight your way through about 20 heavily armed soldiers, save him, and meet up later in the game. Because of the 'emotional attachment' I had to this character, I had no choice but to take Option B... Each of your actions or responses has a definite effect on how NPCs react to you, making the game feel very real.

The really great thing about Deus Ex is how the plot builds itself up to epic proportions - as opposed to laming itself out only a third of the way through like Half Life. There are so many plot twists and turns, so many conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, and it is all developed so rapidly that it really grabs your attention and refuses to let go.

The soundtrack is probably the best for a game yet. It's really what holds the game together for me, adding depth and emotion to the levels. Produced by Straylight Productions (the same people who did the music for Unreal), it's kind of like the game equivalent of John Williams' Star Wars score. All the tunes are instantly memorable, and I enjoy them so much that despite having several hundred mp3s on my hard drive, I still listen to the Deus Ex tunes on a regular basis. The game is honestly worth getting for the music alone!

I love the graphics (based on the Unreal engine). Of course, the developers could have opted for say, the Quake 3 engine, but I unquestionably prefer the Unreal engine as the lighting is superb and atmospheric and everything looks very real and organic. Also, despite having only a Pentium II 400, I can run this game with practically all visual options on and it runs quite fast.

The Bad
There really wasn't anything that had an adverse effect on my enjoyment of this game. People seem to think that because there's a big ol' box for stuff you don't like, that you have to nitpick and point out the comparatively trivial niggles that this game has.

Often cited is the in-game speech - which often veers in quality of acting from top notch Hollywood production to school play and back again in the space of a few seconds. This totally doesn't matter though as the characterisation and dialogue is so good that you forget that the voice acting is something less great. There are literally hundreds of really great quotes from Deus Ex, the scripting is THAT good.

The game often criticised for having bad enemy AI. Yet in all the FPS games I have played, games that feature superb AI are in my opinion no better than those which don't - even in some cases having great AI is annoying. An example would be the marines in Half-Life which magically know exactly where you are despite you not making a sound. You're then on the receiving of a hail of grenades and you die. So you reload your game, but you die again. So you reload. But then you die. So you have to reload, until by sheer luck you manage the get pass the marines. Having really good AI as in Half-Life's case makes the game unbalanced and in my opinion, the AI in Deus Ex, while being far from perfect, does not adversely affect gameplay. The aim of an FPS should be to challenge the player, but not make it so hard that you spend more time hitting the load saved game key than actually playing. Deus Ex succeeds in getting the balance just right, even at higher skill levels.

The Bottom Line
I'm always wary of describing games as 'classic' or as a 'masterpiece'. Invariably once you've made your grand claim, you'll soon find another game that surpasses it, and that game you thought so highly of begins to look only average. So instead, so I don't contradict myself in future, I will say that thus far this is my favourite game ever, on any platform. It really is that good! So if it's not in your collection, and you are looking for a new title, buy this now!

The Good
A while ago I reviewed a game called "Alpha Protocol" and in that review I made the point that a spy-RPG or games about conspiracies in general, are often too difficult to understand and therefore fall flat. Deus Ex however proves exactly how a story about conspiracies can be great; it has a cast of enjoyable characters that frequently appear in the story, there aren't too many factions, plot-points are well explained and there is a lot of detail. I am especially fond of the characters and how you unravel their side-stories throughout the entirety of the game.

Part of the reason for why I am so fond of the characters is that their voice-acting is of an admirable level when compared to other titles at the time. Unlike the characters from the first Half-Life, there are a lot of different voices to be found in this game, including various accents based on the region you are in. It really helps the immersion when you don't hear the same voice, repeating the same four lines of dialogue on every generic NPC you come across.

For some reason I always take the sneaky approach when the option is given to me, which is odd considering I can't stand sneaking games like Splinter Cell. While I am not a professional, the sneaking in Deus Ex seems to be very well executed. You can press X to sneak which makes you move silently and as long as you don't start hugging enemies or cross their line of sight, you can pass them fairly easily. Of course there are also cameras and other security measures to get around, but a nice little extra is the ability to install augmentations that help you avoid detection.

Upgrading is one of the main themes of this game and it works very well. I always say that a good upgrade system allows the player to make the characters their own and specialize in whatever they want, while a bad upgrade system is merely there to justify having money in the game and only forces the player to tweak already existing items/skills. When starting the game my character was very weak and useless, but as I kept playing he would soon grow into an efficient killer. Been skilled in most weapons however meant not having any of the useful skills such as lockpicking, electronics, medicine and demolition.

Along with this great upgrade system comes the game's main selling point, the amount of choice it gives the player. Here is a random scenario: import military storage room with a locked door, what do I do?; scour the area for a key or code?, lockpick the door?, hack the doorpad?, open the door by hacking a security terminal?, look for an alternative way in?, blow the door open?, trigger an alarm to lure a guard out of the door? All of these options are there and I am probably missing out on some. Some ways are more efficient than others, sometimes you will have to combine skills, but it's never impossible to complete a task with a certain set of skills.

Finally I'd like to say that I like it how each part of your body takes damage separately and losing some does not necessarily mean that you die and have to reload a save. Losing both your legs means that you will be dragging yourself forward for example, but that still makes it possible to complete your objectives. This made for a very tense moment when I was at the top of a terrorist-controlled tower and had to drag myself all the way down with no legs, no left arm and all my remaining body-parts in a critical state.

The Bad
The very first problem I would like to mention is that early on in the game objectives would literally solve themselves. A very good example was when I had to find a supply of medicine hidden somewhere in a building, but after running into a dead-end, I decided to go detective on it and find some clues. However, by the time I was ready to resume my search another agent informed me that she has found the supply herself and I can move on. This was really infuriating for me at the time, but this problem disappeared later on.

Most of the time you don't have a map screen and the game expects you to find your way around all by yourself. Most of the time I could manage, but in a level set in Hong Kong I got so insanely tired of endlessly going in circles that I gave up on an important side-quest. This is also annoying because there are many occasions where people will provide information and directions, but if many of these characters are close together you will get so many locations and information thrown at you that it starts to get overwhelming. A map would really help out here, especially if they would mark locations you found information about.

One of the problems that I found particularly odd was that fact that there was a severe lack of resources. You would think an international agency working for a global superpower would send their best agent out with more than just one clip of ammo and a single lockpick. Even in missions I often found mandatory items to be very scarce and sometimes it doesn't even make sense: A soldier spots me and fires two clips of machine gun ammo into my face, I reload and kill him before he sees me, but when I loot him I get a shocking 4 bullets.

The game is also kind of glitchy from time to time and I am not talking about just ordinary crashes. Sprites would often go insane, entire textures would disappear, invisible walls could pop up and the gamma-settings would sometimes go dark. Most of these issues are just annoyances, but for a game this immersive, it's a real kick in the nuts.

One thing Alpha Protocol did better than Deus Ex though was the hacking and lockpicking. In that game you had to do short mini-puzzles that gradually grew in difficulty as the game progressed and if you neglected the related skill. Here every machine/door just tells you how many hacking-devices or lockpicks you are going to need in order to unlock it and all you have to do is click a button. It's a boring chore with no difficulty to it.

The physics engine is kind of disappointing, which might seem unfair, but stick with me. The game allows you to pick up a lot of items, varying from simple pots to entire vending machines. You can also throw these items, but the effect is literally non-existent. Throwing a vial to distract a nearby guard might seem like a clever strategy, but when that vial makes a thick thud as opposed to a load crack, it just seems so silly. The whole point of throwing a vase, is not to throw the thing, but to hear and see it shatter into a dozen pieces, but in Deus Ex is does neither.

The Bottom Line
Deus Ex is often called "The best PC game of all time" and after having played it myself, I can clearly see why. Though it started off very rocky, most of the flaws I mentioned became less apparent as I progressed through the game. The reason for why I can't continue (as stated in the title of this review), is because I accidentally saved right before a huge explosion happened right next to me and I have no extra saves to resume from. As sad as that is, I had fun with Deus Ex and will likely return here one day to finish off the story.

If you are a PC-gamer than you probably owe it to yourself to check this game out, if only to prove yourself in the eyes of the veterans. However, a fan of James Bond and Alpha Protocol will probably find much to love in this game too. If you don't feel much for complex stories or can't put up with the difficulty that comes with PC games from two/three decades ago however, then I recommend looking for your digital entertainment elsewhere.