Deus Ex

The Good
Deus Ex... What else to say? I almost feel there are already too many reviews for this game here, but well another one can't hurt, right? I really can't add much more praise to this game so I'll just stick to confirming that all of it is well deserved. Really, to those who still have their doubts about this game and ask themselves "is it really that good? Or is it all hype?" All I have to say is that it isn't that good. It's even better.

The premise of the game is part System Shock (man, Spector must have a real thing with AI's!) and part X-files slapped on a first person rpg with fps elements, but the game takes all preconceptions you may have over all these genres, influences, etc. and mixes it into one very well made whole which manages to amaze even diehard gamers like myself... well maybe that's overstretching it but yeah, it's VERY good.

Granted, a lot of the marvel of the game comes courtesy of a lot of groundwork that was laid in previous games so it's not as "original" as one would like to assume (a certain person I know thinks this is the holy grail of gaming simply because he completely skipped past all of Spector's early works). But still Deus Ex manages to take all that has been done before and expand it to pharaonic proportions. Want cyberpunk ambience? Have as much as you want. Non-linearity? Ten times as much as you have ever seen. Complex storyline? Take every conspiracy theory and add some more. That's how Deus Ex feels, it's ideas may not have sprung first, but it sure is the best incarnation to date of them.

I could go on and on about each aspect of the game that has been tuned to perfection, but instead let me adress what I think is the golden nugget of Deus Ex: It's freedom of choices. At virtually no point in the adventure the game makes any preconceptions about what your choices may be, for each objective there is a million different ways to accomplish your objective be it guns-blazing, sneaky or whatever. Thus Deus Ex has done something utterly amazing: it has found the absolute cure for gaming frustration. Sure, you may love a certain type of games, But every now and then you need a change of pace right? Well Deus Ex changes paces with you. Got tired of sneaking around? How about some stress-relieving shootouts? Want to stop "playing" for a while and just talk with npc's and interact with the world? Go right ahead! Anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Thus you are never stuck in the game, you always find another solution to whatever problem lies ahead of you, and you are always moving forward. The sense of progress is constant, and it's a remarkable feat to accomplish in any game. This is quite simply: admirable.

The Bad
Well, there are some bad things about Deus Ex I'm afraid: First of all it's AI is braindead. Seriously. It uses the so popular pre-set reactions that make it look like it actually thinks when it goes and hits the alarm or whatever, but in reality there's very little under the hood. In fact, the AI suffers from the deadly "Headless chicken" syndrome, when no alarms are around, the enemies will start to run around frantically with absolutely no purpose whatsoever whenever you show up, shoot someone, or do whatever. Fully emulating the behavior of... you guessed it, a headless chicken. Furthermore, there are also some serious issues like their indifference to knocked-out bodies (if they are dead, sure they start to run around, but if they are ko'd... guess they probably figure they are taking a nap. Face first. In the middle of a corridor... a-ha)

Also something that is truly horrible is the voice-acting. AHHHGH!!! Memo for Deus Ex 2: get professional voice actors!. Most characters sound like they had a gun pointed at them, and those who don't simply can't act, like Simons who is simply HORRIBLE, and don't even get me started on the "foreigners" and their painfully overacted accents. Seriously, I though my ears were bleeding at times, and I have heard everything from the abominable (but ground-breaking we must admit) Ultima Underworld opening to the Resident Evil games.

Now, this is all... shall we say on the technical area, the game does have a cohesive (though sometimes cliched) story, but I also have a bone to pick with the "creative" aspect of the game.

Whenever you play a game, watch a movie, etc. you make concessions to it depending on the game's setting and other things in order to get into the adventure. Thus nobody complains that in Mario Bros. there are talking mushrooms or that Mario can't jump so much without getting tired, since we accept that Mario's games are totally free of our physics laws and happen in a fantastic reality where we accept those things. Deus Ex on the other hand, is "for real".

Sure, it's sci-fi, but it's rooted in our reality, in our world. In fact, every fantastical or outrageous element in the game is explained and justified with luxury of detail both to add to the ambience and to ground the game in our reality. So Deus Ex takes the stance that it's serious and "realistic" and lets go of practically every concession we make to videogames. Now, I have nothing against this, but it's tricky business to make something "real" and I'm afraid not even Spector and his group of elite coders got it right.

Sure, they added realistic details to the game, real-life reactions to certain events, etc. etc. etc. But they missed out on lots of simple stuff. Stuff that is so blatantly stupid that I couldn't stop myself from laughing whenever they popped up, and in fact it's stuff that doesn't concern the game per se, but the narrative/dramatic qualities of it. I wouldn't even call them flaws, but "goofs" since it seems like stuff that got lifted from those hilarous mails that go around the net by the title of "Stuff we learn from the movies" or variants of it. Allow me to list a few: The bad guy that tells you his plan and laughs maniatically (with the optional "The world is Mine!!! Bwahahahaha!!") the "I'm-so-cool-I-talk-in-a-low-key-drone-and-I-never-raise-my-voice"; the one man army vs a million terrorist/conspiracy soldiers; the self destruct button, characters that are lifted right out of comic books and are either "good" or bad to the bone, etc. etc. etc. But those that were most amusing to me had to be the ones related to the "internationality" that the game was given. Let me tell you a secret as a certified non-US resident: We all secretly speak english. Seriously! All that mumbo jumbo about different languages is a hoax, we are only people who speak english in different accents! In fact, when we are alone we like to discuss in english!! I swear it's true! And thank god that Deus Ex has blown the cover on this big hoax showing us all as we really are! :))) ....Seriously, sometimes the game seemed to become something like "American tourist: The simulation" :)) With wonderful bits like J.C. approaching a couple in paris and going "Yo! 'Sup bro? Heard anything 'bout Silohuete?" :)) Ok,ok so I'm stretching it, but that is pretty much J.C.'s approach to "spying" in the whole game, complete with a Matrix-get up and a low key drone-like voice.... yeah, "conspicuous" it ain't! :))

So yeah, yeah, I know what you are thinking: I'm nothing but a little bitch. But remember that in the box it says "epic globe-hopping adventure", etc. etc. Not "cyberpunk B-grade James Bond clone" so I think I'm right when pointing out whenever the so vaunted "realism" comes apart at the seams.

The Bottom Line
Quite simply Deus Ex is a superb game, I can't help pointing out the few flaws because... well, maybe I am nothing but a little bitch :) But still, American tourist simulation or not, braindead AI or not, terrible voice acting or not, Deus Ex is fantastic. It's a remarkable game and everyone who considers him/herself a serious gamer HAS to own it. There is no way around it, Deus Ex is a defining moment in the history of videogames and no one should miss it.

The Good
The Plot behind Deus Ex is solid. Stop the Evil COnspiracy from taking over the world, and it does work, the developers have obviously done their conspiracy story research, with a few literary License mistakes, but that cant be helped.

The Graphics are solid, and sound is good too.

The Bad
The Inventory system Sucks, majorly. If I ever encounter the person who thought that up, I will ensure he or she meets a fowl death.

There seems to be little use for money. Bribing guards is out of the question, which is what I would have liked to do, and some Augmentations just seem stupid (okay, why do I need Night vision when I have Torches in my eyes?).

I would have liked some more skills too, but that would require a bigger game.

The Bottom Line
Its very good, but could have been better. You run around NY, HK, Paris, and numerous other areas uncovering plots and counterplots, killing people, blowing stuff up, and its not senseless violence (unlike say, Doom or Quake) which is a major plus.

Seriously, Try this game out, you'll be caught up in it, while winging about the bugs.

The Good
You know how there are sometimes games everyone keep recommending to you, asking you to play them, and you resist stubbornly, perhaps without even realizing why, talk rudely to your friends, and say: "Gimme a break! I'm not interested! Got that?!"

Well, that's what happened between my game-playing buddies, Deus Ex, and myself. Nearly everyone spoke about this game as if it were a sacred object, almost an idol, worthy of zealous admiration and maybe even human sacrifices. Nearly every review was positive - no, positive is not the correct word. The game was praised up to the point of calling it the Messiah of gaming, the savior of sinful player souls, and the way to a new, enlightened gaming paradise.

Since I usually can't stand this kind of hype, Deus Ex annoyed me long before I actually laid my paws on it. But when I read some of the reviews more carefully and realized the game was a kind of a fancy mixture between FPS, sneaking game, RPG, and adventure, I understood I wouldn't be myself if I didn't try it.

I can't say I fell in love with the game from the moment I inserted the disc into the drive. In fact, the game was heating up pretty slowly. The intro sequence is rather unspectacular, and the first mission not particularly exciting. But times has passed, and it really grew on me.

It is interesting that the atmosphere in the game also develops gradually. The more I played, the more I got sucked into the game, and finally I found myself praising it for what I was already prepared to condemn: its atmosphere. It increases slowly, the more missions you get, and the more clear the relationships between the different characters of the game become. After you get your partner, and your brother appears on the scene as a really important figure, Deus Ex becomes more than just interesting - it actually gets captivating and fascinating.

One of the decisive gameplay elements here is the fantastic interaction with the world, which can be almost compared to Ultima-style "if it is there, you can use it" kind of gameplay. You can fool around with pretty much everything you see, and sometimes the results are more interesting and rewarding than you'd expect. I absolutely love this kind of attention to interaction and detail. I mean, which other game lets you take a break from the story, walk over to a playground and play some basketball?

Deus Ex is a spiritual successor to the fantastic System Shock 2, especially in the way it experiments with different genres. Like System Shock 2, it is also primarily a FPS with strong RPG elements; but it goes even further than its predecessor in merging various playing styles into a single coherent and immensely satisfying whole.

The magic of Deus Ex is that it allows you to play it the way you want to. The different genres are not "over-imposed" on each other, but are merged in such a way that you won't notice it; you'll simply feel that you can do whatever you want. The subtlety of this genre-mixing is astounding; but even more astounding is the fact the game actually works as a representative of any of the genres it contains, taken separately.

Basically, if you liked straight-forward shooters, you can play Deus Ex as one. If you liked Thief-style sneaking, Deus Ex provides it for you as well. If you like RPGs, you can focus your attention on that aspect when playing this game. The thing is that Deus Ex only rarely throws at you tasks that can be completed only in one way; it doesn't have "shooting missions", "stealth missions", etc. You don't need to disable every single alarm or to hack every single computer system to get what you need. The game conveniently offers you several ways of solving a problem. If it doesn't go with force, try using the brains; and vice versa. You choose the approach by yourself almost at any given moment. This is the greatness of Deus Ex.

I loved the RPG touch. You gather "experience points" which you can then allocate to make your character more skillful. You choose yourself how to do it, like in a true hardcore RPG. You can upgrade your weapon skills, or your ability to pick locks, or your swimming, etc. and all those skills are important, it really shows in the game and is a testimony of its fantastic programming. Then there are the bio-upgrades which work a lot like equipment or even like magic spells, you can protect your characters from various poisons and similar things, heal him, make him jump higher, and so on.

The locations of Deus Ex are, for the most part, interesting, large and detailed. You visit large urban areas such as New York or Hong-Kong (one of the best levels), there's no linear "go there, talk to that guy, take this" advancement; on the contrary, you wander around like in a RPG or an adventure game, talk to characters, gather objects, and so on.

The story is more than just a simple "good guys vs. bad guys" thing it seems in the beginning. And the characters are more than just anonymous voices who give you missions. Yes, it takes time to get into the story, but its development and the ending makes up for the long wait. And the final part lets you choose between three ways, each one of which leads to a convincing (in its own way), yet a problematic ending. Bravo! There's no "save the world, get the girl" stuff: you should apply your philosophy and your vision of the world to the game. It is like Shin Megami Tensei, only a bit more concrete.

The Bad
I could mention some obvious flaws such as the not-so-hot graphics in certain areas, the somewhat repetitive level design (too many "square" levels, vents are a bit overused), the length of the game, which is not always a plus (it starts repeating itself, and while some parts are brilliant and full of plot twists, others are just "missions" devoid of story), the average voice acting, the dubious AI (you drop an electronic grenade to disable an alarm two meters from the guard, but he ignores it completely; you run loudly towards a terrorist, and instead of turning his head back at the noise, he waits until you aim your gun at his skull, and says something like "Aha! An intruder, eh? I think you shouldn't be here! Or am I wrong? Maybe it should be so?") and so on. But to tell you the truth, those things didn't really bother me.

The story is not that great. Interesting, yes, with a couple of very good twists, and some fantastic moral choices in the end, but it couldn't help being a bit dry and uninvolved for a game of this scope. Also, the writing is definitely less than stellar; some of the dialogue seems to be taken straight out of a not particularly brilliant B-rated movie.

The Bottom Line
There is no doubt about that: Deus Ex is amazing. Incredible gameplay flexibility, marvelous interactive world, interesting locations and a good plot make it an outstanding shooter/RPG hybrid and an overwhelming, deeply satisfying experience. It fully deserves the praise it has got and stands out as one of the most remarkable achievements of video game design.