Deus Ex: Invisible War

The Good
The story has a lot of twists, the graphics are very atmospheric, the biomod upgrade system adds a lot of strategy and depth to the game, the speech is great, the gameplay is non-linear.

The Bad
Most of the models have been heavily reused through the game, the story has more twists than required, You can't use more than 6 different upgrades at a time.

The Bottom Line
Deus Ex 2 is simply a breathtaking joyride through a dark world of corruption, lies, heroes and demons, with a lot of story twists. You start as Alex D. (either male or female depending on Your choice at the beginning of the game) and are about to uncover that the fate of the world is not decided by the people, but by 4 groups which have different interests and aims, and You are just a puppet in a big conspiracy game.... Since this is a mixture between roleplaying game, FPS, adventure, You have a lot of choices on what You will do and who You will work with. You meet a lot of friendly or neutral NPCs who will give You jobs, ask for or offer help, want to trade with You, like in any good RPG. The nice and immersive thing is that You can accept jobs from different parties resulting in changes of how the story evolves. Sometimes You are told to kill someone by one fraction and ordered to save him by another... There's also quite a nice variety of real-world weapons, like flamethrowers, missile launchers, knifes, swords etc. Besides that, there is the biomodification system, that offers You slots (body parts) to be "enhanced": You can modify the brains (to hack computer systems via a neural port), the eyes (better sight, remote control killer drones...), the body itself (becoming invisible...), the legs (faster, higher jumps, safe landing from high altitude, sneaking...), the arms (more strength, built-in bioweapons...).... In each slot, You can only have one modification, but the choice between three different ones (including mods called "illegal"). The best part is that You can play Deus Ex 2 the way You want.Each problem can be solved in different ways, You can infiltrate buildings via the ventilation system, by using "multitools" (a kind of digital lockpick key set), by using a weapon (missile launcher), by getting a code card....that code card could be obtained through a dialogue, by stealing it, by finding it in a chest....it happened to me to actually reload the game several times to try different approaches, and in almost any situation, You can find a non-violent way to solve a problem. There's always the option to fight Your enemies with bio-toxine which will render them unconscious, instead of having to kill them. Or, like in Splintercell, You can just try to sneak by (using Your biomods to become invisible for as long as the bio-battery holds...). Plus, there's multiple ways to combine Your bio-modifications, so at the end of the day, Deus Ex 2 offers a tremendous amount of non-linear ways to play the game and experience it YOUR way, and it has real lastability, because You would find new ways to play it even when playing it for the third or fourth time. Add to that the four different endings depending for which party You eventually finish the game, and You have another classic game made by the awesome folks at Ion Storm.

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.