grimjack2's Full Review: Deus Ex (Game of the Year Edition) for Windows
I can’t believe I waited so long to play this game. In a time when so many 1st person shooters have single player games that last maybe ten hours, this one could possibly have one hundred hours of game time behind it. In a time when so many 1st person shooters seem to feel so much more simple than the one you played just last month, this game feels like a true role playing game. In a time when people need to go back three years to praise Half-life for having a great story that is both involving and cinematic, Deus Ex manages to have the most available branches and open ended story line I have ever seen. And this includes the more traditional role playing games like Baldur’s Gate. Most impressive is the fact that this game gives you so many ways to play it, that you very likely won’t mind starting it again, and make different choices giving you an entirely different experience.
Choices is probably the key word here, because that is what this game is really about. On one level you have all these choices to make regarding your character’s statistics, and what he will specialize in. You are infrequently given skill points that you use among the ten different skills. There are four types of weapon specialties, computer hacking, lockpicking, swimming, medical training, and more. Most skills have different requirements to go up to the next level, and they all become exponentially more difficult to increase to subsequent ones. This gives you some choices. You could go up one level in swimming for a mere 700 or so points, or since you tend not to swim in the game, do you wait until you have 1800 points to go from level 2 to level 3 in your lockpicking skills?
The instructions make it clear that no matter how thoroughly you play the game, there is no way you are going to be able to master more than one or two skills, and it won’t pay to try and be a jack of all trades. What you have to do is decide if you are going to play the game as a stealthy thief, a talented computer hacker, or as a slightly more organic terminator fighting all challengers. This is the second tier of your choices. Throughout the whole game, puzzles can be solved multiple ways. Sometimes you can make a direct assault killing all that you see. However, you could also pick the lock and hide in the shadows to evade the enemy. Another option might be to hack into a computer system, unlock all the doors, and tell the gun turrets to fire only on your enemies. Still another option may be to swim around all the opponents through a secret sewage tunnel, or those players with augmented strength could stack large boxes to make a makeshift stairway allowing rooftop access.
Yes, the game is this complete, which is great in that it gives you the feeling of real ‘world’ to play in (as opposed to a tunnel through a real world you have to traverse like in “Half-life”). However, for perfectionists like myself, it is frustrating going back over every nook and cranny seeking to find the alternate paths that I don’t need to go back for any reason other than to earn more skill points.
The game is from one of the gentleman I consider to be Royalty in the world of computer game design. Along with Sid Meier and John Carmack, Warren Spector has helped design or greatly influenced “Ultima Underworld”, “Thief 1 & 2”, “System Shock 1 & 2” and “Flight Unlimited”. Actually, it is quite fair to describe this game as a combination of “Thief” and “System Shock 2”. The interface and general feel of the game is similar to System Shock, but it does contain a lot of the sneaking elements of “Thief”. And like “Thief”, there is an excellent background story that you uncover as you play the game. It involves all the major conspiracies from the illuminati, Area 51, the Free Masons, Men in Black, and you name it, and rolls it all up like one long episode of the X-files.
The third level of choices you have in the game is in the way that you modify yourself and your equipment. Your character is a bionic man. Just like “System Shock 2”, you have mechanical augmentations that you can add to as you play the game. Hopefully your choices will be determined by how you play the game, and not the other way around, but I’m sure there are people out there who thought being a great computer hacker fits them, but then they play the game like it is a Quake Deathmatch. You only have so many inventory slots (Why do programmers never give you enough room to store your stuff? Does anyone ever find this challenging as opposed to frustrating?) and some of the more powerful weapons might take up to 1/6 of all your available slots. If you enjoy carrying rocket launchers and similar stuff around, you probably won’t be able to also keep a sniper rifle or the shotgun. Throughout the game you will find weapon modifications that can improve recoil, clip size, reload time, accuracy, and more, even including a scope or laser pointer. When faced with the choice of improving the accuracy of a weapon I have to choose whether or not I want to improve my sniper rifle which is already pretty accurate, or a 10mm pistol with a silencer that isn’t too accurate, but I really only use up close. These types of choices really adds depth to the game, and you get an attachment to weapons you have modified, even when you come across better ones later on.
Along a similar vein, you also have modifications you can make to your body. There are seven or eight of them, but in reality there are twice that many. For instance, you can augment your legs in one of two ways. Move more silently, or move faster. Once you make your choice, you can upgrade yourself several times, but you only get one or the other. You can be a better swimmer or be more resistant to poisons. Do you want to have the ability to zoom in and target without the use of a sniper scope, or do you want to be able to see enemies through the walls? Again, it’s all about choices, which makes this game one of the most open ended ones available today, except for the massively multiplayer ones.
The fourth level of choices is in how you play the game. You can kill everyone you see, or you can tranquilize them with crossbow darts, knock them unconscious, or even use a stun gun to take them out. An unconscious enemy is the equivalent of a dead one, and will not recover even after hours of waiting. Blowing up an enemy doesn’t seem to make his corpse have any less ammo or items than he would otherwise. You would think it is all the same, but the game doesn’t think so. If you don’t kill enough people, your bosses may think you are weak, and criticize you for being too easy on the enemy, and taking too many risks for yourself. When you do kill lots of people, your brother, and the sergeant at arms criticize you. I was very impressed that the quartermaster was upset with how many people I killed one mission and gave me a scope so that I could be more accurate instead of giving me more ammunition. Another time he complimented me for sparing someone’s life against direct orders and offered me a different ammunition selection for the non fatal weapons.
The fifth level of choices is in the actual path structure of the game. Choices come up that can effect the entire rest of the game. Not too far into the game, you actually get to make some choices that involve directly betraying your bosses and being hunted by your own people, or instead you can turn in your brother who is trying to convince you that you aren’t playing for the right team. You can assassinate someone as ordered, or you can hear what he has to say. Most lesser games only give you one path, and taking the wrong one ends the game for you in one way or another. Not here! There is so much to do, and so many paths to take that you eventually end up playing just how you morally would. Sort of like the beginning of Ultima IV so many years ago made you, although on a much lesser scale.
The graphics were excellent for it’s day, and are still more than just respectable today. The game uses a modified Unreal engine, which strikes me as odd since the other games from the designers used the lithtech engine. The sounds is EAX and works well with four speakers. Often times you can listen to a conversation through a wall or just here the general mumbling of guards you are sneaking around, and it really adds to the atmosphere. If I have any complaints with the sound it is that the voice acting is unusually bad for a game of this quality in other areas. All they had to do was have qualified voice actors mouth the lines instead of what sometime sounds like their office staff reading the lines from a script.
I’m amazed at just how much game these guys were able to fit onto one CD! The maps are huge, and I can’t express to you the shock I felt when I realized after about 20 hours of the game that I was only about 20% of the way through it according to a strategy guide. I never look at a walkthrough before I play the game, but for a game like this, I have saved my game just before a ‘mission’ ends, and than I’ll look up on a walkthrough to see if I missed any major secrets containing a major weapons modification or something else very valuable. I am really impressed that the three professional walkthroughs I’ve seen all have variations on how they suggest to solve each section. I’m certain that I’ve even found one or two secrets that none of the guides mention.
The enemy AI is above average, but is still exploitable. They duck, but never really go prone or use obstacles for defense. Picking them off from a distance is similar to “Hitman” where they might crowd around the body and run in circles wondering where the shot is coming from, but if they weren’t close enough to hear your gun fire, they will eventually calm down as just start patrolling again. Unlike “Thief”, I don’t think I’ve ever had a patrolling enemy come across the body of a fallen comrade and do anything about it. Wounded guards will run and set off alarms which will cause others to come looking for you. I also once had an amazing moment where I leaned over the edge of a rooftop and shot a guard in the head with a silenced pistol. He screamed when he died and his comrade opened fire on me. I pulled back from the ledge and figured I could wait sixty seconds or so for him to calm down, and then I could lean out and take him down as well. Instead I heard a sound a realized that he was pitching grenades onto my roof, and I didn’t get far enough away in time.
The interface is very similar to “System Shock 2” and works just as well. For the most part, one hand on the mouse and one on the movement keys works just fine. The number keys are 10 configurable keys for using inventory items, and don’t have to be just weapons. The function keys work your augmentations, although you can remap these to keys easier to find if you think you are going to use them often.
I like how your target reticule starts off large, and slowly shrinks the longer you stand still or when you crouch. If you start to run it grows showing that your weapons are more likely to miss. This helps snipers, far more than it does circle strafers. The enemy seems to suffer the same, so expect to often see them crouch and take aim before pulling the trigger.
As I played it further I did realize some kinks in the armor. The game really doesn’t reward you for all out assaults, so in a sense it is limiting you to subterfuge. Many of the augmentations are minor enough that you really don’t use them as much as you should. The inventory hot keys work great, but the layout of your ‘backpack’ is worse than games from years ago like “Diablo 2”. Almost the whole game is played at night, and the indoors are usually dark forcing you to use your ‘flashlight’ which gets tiresome. And being so large an area does make it possible to miss an important dialogue, or some valuable items, but this is arguably not a bad thing, but a really good thing.
Still, even with these complaints, I cannot recommend this game enough. I have been meaning to play this game for almost two years, and feel silly that I waited for the current lull in new software to finally get to it.
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