Deus Ex™ GOTY Edition

A true masterpiece. No further comments needed.

While a bit daunting for newcomers, Deus Ex still offers up some great FPS meets RPG gameplay. We all know the cliche's: cyberpunk, dystopian future, with a morally grey protagonist who ends up entangled in something far bigger than himself. Hell, what am I talking about? We LOVE these damn cliche's! Deus Ex manages to deliver everything we love about the ol' William Gibson novels (which are turning out to be rather prophetic these days), while offering a pretty wide variety of CHOICE. What sorts of choices? From augments to multiple ways of handling situations. Wanna run-n-gun it? Do you. Wanna go Solid Snakin' it? Slither, homey. Wanna be diplomatic? Everyone needs friends. Just be sure to equip the augments that play nice with said play style. Graphically, Deus Ex uses the ol' Unreal Engine. So don't expect face melting graphics. However, for retro gamers like myself, these "old" graphics lend to the atmosphere in Deus EX: a time when cyberpunk was more escapist and less like what we all now live. In terms of difficulty, Deus Ex can be punishing. Particularly if you choose augments that don't work well with your tactics. At its time of release, this mechanic was still very experimental in gaming. Deus Ex definitely plays best on a second or third (or fourth or fifth) play-through. Whether for challenge, for a good story, for nostalgia, or for a good allegory of where First World society is right now, Deus Ex is worth owning.

There are two sides to this game. One is storytelling. And while some of my friends consider the story a bit too convoluted, I enjoyed every minute of it. Sometimes the game can be a bit frustrating with all those multitools and lockpicks and you running out of them in the important moment. But the general feeling of the game is just great. The other thing is the technicalities. Well, the game is over 20 years old and it shows. The models are very low-polygon for today standards, the textures are so-so, the mechanics can be sometimes annoying. And it definitely pays off to find some mod that lets you play in higher resolution and such. (like GMDX). The streets are not as crowded as in GTA, there are relatively few areas you can get into. But you have usualy several approaches available depending on your style of play - stealth or gun blazing. Overall - if you've never played it before, you might get put off by the technicalities but it's worth getting over this feeling to get through the story.

Just beat it on Realistic, wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. First time ever playing the game by the way. Sooo... how does one of the most acclaimed titles in gaming history hold up? Pretty damn well. The best thing about it is how addictive and fun it is, you almost always make progress and there's some well-earned satisfaction when you complete a mission. And it's not frustrating, mostly due to the now-extinct save-when-you-like system; whenever you die it takes you longer to actually press the quick load button than for the game to actually load it. It's also cool to have all those RPG elements, different paths to choose from, side quests you can take or ignore. Pretty standard these days but I imagine it to be quite a shocker back in 2000. But then there's stuff DX doesn't do well. The story, while interesting, doesn't really deviate from the course you'd expect it to take right at the start and the plot twists alog the way range from "I saw that coming" to "Well, I guess she might have been with the bad guys all along". The characters are one-dimensional, forgettable and easy to confuse, especially our protagonist, who in terms of blandness could give Keanu Reeves a run for his money. The voice acting is half-decent with a bunch of over-the-top accents that make you question the hardcore sci-fi atmosphre around you. The graphics failed to impress even at release and the enemy AI is a joke. So what if they ring an alarm? I'll just sit this one through and it's gonna be like they never saw me in the first place. And don't even get me started on the Bethesda-proportion bugs and glitches that infest every corner of the game. With all that in mind, I still enjoyed it. But no, it's not a masterpiece: DX simply takes way too many missteps for me to be able to count it among the real works of gaming art, such as KotOR. Give it a try nonetheless and don't worry about the difficulty, the game's not that hard. Trust me, I'm a noob.

-You will be who you will be. We are our choices. And we can choose to lead humanity away from this...darkness. -This is what I was made for, isn't it? This is why I exist? All right, let's do this.