Deus Ex 2: Invisible War

I just revisited the second instalment in the Deus Ex universe. Don’t have much to add to the general consensus that this is an inferior sequel yet a decent game in its own right. Lots of console compromises but deus-ex series ambience and allure are still there. Just a technical note: I’ve used a lutris script (GOG version + mods) for playing it on Linux (wine) which automatically installs ‘Visible Upgrade with John P Unified Texture Pack, ‘ESRGAN Texture Pack’, high-res fonts, dgVoodoo2 and Large Address Aware patch. Game looked considerably better than vanilla and ran perfectly well without the compatibility issues many players complain about on win 10.

Even played out of the context of deus ex 1 its simply just a poor game / shooter. Universal ammo is never a good idea and eliminates the "wow i found some more darts for my tranquzliser" moments. The augs and stats are removed and the augs are ok but i miss the leveling up system coinciding with the augs from deus ex 1 which is removed from the latter deus ex games it made more sense to me in the context of the world. The story starts out well but it destroyed by the lack of consequence in the factions and its hard due to trying to incorporate all 3 endings from the 1st game into this plot. The pacing and the levels are fairly small making the grand scale of the locations feel small and ruined some of my immersion. It's not a good game but every now and again i feel that the people who made this tried but they didn't "get" deus ex or were afraid a wider audience wouldn't get deus ex . P.S i would talk about the AI but honestly its probably great AI compared to most FPS games.

Invisible War has two irredeemable features. 1: by making the game cross compatible with consoles they nerfed the rpg elements, gameplay, level design, and even combat system; 2: it was the highly anticipated sequel to a PC game believed by most (myself included) to be the GOAT. I played this game a long time ago, and didn't get too far in before I gave up in disgust. While it probably has some redeeming values I wouldn't know what they are. Granted, I am a massive fan of the first game so my review is undoubtedly biased - but I'd recommend buying Deus Ex 1 GOTY ed. and install a graphics mod instead - and you'll be biased too;).

This game got great press when it was released, a lot of awards, was commercially successful ... the whole shooting match. It's easy to understand why, it's a nice tight game with good focus and good combat. Writing is respectable considering it's a game, voice acting is good, it looks good. It can be hard to get working on modern hardware, but just do a search for "imagecfg.exe" which is a tool from the Windows 2000 Server feature pack that lets you permanently configure executables to run on a single core. Apply that to the three main executables, then get the popular VisibleUpgrade mod. Viola. This game is better than 90% of the games being released today. At the current price of under $2 it's such a good deal it should be a crime.

It's just not quite what the original was. Basically, I, like most was disappointed at first. I didn't like the cartoon feel of the character art, and the game ran terribly on my computer when I first played it. Then of course there was the physics, you bump into something and it flies across the room. I quickly overcame what I didn't like, though, because this game does offer something really good. AMBIANCE. I loved the feel of walking around Upper Seattle, and then seeing the stark contrast between life there and Lower Seattle, truly life in the future will be very Blade Runner-Esque. This game is a testament to that. By far Seattle is the best area in the game, but I also very much enjoyed the other areas. This is a game where you just feel like you're there. With all this said, I consider the original Deus Ex to be the best game of all time, and this doesn't quite live up to that Legacy, but of the few Deus Ex clones out there, this is certainly one of the best.