What I mean is that is it possible to play this game as a shooter?

Max out the Gun Skills like Pistols and Rifles to make them accurate right off the bat?

Deus Ex is known for its "Tackle this game in anyway you want"

So has anyone played the game in this fashion. Complete forfeit stealth in favor of all guns blazing?

Try many people. IMO, one of the more boring ways to play.

I did that once, but only once. It's actually kind of fun doing that for a change, and it works perfectly fine. The only thing you have to be careful about is managing your weapons and ammuntion. No weapon has enough ammunition to serve as your one-and-only gun, which means that you have to carry around several different guns and switch between them depending on how much ammo you have for each, and whom or what you're fighting.

I kept switching between the pistol (not the stealth pistol, the normal one), the assault rifle, and the shotgun most of the time. Bringing along a melee weapon for quick kills on single opponents to save a few rounds is also not a bad idea.

However, playing Deus Ex in a guns-blazing, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later manner is a bit of a mixed experience overall. It's like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet with a wide variety of utterly delicious dishes, and eating nothing but bread -- you'll be sated afterwards, but you'll miss out on the best things. ;)

Right from the start, it'll be challenging to do this. The highest you'll be able to get Pistols and Rifles will be one at Advanced and the other at Trained, which means you're going to miss. A lot. Or need to take so long to wait for your shots that you'll be needing a large supply of medkits after each fight.

However, it is a possibility. You just have to be smart, and take enemies on one at a time, or in the smallest numbers you can. I'd recommend starting with Pistols at Advanced, as that's the ammo you're going to find the most of in the early levels. You're going to go through a lot of it. Explore everywhere to get skill points so you can get Rifles up to a decent level as soon as possible to make the assault rifle viable once you get to Hell's Kitchen.

Ambush tactics are your friend here. Get in close so you'll hit. Good luck!

It is more than possible; it is actually my preferred play style since I have little patience for stealth.

You don't have to limit yourself to pistols/rifles, either. You can beat the game with just a pistol. You can even beat the game with just a combat knife, although you'll initially be restricted to a stealthy approach. Heavy weapons is also fun, as the flamethrower kills most enemies in one hit, and you can run with them once your skill is advanced.

***MANY SPOILERS FOLLOW***


Starting off

Unfortunately, at the start of the game you don't have many options, so it's the most restrictive phase of the game. You will need some sneakiness to survive, but not as much as you might expect. When you're willing to use the many weapons in your arsenal, you'll discover just how versatile your character can be.

If you're going pistols, then you're set the from start. Just upgrade it and enjoy.

With the other weapon sets, I generally start with pistols on trained. It's slightly annoying because you have to wait a couple of seconds for the reticle to shrink, but the AI has such a short line of sight that you can just stand in plain view. Ammo can be a problem because at low skill levels even maximum aim is inaccurate enough to miss at range. This is where your versatility comes in. Even when you're untrained in a weapon skill, the weapons can still be useful. And there are plenty of weapons on Liberty Island.

First, rifles. There are four rifle weapons on Liberty Island: the sniper rifle from Paul, the sniper rifle from the NSF sniper patrolling the dark area outside the statue, the shotgun from the barge, and the assault rifle from the UNATCO soldier in the statue. Unless you're going rifles, the only weapon that will be useful is the shotgun for the close quarters fighting inside the statue.

I generally prefer the GEP gun from Paul, even when going rifles. Each round is basically a guaranteed kill, and you don't have to worry overly much about preserving ammo since most players ditch the bulky thing quite early.

Transquiliser darts are also basically a one hit kill.

If you're going low-tech, the pepper gun at the front of the statue is useful.

There is loads of TNT lying around. You can get a few kills by throwing TNT at people. Like the security bot outside the front entrance to the statue. If you have the patience for being a bit sneakier, then you can booby trap the patrol route and shoot the TNT box. But I usually just throw it and duck away.

There's a LAM inside the front entrance to the statue. There are four gas grenades halfway up the statue that you can disarm. I think there are a few other grenades lying around the place. Gas grenades can help you get in close if you're going low-tech.

You can convert the turrets without needing any computer skill. (Computer skill makes any playthrough easier, but is far from essential.) You can lure enemies to your turrets and bots.

There are two medbots hidden in different crates outside the statue. The cheapest way to access them is with TNT. A pistol round to the head will kill you, so you still need to use tactics that minimise your risk of getting shot, but the bots are handy if something goes wrong.

I might be missing a few other things. All in all, you have plenty of options available depending on what you feel like doing.

Make sure to have a candy bar in your inventory when you leave Liberty Island.

At Castle Clinton, you can storm the front and let Navarre do most of the work. If you're going heavy weapons, then taking the back way nets you an early flamethrower. Ammo for your rifles will be scarce until you reach Hell's Kitchen.

Once you reach Hell's Kitchen, your options start opening up. Pistols and rifles now have sufficient resources to specialise. Heavy weapons and low-tech will remain difficult; low-tech because close combat remains risky, and heavy weapons because ammo is scarce. So you'll probably be relying on your pistol for more situations. But you can do so much more now, such that you should be able to handle most obstacles without resorting to stealth. You have gas grenades for incapacitating crowds, pepper spray for close quarters with the knife, LAMs, a flamethrower with a decent quantity of ammo, a variety of weapons, and medkits. And if you added a laser sight to your pistol, then accuracy is no longer an issue even if your skill level is low. I wouldn't waste a laser mod on a pistol if I'm going rifles, though. Putting a laser on the sniper rifle or assault rifle is much more important for a rifle user.


Strategy and tactics

Environmental training is a valuable skill, and you should aim to get it to advanced as fast as possible. The consumable suits become more powerful than fully upgraded augmentations, provide features from multiple augmentations, and the benefits stack. For example, with environmental training skill at master level, ballistic armour reduces damage by 87% from both bullets and explosions. Level four ballistic protection aug reduces damage from bullets by 65%. When you're using both simultaneously, you only take 4.5% damage from bullets. You're basically a god.

Gung ho combat becomes viable long before this. If you have a ballistic suit, and some environmental training, then you can jump into a crowd and start stabbing. Once you have the ballistic protection aug, your ability to take risks in combat improves significantly.

Medicine is an important skill. Getting it to advanced helps tremendously. You can even open your menu during the game and selectively heal parts of your body. This ensures that your healing is applied preferentially to your head and torso instead of being wasted on your limbs. You can fight without legs, but you cannot fight without a head.

A level or two in demolitions is useful. Don't hoard your grenades. By the end of the game, you'll be able to handle most obstacles using your primary weapons, and your augs make you nigh invincible. Your grenades are most useful when you are a mere fledgling god.

You'll spend most of the game with your primary weapon skill at advanced level. Master skill provides some perks, such as allowing a sniper rifle to destroy turrets in one hit, but advanced skill is adequate for most purposes.

Even when I'm not using rifles, I like to keep an assault rifle in my inventory just for the HE rounds. You might find that this helps you overcome a tendency to hoard LAMs. It can shoot explosives further than you can throw them, and it only takes half the space of a GEP gun.

You can run faster than a military bot can turn. You can take one out with a shotgun without taking damage. Sabot rounds are also useful against spider bots. I think it's also possible to kite security bots with a shotgun, but can't remember for sure. I remember that military bots eat up a lot of ammo, so it's often better to use a grenade first.

Plain crossbow darts do the same damage as sniper rounds. (I can't remember if any skill upgrades are required for full effect.)

You never need more than one skill level in swimming, electronics and lockpicking. It's possible to do without, but the convenience is tremendous. You can get by without computers. This means more skill points earlier in medicine, environmental training and your selected weapons skill.

It's possible to kill MIBs in melee and escape the explosion unscathed.

You can shoot weapons out of an enemy's hands. Handy if you want what a MIB's carrying, or just don't want to deal with a mess.

Commandos are deadly. Stay at range so they'll use rockets instead of their minigun. Install the aggressive defense system.

Energy is usually not a problem if you know the game well, as most battles are quick and brutal. So you can use the synthetic heart to squeeze more out of your augs, even beyond level four. But I usually take power recirculator because by this stage, you're so powerful already that it's more convenient to remove the issue of energy management altogether.

You can guess some passwords and key codes. I think most, if not all, key codes of three digits or fewer can be "guessed" without brute force, although the hints can be somewhat obscure. Some passwords that you can guess include Alex Jacobson's, Maggie Chow's, and Beth Duclare's. (Beth Duclare's might be a key code; I just remember that it's important for some reason: maybe it has something to do with an upgrade canister?) I don't recall any logic to the ATMs, but you don't need ATM money.

The environmental resistance aug makes a nice complement to gas grenades.


Closing thoughts

My biggest gripe with this game is the few convenient opportunities to use a LAW. The only time I ever have the spare inventory space to lug a spare LAW around is if I'm going low-tech. And then there's never a satisfying opportunity that I would want to use it. And I think it's a shame that you can only carry one LAW at a time.

Great post by ForgottenTrope.

Here is the thing about Deus Ex: The designers thought that "play it any way you want" means "create so many paths you can progress quickly regardless of character build". You don't actually need to invest in any skills or augs at all, there is always a convenient window somewhere or some other place to circumvent difficult fights. Playing it like a shooter just means you probably won't be vent crawling for the sake of avoiding locked doors and enemies as you would playing a sort of pacifist sneak'em up.

That said, Deus Ex doesn't have proper first person shooter style weapons. They are all quite slow and many times rather weak. You won't be running and gunning with the assault rifle as you would in a more focused shooter. They are not suited for hard charges, you'll want to hit them like lightning from a clear sky anyways to get a bigger damage modifier (against unaware targets). Explosives on the other hand are very brutal and makes fighting multiple enemies quite a lot easier than using the shooting weapons.

In the vanilla game, you can downgrade the pistol and start without any skills. Due to a design oversight, your pistol skill will be trained when the game starts anyhow but you still get to keep the refunded XP. Bump it up to Advanced in the first few seconds of the game, don't spend any other XP. On Liberty Island alone you will find three accuracy mods. Save them for now, you don't want to give an upgraded pistol to Gunther by mistake. By the end of the first mission you should have enough XP to evolve the Pistol skill to master level. Slap the three accuracy mods on the pistol and it will now have 100% accuracy and almost no bullet spread during movement. This is the quickest way to get the shooting mechanics of the game up to "run and gun", though the pistol is very slow firing so you still have to use some element of surprise and avoid being seen while trying to take down groups of enemies. Still, I like the pistol a lot better than the assault rifle or either shotgun because it is the gun that actually fit the awkward unintuitive shooting mechanics of the game.

The stealth pistol is too weak and low range, the crossbow is even worse. The sawn of shotgun is so inefficient I'd rather just run up to unaware enemies and stab them in the eyes when they turn around. Assault shotgun and assault rifle, meh, they just feel weak and unresponsive. Sniper rifle is fine, but isn't exactly a weapon to fight with. I find the flame thrower so weird I've never wanted to use it. The plasma rifle projectiles sail slowly through the air, they are just weird and not all that good at anything. The GEP gun isn't exactly a fighting weapon either, it fires slow moving rockets and you never have enough ammunition to really use it much for fighting. Grenades are limp wristed and slow to detonate, not all that great feeling on the offensive. This just isn't a game for taking the fight to the enemy. The weapons are only servicable enough to strike from the dark, to make deliberate surprise attacks or detonating exploding barrels. Shooting lone enemies in the back of the head, fine, the arsenal covers that kind of shooting. Much of the shooting game will be an awkward feeling uphill battle though.