Consider this a dual review; I'm reviewing both the original and the sequel here.

My first experience with Deus Ex was when my brother showed me a few minutes of the gameplay on his PC back in 2000. It wasn't too terribly far into the game but far enough that I had no clue what was going on story wise or what sort of gameplay mechanics it used. That was the seed that began it all, however.

A few months after that I found a jewel case for about $20 in a used PC store. Figuring that I could spend $20 on worse things, I snatched it up and went back to my dorm. Took a bit to tweak the settings to balance visuals with framerate (the computer I owned at the time was ancient even then) but finally worked all of that out.

And it didn't take too long before I realized why my brother liked the game so much.

I'd played a few games that allowed for freedom of choice before, but not to the scale that was offered here, and certainly not one that had as much replay value. I couldn't even begin to imagine how many times I replayed a particular level, or the game from beginning to end, trying something else just to see how it'd play out, and it took many, many playthroughs before I finally could say I saw/heard everything. Even on playthroughs where I already figured I must've seen/heard everything, I still ended up uncovering something new.

The game had a stronger emphasis on the shooter aspect than sneaking/hacking, but the general gaming atmosphere, and the expectations of the gaming audience at the time, were far different than it'd be today, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that shooting through the game was oftentimes the main path. There always was a stealth route available (apparently, even the most secure, heavily defended bases on the planet all have at least one air duct large enough for a man to crawl through - and they can crawl through completely silent at that!) but breaking stealth, accidentally or otherwise usually meant a fight until everything around you gathered flies. The fact that decisions in one level rarely impacted the game in the long term was disappointing, but it was more than fun enough to see everything it had to offer. In the end, the game was easily one of my favorite games and likely always will be.

Then, about a year ago, I stumbled across a copy of the much less well received sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War. By the time it originally came out, I was drifting away from PC gaming as a whole and didn't really bother to check into it before this. I knew that lots of people hated the game, but some enjoyed it, and I finally decided that there was only one way to find out which camp I belonged in.

By then I had a computer that was made several years after DE:IW came out, and was far more powerful than the recommended specs on the box.

Yet, somehow when the game began, I had to spend at least 15 minutes messing with the visual settings before finally having no choice but to scale everything - resolution, textures, the whole nine - down to the lowest levels. If I made one single setting go higher than the absolute lowest, it'd be a slideshow. Didn't matter which one, every single setting had to be at its lowest. Yet somehow everything at the lowest was smooth - there was no in-between. Not a great way to start things off, especially when you already have concerns about the game.

And it only got worse from there.

It's already very hard to ignore the mechanical flaws this game has, such as the horrible voice acting from every major character who wasn't in the first game (and some who were) the clunky gameplay, the annoying side quests that I ended up just ignoring about half way in, the horribly washed out colors, goofy character animations, the tad bit TOO streamlined inventory and magic ammo pool from whence all weapons drew being examples just off the top of my head. These might - just MIGHT - be forgiven if the story and characters themselves are great. But these are also two areas where IW failed to deliver. There were zero - literally, zero - great plot twists. There is a plot twist towards the latter half of the game that changes how you view the factions, but even if the plot twist was mind-blowing and completely unpredictable, (it's not!) it doesn't hold any weight to the game, so replaying the game and knowing the truth doesn't really make a difference. The plot twist in this game doesn't quite hold the same impact as the original KOTOR when you discovered who Darth Revan was, or perhaps Andrew Ryan telling you to stop (and what he says after) in Bioshock, or when Harbinger said what would be his final two words to...somebody who's not Shepherd in Mass Effect 2, despite the fact that it looks like that's what the developers were striving for. It seems like they were trying to wow us with that plot twist, yet it just falls flat.

There's also no real sense of escalating tension between protagonist and antagonist(s) either. In the original, every step forward meant two steps back, as it should be. Here, there were multiple factions going head to head and trying to convince you to take their side, but there's no real reason to care about any one of them, and the fact that you could have actively worked against any one of them the entire game yet still be able to fulfill their agenda was disappointing. In one instance, this can even mean going so far as to kill a key member of the original game in cold blood. You could do that, and still work with that faction, as if nothing was wrong. No real consequence for your actions.

Speaking of factions, did anybody else's hand attach itself to forehead upon finding out that one of the factions is - I'm not making this up - the Templars? Oh, but it gets better! Despite being disbanded over 7 centuries ago, somehow the Templars manage to raise up a formidable army, in a horrible, global recession no less, complete with walking mechs, choppers, tanks, you name it. You also spend the majority of the game sneaking into, killing, destroying, disrupting and otherwise giving anything that is even remotely Templar a headache of titanic proportions. But towards the end of the game, that doesn't matter none! Nope! The grandmaster of the Templar order doesn't seem to care one bit that you've killed countless soldiers and cost him millions in equipment loss. He'll still let you work for him if you're so inclined! And unless I missed something, the game also didn't really explain how Chad went from peaceful protester to megalomaniacal, homicidal dictator who would stop at nothing for total control. He was easily as detestable as the grandmaster of the Templars, if not more so.

The endings do require that you commit to a certain path at the very end (but only the very end) and they divulge largely from each other - they are mutually exclusive. In the original, they're not really so exclusive, a fact that this game takes on, because the canon "ending" the sequel uses is a combination of all of them. That is to say, JC fulfills every ending, and the world is shaped by that. But despite being mutually exclusive and forcing a final commitment, they still disappoint.

The only real improvements this game had over the original are that unlike the first game, you can 1.) Play a male or female operative. 2.) You can't save, get a door code by paying somebody, reload the game and use the code without spending the money - this time, you have to have the code to open the door. 3.) Air ducts are also guarded this time. 4. There's an interactive AI who resembles a major pop star. In one exchange, you can reveal the actual pop star's manager doing a dirty deed and ask her what she'll do. Her response? "Oh, tra la la...I'll probably just fire the b---h!" That got a good laugh. 5.) And the last level in the game was a good choice, as it ties the storyline back to the original game.

But those are it. And those plusses do not even begin to compensate for IW's many and deep flaws. So, in the end, I have no choice but to side with the camp who loved the original but hated the sequel. Fortunately, Human Revolution proved to be just what the series needs to bring it back into the limelight, so hopefully we can all move forward and forget this awful game.

Deus Ex: 9.5/10
Invisible War: 3.75/10 (And I feel that I'm being generous with that score.)
Human Revolution: 8.5/10
Consider this a dual review; I'm reviewing both the original and the sequel here. My first experience with Deus Ex was when my brother showed me a few minutes of the gameplay on his PC back in 2000. It wasn't too terribly far into the game but far enough that I had no clue what was going on story wise or what sort of gameplay mechanics it used. That was the seed that began it all, however. A few months after that I found a jewel case for about $20 in a used PC store. Figuring that I could spend $20 on worse things, I snatched it up and went back to my dorm. Took a bit to tweak the settings to balance visuals with framerate (the computer I owned at the time was ancient even then) but finally worked all of that out. And it didn't take too long before I realized why my brother liked the game so much. I'd played a few games that allowed for freedom of choice before, but not to the scale that was offered here, and certainly not one that had as much replay value. I couldn't even begin to imagine how many times I replayed a particular level, or the game from beginning to end, trying something else just to see how it'd play out, and it took many, many playthroughs before I finally could say I saw/heard everything. Even on playthroughs where I already figured I must've seen/heard everything, I still ended up uncovering something new. The game had a stronger emphasis on the shooter aspect than sneaking/hacking, but the general gaming atmosphere, and the expectations of the gaming audience at the time, were far different than it'd be today, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that shooting through the game was oftentimes the main path. There always was a stealth route available (apparently, even the most secure, heavily defended bases on the planet all have at least one air duct large enough for a man to crawl through - and they can crawl through completely silent at that! ) but breaking stealth, accidentally or otherwise usually meant a fight until everything around you gathered flies. The fact that decisions in one level rarely impacted the game in the long term was disappointing, but it was more than fun enough to see everything it had to offer. In the end, the game was easily one of my favorite games and likely always will be. Then, about a year ago, I stumbled across a copy of the much less well received sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War. By the time it originally came out, I was drifting away from PC gaming as a whole and didn't really bother to check into it before this. I knew that lots of people hated the game, but some enjoyed it, and I finally decided that there was only one way to find out which camp I belonged in. By then I had a computer that was made several years after DE:IW came out, and was far more powerful than the recommended specs on the box. Yet, somehow when the game began, I had to spend at least 15 minutes messing with the visual settings before finally having no choice but to scale everything - resolution, textures, the whole nine - down to the lowest levels. If I made one single setting go higher than the absolute lowest, it'd be a slideshow. Didn't matter which one, every single setting had to be at its lowest. Yet somehow everything at the lowest was smooth - there was no in-between. Not a great way to start things off, especially when you already have concerns about the game. And it only got worse from there. It's already very hard to ignore the mechanical flaws this game has, such as the horrible voice acting from every major character who wasn't in the first game (and some who were) the clunky gameplay, the annoying side quests that I ended up just ignoring about half way in, the horribly washed out colors, goofy character animations, the tad bit TOO streamlined inventory and magic ammo pool from whence all weapons drew being examples just off the top of my head. These might - just MIGHT - be forgiven if the story and characters themselves are great. But these are also two areas where IW failed to deliver. There were zero - literally, zero - great plot twists. There is a plot twist towards the latter half of the game that changes how you view the factions, but even if the plot twist was mind-blowing and completely unpredictable, (it's not! ) it doesn't hold any weight to the game, so replaying the game and knowing the truth doesn't really make a difference. The plot twist in this game doesn't quite hold the same impact as the original KOTOR when you discovered who Darth Revan was, or perhaps Andrew Ryan telling you to stop (and what he says after) in Bioshock, or when Harbinger said what would be his final two words to... somebody who's not Shepherd in Mass Effect 2, despite the fact that it looks like that's what the developers were striving for. It seems like they were trying to wow us with that plot twist, yet it just falls flat. There's also no real sense of escalating tension between protagonist and antagonist(s) either. In the original, every step forward meant two steps back, as it should be. Here, there were multiple factions going head to head and trying to convince you to take their side, but there's no real reason to care about any one of them, and the fact that you could have actively worked against any one of them the entire game yet still be able to fulfill their agenda was disappointing. In one instance, this can even mean going so far as to kill a key member of the original game in cold blood. You could do that, and still work with that faction, as if nothing was wrong. No real consequence for your actions. Speaking of factions, did anybody else's hand attach itself to forehead upon finding out that one of the factions is - I'm not making this up - the Templars? Oh, but it gets better! Despite being disbanded over 7 centuries ago, somehow the Templars manage to raise up a formidable army, in a horrible, global recession no less, complete with walking mechs, choppers, tanks, you name it. You also spend the majority of the game sneaking into, killing, destroying, disrupting and otherwise giving anything that is even remotely Templar a headache of titanic proportions. But towards the end of the game, that doesn't matter none! Nope! The grandmaster of the Templar order doesn't seem to care one bit that you've killed countless soldiers and cost him millions in equipment loss. He'll still let you work for him if you're so inclined! And unless I missed something, the game also didn't really explain how Chad went from peaceful protester to megalomaniacal, homicidal dictator who would stop at nothing for total control. He was easily as detestable as the grandmaster of the Templars, if not more so. The endings do require that you commit to a certain path at the very end (but only the very end) and they divulge largely from each other - they are mutually exclusive. In the original, they're not really so exclusive, a fact that this game takes on, because the canon "ending" the sequel uses is a combination of all of them. That is to say, JC fulfills every ending, and the world is shaped by that. But despite being mutually exclusive and forcing a final commitment, they still disappoint. The only real improvements this game had over the original are that unlike the first game, you can 1. ) Play a male or female operative. 2. ) You can't save, get a door code by paying somebody, reload the game and use the code without spending the money - this time, you have to have the code to open the door. 3. ) Air ducts are also guarded this time. 4. There's an interactive AI who resembles a major pop star. In one exchange, you can reveal the actual pop star's manager doing a dirty deed and ask her what she'll do. Her response? "Oh, tra la la... I'll probably just fire the b---h! " That got a good laugh. 5. ) And the last level in the game was a good choice, as it ties the storyline back to the original game. But those are it. And those plusses do not even begin to compensate for IW's many and deep flaws. So, in the end, I have no choice but to side with the camp who loved the original but hated the sequel. Fortunately, Human Revolution proved to be just what the series needs to bring it back into the limelight, so hopefully we can all move forward and forget this awful game. Deus Ex: 9. 5/10
Invisible War: 3. 75/10 (And I feel that I'm being generous with that score. )
Human Revolution: 8. 5/10