The War Is Under Everyone's Radar Just Like This Game

I’m not much of a PC gamer. I’m going to say that off the bat just so you people can know that if I buy a PC game that’s a bit out of character for me. I’m generally a console gamer and stick to my GameCube and PS2 but every now and then there will be a PC game I can’t resist. Deus Ex was one of my favorite PC games and is probably in the running for my top 10 greatest games of all time. It’s an amazing piece of software and if you haven’t played it I recommend you pick it up somewhere (I’d recommend Amazon.)

After having experienced that masterpiece I was of course very anxious for it’s sequel. The game came out and I had no money with which to purchase it so I went awhile without really playing it. Sure, I had played it in spurts but it took me 2 years before I finally bought it (and at a very cheap price.) So now, I bring to you, my review for Deus Ex: Invisible War.

First, I’d like to give everyone a quick rundown of what made Deus Ex so great and go into what made it and got cut in its sequel. Deus Ex prided itself on it’s free-form nature of play. What I mean by that is that every situation basically had many different ways of going about and tackling it. You customized your characters abilities via skill points (much like an RPG) and augmentation canisters (which gave you new abilities) and based on what skills you built up then you could perform a multitude of tasks.

For example, if you needed to sneak into a base (which was very common in the game) you could hack the computers and break in, go in through a vent of some sort or find a back entrance, you could pick the lock of the front door and go in through there, and once inside you could either be Rambo and kill everyone in sight or you could be stealthy and slink your way to your objectives.

This is really the main component of Deus Ex and what made it stand out from the other shooters. There was an incredible story as well but the gameplay was its main draw.

So now, we’re brought to it’s sequel which came out 3 years after the original, Deus Ex: Invisible War still has the main elements as to what made Deus Ex stand out but in the process of streamlining it for a wider audience it’s also lost a few of the less-talked-about but still important aspects of Deus Ex’s supremeness.

The story takes place 20 years after the original Deus Ex and if you don’t want any story spoiled for the original Deus Ex I recommend you not play this game, you play the original and you skip this paragraph. Deus Ex had 3 possible endings and apparently they chose the coolest ending (in my opinion) from the original set to lead this off. JC Denton (the character you played as in the first game) merged with the AI, Helios and brought about a historical event known as The Collapse. Basically The Great Depression II. 20 years after that event and the world is coming out of the The Collapse and back into comfortable territory although political strife is starting to rattle the globe.

There are 2 warring factions who you will work for throughout the course of the game: the WTO (World Trade Organization) and The Order (a group of religious fanatics.) There’s more to the 2 organizations than it originally seems and it’ll be up to you whose orders you follow. But who are you? Why, you’re Alex D (male or female), trainee at Tarsus Academy and biomodified like all of your classmates. The opening sequence shows Chicago, your hometown, being destroyed and just as soon you are whisked off to another Tarsus facility in Seattle. Before you can even get started, the facility is attacked and a clever tutorial stage is presented before you.

Now, here’s where I address the elements from Deus Ex and how they relate to Invisible War. The skill point system has been axed completely. No more exploration bonuses or even building your character from nothing to something. I can understand why they cut it out (to streamline the game more) but it sacrifices a bit of what made Deus Ex so great. I mean, look at Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. That game was a huge commercial success and it had a skill system that wasn’t even present in the previous Grand Theft Autos though this is looking in hindsight and it’s not like they knew that it would have succeeded. While this feature is missed I can’t say that it ruined my experience.

The augmentation canisters are back though they’re called biomod canisters now. To explain the biomod system it’s basically the same as the augmentation system in Deus Ex with a few differences. You now have an option of 3 skills per canister and each canister can work for whatever skill you want. The catch to this is that the 3rd skill in each set is an illegal skill and requires a black market canister. I think it’s very obvious that these skills are a lot better than the default ones but black market canisters are a lot harder to come by.

The skills run the gamut from things like making your footsteps quieter, increasing your physical strength to some of the more interesting skills like bot domination and health leeching (using corpses for health.) Of course, I’d be remiss to not mention computer hacking since that was always my favorite skill in the original Deus Ex as well as this.

The game controls rather well although the framerate can hamper your accuracy a bit in all areas. It’s a first person shooter on the PC so there’s really no complaints on control. They were basically made to work with the old keyboard and mouse combo and this game is no different. The graphics are quite pretty though it comes at quite a cost. Even 2 years after the game was released and with a fairly powerful system (AMD Athlon XP 3000 , nVidia GeForce FX 5500, 1 GB of RAM) I still had trouble keeping the framerate running at a solid rate.

The main problem stems from the beautiful but resource devouring shadows. The shadows are incredible and they really enhance the look of the game but they basically kill the framerate. After downloading a patch that improved the framerate (slightly) and also allowed me to remove the shadows, the game ran at a blazing 60 frames per second.

This is something I have to blame on the folks at Ion Storm because I ran Doom 3 on here (a game with way more shadows and polygons than this game) and the game ran at a solid 50 frames per second. This is something that Ion Storm should have optimized but they didn’t, not even in the second patch. It’s a shame because while it doesn’t completely ruin the game experience, it does hamper it and if you’re running a weaker system then the game will be practically unplayable (unless of course you turn off the shadows with the patch.)

The music is pretty subdued. Nowhere near the genius level of music in Deus Ex (yes, I loved it to death.) It’s very much in the background and in fact, with music at the highest level you can barely hear it. It’s a bit more atmospheric and you can hear enough to set the mood but Deus Ex had classic video game composition. You know, the kind that gets stuck in your head and you find yourself humming all day. The music is far from bad so I can’t really complain but I can’t help but be a bit disappointed.

The story is ok but it really develops too quickly. Already from the beginning you know to be suspicious of the 2 organizations and their big secret is leaked rather early on. The game is also really a great deal shorter and much smaller in scope than the original Deus Ex. The original took me at least a month of dedicated play to beat. And this was dedicated play. I mean, I would get home and play it until I had to get up and do something. Invisible War took me one weekend of fairly dedicated play. By fairly dedicated I mean I played it quite frequently but took breaks and played other things in addition to it.

One of the greatest aspects of the original Deus Ex was it’s replayability and I have to say that this game is definitely on equal level in that respect. I played through Deus Ex 3 times and I plan on making another go around. I expect to revisist Invisible War at least one more time.

Despite its flaws, Deus Ex: Invisible War is still a very solid game and a somewhat worthwhile sequel to the original Deus Ex. While it is most definitely nowhere near as good as the original (which was expected) it still is a solid game on its own. I’d recommend this game to fans of the original Deus Ex (if you’re not a purist) and to fans of first person shooters with a little more thought put into them outside of just shooting everything that moves. Also, if you’re a fan of conspiracy stories then this story might be right up your alley.

If You Like This Game I Recommend:
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
Thief Gold
Thief II: The Metal Age
Thief: Deadly Shadows