About five years ago
Deus Ex: Invisible War infiltrated our world of memes. Here's my edited email review from that period:
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I've Half A Mind: Deus Ex: Invisible War Half-Way ReviewA modified joke to set the tone of this review: A genius with an extremely high Geek-Fu decided to reduce his 180 IQ so that he'd do better when trying to get to know girls. He went to an Aggie business that provided an IQ reduction service: by playing
Deus Ex: Invisible War you could lose 30 IQ points an hour. He wanted two hours' worth, but the attendant fell asleep and the poor guy played four hours straight. When the attendant pulled him out and asked if he was okay, he replied, "That's a big ten-four, there, good buddy!"
If you are looking for immersion, characters you care about*, or suspension of disbelief, don't buy this game. If you are looking for a sequel of
Deus Ex (a game which had immersion, great characters and suspension of disbelief in spades), don't buy this game even though a lot of the original is here.
If you are looking for eye candy, an awesome graphics demo, novelty, or you simply have ADD/ADHD, you'll probably enjoy the experience.
It's a game of halves. There are some great game ideas that are halfway implemented, clever decision trees that are half QC'ed, and interesting conversation with subtitles only half spell-checked.
The lighting is superb. The shadows are a must in this game; it is thrilling to see the shadow of a baddie first as he approaches from around the corner. And the Havok physics combined with the use of bones in the models is a definite plus, most of the time. This does take a toll on one's PC, which must run DX 9.0b or later on a pixel-shader-supporting video card.
Unfortunately the game has been twice dumbed down. Once for the console; the PC version reeks badly of consolitis. And once for the typical age of the console's audience; if this is the descendant of "the uber-thinking-man's Halflife", we have a serious inbreeding problem.
In the "right brain only" department:
All of the endings in the original apparently took place twenty years before the setting of this story. Unlike the first, where the conspiracies were thoughtfully intertwined and complemented each other, this is more of a Gordian knot coated with honey.
As either a male or female Alex D, you start as a nano-augmented member of the elite Tarsus Academy in Chicago, but that relationship gruesomely ends in the opening Bink-based cutscene. From then on, you work to discover the whys and wherefores of the wacky "invisible war" between the various factions that exist, and of course there are wheels within wheels and nothing is what it first seems.
Each faction vies for your loyalty and you demonstrate it by performing various RPG quests, for the factions and for individuals. (One flaw in the game is that not all received goals are added to your list.) Naturally, some quests are explicit opposites (rescue person A/make sure person A dies before talking), so you can't make everyone happy. --Not that this matters; with one "good" deed you can get back in the good graces of a faction you so totally dissed previously.
Gah! They are all slimeballs! You don't want to do anything for anyone. You only do it to see what happens.
There's a nice quicksave feature in the patched version of the game, so I've been testing the various choices. I've found that sometimes playing the bad guy pays off better than always being a decent person. (Another flaw: not all conversation choices have an associated sound file; you should play with subtitles enabled.)
I'm ambivalent about the fact that I can climb most obstacles a la Lara Croft, but I can't go prone or lean around walls as in the original. If you crouch before looking around a corner, you reduce your visibility, but that's a cop-out.
One annoyance is the inability to pick something up like a crate and simply put it down. Stacking crates for climbing is a pain because the crate is "tossed" even when you are crouched looking straight down.
And while I'm here: there is an intense disconnect between the environment and me. In the original, the interface gave me the feeling I was doing things. In DX:IW, the feel is
waaaay wrong. Weapons bob in an exaggerated manner when you walk. You don't even cast a shadow, a strange thing because Deus Ex had that feature. When I fired a weapon in the original, it felt pretty realistic. Here it feels like I'm pushing a button and making the screen go wonky. (Did you know you can swing a sword to kill a spiderbot while inside an airduct?)
The NPCs have high-poly faces, and the lipsyncing is excellent. But the gestures are limited/exaggerated/overly used; the person not talking in an in-game cutscene might immediately act bored. (Hmm. I guess that's realistic here.) Also, NPCs turn their whole bodies to the talker, instead of just their head.
The rats are annoying. They are ubiquitous and have no fear of people, and they can move bodies and boxes out of the way when they bump into them. What's worse is that they look and move like model cars: their legs churn like train wheelbars, and their bodies pivot in place. In fact most of the animated models pivot in place. A cat will rotate like a weather vane.
More on the double dumb-down: You have voices in your head. In the original, this was quite intelligently done, but here it is non-stop selective spying on you. Everyone knows exactly what you are doing when you do it, and they all praise or complain frequently. There is a problem with this since it is trigger based and you can trip the trigger in the middle of a battle (!), but there is a bigger problem in that there is no discovery and consequently no feeling of accomplishment. The security police director knows everything, but doesn't seem to care when you hack into the Evidence room and stock up on some goodies.**
I've had the game exit to the desktop a few times, and apparently this is due to the open nature of the game. One explicit cause: Two NPCs will engage in a conversation when you approach them. However, if you fired a weapon nearby, you might cause them to split up, and this will cause an exception in the engine when you come upon one without the other.
I was so good at sneaking around that when I got into a building in a stealthy manner, I overheard a guard say that the security bot had been shut down -- when it hadn't!
The patch makes the NPCs respond negatively to weapons and gunfire, implemented because folks complained that you could shoot them a lot before they got upset. Now, if you should shoot a greasel or karkian (gengeneered creature baddies) within earshot of a neutral human NPC, expect them to take shots at you. Grr! Also with the patch, if a critical NPC is injured during an encounter with the bad-guy security, he won't speak to you and thus reveal important background info, even after the threat is eliminated.
Even more consolitis: There's no inventory drag-n-drop. You are quite limited on inventory (six backup slots; eight max with the arm strength biomod), and you can only install two weapon mods per weapon. I have no idea how much effect they have in the first place, so I can't weigh the choices the way it was done in Deus Ex. The fewer biomod slots are maxed with three infusions instead of four.
On the plus side, black-market biomods give you more choices, and the Bot Domination biomod is nifty. I'll probably take it out because I prefer the extra slots provided by the Arm Strength biomod, but it was fun to run around behind a slow-turning military bot while hacking it, then use it to chase down the baddies with rockets.
The universal ammo is both boon and bane. My biggest complaint in the original was how few anesthetic darts there were. In DX:IW, I can use neuro-toxic darts (crummy name; they're knockout darts) on organics all day long -- at least until I encounter the fully-armored dudes... But the need to scrounge for that specific type of cartridge for the sniper rifle is no longer there.
The incidental comments made by the characters is a nice thing, especially that of the bots. There's some witty conversation with an AI construct modeled after a popular pop music star that beats all of the human intercourse. There's even a character whose nature and goals are blatantly obvious to anyone who played the first game (and to those who didn't but are merely observant).
If you stare at an NPC for too long a time, they'll tell you. Even the friendly spiderbot! This is a favorite weapon, especially against greasels: Toss a spiderbot grenade, and it blossoms into a four-legged ally that will attack while you go about your business. If no enemies are visible, it will "heel". I'd pet it if I didn't think I'd cut myself.
What do I think? Well, I hate being told what to do instead of figuring it out. And I hate the consolitis problem. But I can see a lot of attention to detail in places. It's fun to explore, too. With an IQ a third of what it used to be, I'm really enjoying the game now. (Yes, I'll miss my IQ. Later.)
Just click your heels together and say, "It's not the sequel; it's just another game..." But wait for the bargain bin price. At least by then you'll have a rig that will run it right.
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*not the same as "characters you care for".
**In the original, you were castigated for going into the women's rest room in UNATCO headquarters.
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I've Half A Mind: Deus Ex: Invisible War Review -- ConclusionTo wrap up: I've finished all four DX:IW endings. Two of them are pure evil* to reach; you have to play the part of a moron to buy into the spiel of the corresponding factions. Oh, wait -- you ARE a moron by the time you get here, due to the IQ reduction the game play engenders.
Unlike the original, where all three endings had rational, believable reasons for their choices, DX:IW left me with a slimy feeling. (I guess that's okay; the IQ of slime is nothing to write home about but that's about where you find yourself.) I wasn't fond of any of the DX:IW endings. Even the "utopian" ending felt dystopian to me.** The other endings are just plain bleak.
Something worse than a missing sound file in a conversation is the _wrong_ sound file. If you get this game, enable subtitles. There were a lot more exits to desktop and quite a few obvious map flaws in the endgame levels around Liberty Island, a strong indication of a rush to meet a deadline.
It's sad. This game really demonstrates some incredible advances in gaming and virtual reality technology. Yet it never made me care. I'm thinking of installing the original on my new box, and try out the two single-player add-on games for it.
I just hope the IQ loss isn't permanent.
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*This should appeal to the Europeans, who love to play the role of the bad guy according to studies and surveys.
**If you ever play the game, we can discuss this.
