The first time I ever heard about Deus Ex I was a mere lad of 17 who couldn't afford a PC to call his own. Yet what I was reading intrigued me. The creators of the game were steadfast in their promises for the advancement of the FPS genre. Many had made this claim before, and yet could never seem to bring anything more than a customary update to the formulaic genre. Deus Ex was different in one crucial way though. It succeeded in completely reinventing the genre and its influence is still being felt to this day.

Since that time I've had the pleasure of playing Deus Ex, and have witnessed what was once a high end PC game get ported to the lowly PS2. I guess what I'm trying to say is that by now Deus Ex is a game that anyone with even a minimal PC should be able to play. Yet despite its age I would still say that the game falls into the Must Play area and remains one of the best experiences that any gamer can partake in.

The reason that the game has managed to withstand the test of time without so much as a loss of interest is that the advancements made in Deus Ex were so revolutionary that I have yet to play anything similar. Even the achievements of both Goldeneye and Half Life combined pale into insignificance when compared to the wonder that is this game.

What it does is to place the player in the centre of what feels like a very real world. It dumps you straight into the story of J.C. Denton; a special agent for UNATCO (United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition) who (along with his brother Paul) is fighting a terrorist organization known as The NSF (National Secessionist Force). These terrorists claim that UNATCO are intentionally holding back the development of a cure to a worldwide plague that is working its way through the poor classes. However J.C. soon discovers that Paul is a double agent for the NSF because of some global conspiracy that he claims UNATCO is involved in.

You do have to accept that the story itself is fairly linear. As an example, you could never give up your job and become a terrorist unless you hit a scripted moment in the game where this happens. However, what you are given the option of is how J.C will progress as a character and how you will choose to live his life.

So during a mission you need to decide whether or not you want to use lethal force; non-lethal force; even the non-combatant stealth option, and then move through the level based this choice. This actually has a fairly large impact on the stories progress to as; while you cannot alter the overall outcome, how you choose to play will affect who you kill and thereby affect any help (or harm) that they might bring. On the first level alone you are required to catch up with a high ranking terrorist and you have to choose your words to decide whether or not you offer him a way out and get his information; or whether you decide to threaten him and get involved in a fight to the death. Of course the really sadistic; namely me, will offer him the way out and then shoot him while he is not looking. It saved me a lot of energy in the fight, gave me the information I wanted, and also prevented the guy from escaping prison and coming after me. I may have felt some remorse over this choice later on though.

Throughout the game you will find decisions like this at every turn. These range from the relatively simple choice of whether or not to kill the enemies in a level, right the way through to much more important choices like which missions to take or which characters to kill (Yes you can kill your boss, but the guards will not let you get away with it so it's not the best idea while you're actually working for him). The simplest way for me to explain this is to liken it to the amount of freedom that you had in the classic space sim Elite, only with similar gameplay to the Thief series, tied together by one of the best conspiracy plot lines ever to grace the world of video games.

The amazing freedom you have though means that you cannot possibly keep switching styles at will. You see Denton is an experimental agent who has been modified using a form of nanobot technology that can be upgraded as you move through the game. Maybe at the start of the game you decide that a stealthy approach would be more fun than an action approach. In this case you would decide to upgrade your legs to enable more silent footsteps, but unfortunately this means that you have fewer points to spend on other things and so you'll need to use them on abilities that will compliment your silent footsteps. On the flip side of the coin are the action fans that would obviously choose to upgrade their strength and weapon handling abilities, but this would leave them making as much noise as a super soldier firing his rocket launcher at 3 guards in a room full of oil; which by coincidence is what was actually happening! In this way the game finds its core in giving you whatever style you want, from all out action through to a total stealth experience. It also increases the games replayability tenfold.

Further tactics are then involved in deciding which items to keep based on your playing style. In this game every item you find will take up an appropriate level of space in your inventory. So stealth gamers would avoid wasting space grabbing a machine gun and hoping for the best, since you could use same amount of space on a few lock picks, medipacs, and a crowbar. Of course if you decided on the action approach and upgraded your strength then a lock pick would be pointless since small wooden doors present surprisingly little resistance against your big bad rocket launcher. This is totally different to the approach games like Resident Evil were using at the time. No longer would a lock pick take up the same space as a rocket launcher in the character's back pocket.

Unfortunately as much as I love this game I do find some flaws. They are actually pretty major flaws that would ruin most games, it's just that with the sheer depth on offer in Deus Ex you become so completely absorbed into the gameplay that they fade away into minor gripes.

The worst is in the control system of the PC version. I usually find FPS games work better on a mouse and keyboard, but in this game I would have preferred the less sensitive joypad option because without the need for cat like reflexes I found the mouse too sensitive for easy aiming. However the keyboard still works because of the sheer number of buttons available for assigning each item its own individual button; something that keeps the game flowing much smoother than a joypad system could ever allow.

The other 2 problems are merely the ravages of old age. Firstly the graphics completely suck! It was never a very pretty game even in 2001, but today it's just plain ugly. There are too many glitches to do the seriously involving gameplay any justice. Background items see an almost insufferable amount of clipping, and character models are extremely blocky. Though none of that is really helped by the kind of robotic animations that would make a ZX81 blush. 

Finally there's a problem with the games sound. Now let me get this straight, I am not complaining that the game sounds bad. It doesn't, it actually sounds excellent. Background noises; such as cats leaping into trash cans and doors slamming shut, are genuinely effective in setting up the mood of the game. The music is also extremely atmospheric. It's just that the voice acting is abysmal! J.C tries to sound cool and mysterious but ends up almost completely monotone, while the laughable attempts at stereotypical accents are just embarrassing to hear.

However it's a testament to the games quality that you can ignore all of these faults and still find yourself unable to put the game down. You will become completely addicted with the game. You will be so absorbed with it that you will forget to eat, sleep, and wash in your efforts to discover the truth. Definitely a game that remains unmatched to this day. Even the sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War and prequel Deus Ex: Human Revolution cannot boast its accomplishments.


This has been my entry into rice75's Bargain Bin Writeoff.

Sample of the voice acting - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kihGm4KfY7k

Recommended: Yes