Deus Ex Machina, Noun. (DAY-us EKS ma-SHE-na)

Etymology: Latin, "God from a Machine", translation of Greek "Theos ek mEchanEs".

1. A god introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome.
2. A person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.

That said, Deus Ex siezes a player firmly by the hair (I'll let you decide what hair) and drags him/her into the role of J.C. Denton, a futuristic UN counter-terrorist agent who happens to be a cyborg in a world of international terrorism, worldwide plague, and covert plots for world domination from every corner.

Intrigued yet?

Deus Ex breaks new ground in the world of computer gaming by combining elements of roleplaying games and first-person shooters into an addictive and replayable mix that will satisfy gamers preferring either genre. As stated above, Deus Ex thrusts the player into the role of J.C. Denton, who is a nano-aug: a human being augmented with nanotechnology. Kinda like the Terminator, except with some blue wires in his hair and he's a really crappy shot.

Scroll your brain forward a few decades into the 21st century. The United Nations has formed an agency entitled UNATCO: the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition, or something to that effect. Their newest recruit (you) has been slapped into an emergency assignment on his first day. You have to rescue your comrades from a makeshift terrorist prison in the base of the recently decapitated Statue of Liberty (naturally, the result of another terrorist attack).

Should you fail, you're facedown on the dirt. Should you succeed, you've broken your way into a hell of an adventure. Deus Ex will take you all over the world: the United States, Hong Kong, a few European locations, remote ocean bases, the list goes on. Not only that, but the storyline manages to tie in every crackpot conspiracy theory and shadow organization ever thought up by the American urban legend industry: Majestic 12, little grey men, the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, Area-51, mysterious doings at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and more. Even a Bill Gates-esque super-billionaire trying to conquer the world with computers is in the mix.

The story is fantastic, and best of all, you can influence it. The amount of detail placed in this game is so great that not only do you enjoy a great story, but you can partially write it yourself. Every spot in the game has several ways to get through it, and it goes way beyond the standard "Should I use my special weapon now or save it for later?" We're talking about things like the preservation of secondary characters. Sure, you can let that guy die, and in a lesser game, you'd fail and have to restart. But no! Here, there's another way you can get through that door without having the Special Guy punch in the keycode, but it'll cost you something else.

You can make even greater choices when it comes to yourself. As you progress, you can develop skills in different areas. You can increase your effectiveness with various tools, making better use of them. Or you can increase your rifle skill and become a better shot. No skill is useless but no skill is clearly better than all the others. Choose wisely.

This, however, brings me to my first criticism. The guy is a wuss! You're supposed to be the top-of-the-line cyber-soldier and you can't fire with the skill of a bebegun-wielding twelve-year-old. It takes (I kid you not) around seven or eight seconds to aim at someone and even then the shooting's not great. Unless you're close enough to poke the bad guy with the nose of your gun, you won't hit unless you have a coffee while you wait for the game to finish aiming. By which point, of course, the enemy's already seen you and started firing immediately with laser-accuracy.

The game takes the RPG elements too far here. In most RPGs, your character goes from "Weak" at the beginning to "Godlike" at the end. Here, you go from "Really Pathetic" to "Less Pathetic".

The weapons also are awful. In order to kill even the weakest grunt-enemy requires around six shots to the head from the game's high-tech assault rifle! You'll have to hit over ten times if you aim for the chest. God help you if you actually have to use the handgun you start the game with. Wait - you do. And you have so little ammo that it's utterly impossible to defeat the first level without resorting to running up and punching the gun-wieldling terrorists.

This, however, makes sense, because the guns don't feel real either. They have mediocre sound effects, dumb-looking models, and half-hearted animations. It's quite disappointing after playing a game like Counter-Strike.

Still, though the shooter elements are weak, the RPG and puzzle-solving portions of the game are excellent. And the last half of the game is much better than the first, once your character isn't quite so wussy and you lay your hands on some proper combat hardware. Now it only takes two or three 7.62x51mm bullets to the braincase to drop a bad guy, and you have a whole lot more of them to fire. At least the 30-06 sniper rifle inflicts some real harm.

Overall, the game is outstanding, just excellent. All the great stuff about the gameplay far exceeds the problems with the game's combat system. However, I'm giving it a 4 instead of a 5. I'd give the original game a 5, but this is the Special Edition. Now you might be asking yourself, "Gee, why'd this fool give the special edition a higher score than he would the normal?"

Simply. The special edition should be special, and it's not. The game is patched (you could do that for free from the Internet anyway) and you get a nicer box. That's about it. There are no bonus levels, expansion packs, or any other features that come with this version of the game. Save yourself a few bucks for the same game, and buy the regular one if you can find it. Unless the Game of the Year Edition box is worth an extra $15 to you.

Recommended: Yes