ACT SMILEY on 1/12/2003 at 20:59

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It feels very much like Deus Ex Lite for me, which is one of the reasons why I don't care much for it.
Graphically, there's only the textures to fault in terms of both technical features and style. That isn't really enough to make up for the rather substantial over-simplification that I find the gameplay to be. In the first Deus Ex, there always seemed to be the Shooting Way, Stealth Way and Talking Way. When I read the first previews, I was optimistic about how they claimed this would be made a lot more streamlined for DXIW, however, I've been let down. In the second there's still the huge distinction between those, only the Stealth Way seems to have been slotted into the other ways. This, the good old unified ammo system (which I found to not be quite as bad as I had feared but still a step back)
None of this can be really taken in without mentioning the thoroughly awful UI - its quite simply the worst I have seen in a PC game in years. Intrusive, headache inducing and amazingly awkward to use. The first DX game had a lot of room for improvement but its STILL a massive leap backward - the blue UI in the early previews seemed to be a rather nice looking one - subtle, unobtrusive and gave the information that this new one does, with its font size from picture books for three year olds.
There's really no excuse for the shockingly half arsed config either - if it says "this is best set to 68 for PC version", then why the hell have they shoved it out with the default at 61? If they'd spent a couple of hours tweaking this to give a better experience the demo would have been a lot better.
I might be wrong about how DXIW will turn out, as if they can stuff a new UI into the PC version and tweak the config files it could still be a good game, but I think it would still lag behind the first if the content of the demo is anything to go by.

Amorpheus on 2/12/2003 at 19:14

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Yes we have, and yes it is. :cheeky: