BlackCapedManX on 8/12/2003 at 22:01

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Having just finished DX:IW, I'm going to make an attempt to write my own non-spoiler perspective of the game, for everyone who hasn't bought it yet, can't buy it yet, or is unsure if they want to or not. Being a harcore DX1 gamer this will more or less be a comparison between the two games, what worked in IW and what didn't. So here goes.

The Bad

Size: The game, in all aspects, feels smaller and fairly claustrophobic. From the fact that any change between maps takes place through a doorway to the feeling that everything is inside, even if you can see the sky. The draw distance is short (There's a mosque in one level and if you stand really far on one end of the building and look diagonally across it's possible for you to see beyond the fog and you'll just see this blue spot) and in the future it seems as those the entire world will be composed of hallways. I remember reading something by Warren saying that they don't need huge maps to give present the game well. I'm sorry but here's at least one fan who's dissapointed. There was really nothing like when you arrive in Vandenburg or the SubBase and can get a sense for being outside in a huge area, where as the biggest map in the game is probably around the size of the inside of one of the Templar Cathedrals from DX1. A map the size of the Cathedral map from DX1 would probably be broken up into between three and 5 maps here (to give you a sense of how small all of the maps are). The game itself took me 14 hours and 40 minutes to complete, with another maybe hour and a half to get the other three endings. This comes from a seasoned DX, Thief 2 and SS2 gamer, so rest assured I left no cardboard box unturned.

Water: The only water you will ever see in this game is coming from a faucet or a showerhead. There are no large bodies of water. None. You know what the coolest thing I was hoping for with ragdoll physics is? I was playing UT2001 one time and I killed someone next to a little pool of water. I jump in and befor their body dissappeared, I shot it with the flak gun, and the way it moved in the water was incredible. Sorry, something of a tangent but I was hoping to see something like that here. Anyway, you lose a sense of immersiveness when there is so much water and swimming and the like in DX1 and zero of it here. Definately feels like something is missing throughout the whole game.

Depth: There is streamlining, and then there is straight out lack of effort. One of the things I loved in DX1 was the plethora of information not at all related to the plot at hand. This sort of goes along with size, but going from all of the info on weapons to people to history of places to just random stuff that you can read about in DX1 to the overall blandness of IW is like going from and Olympic swimming pool to a mud puddle. There's nothing here. In DX1 there was so much shit that you could read about or be told about or whatever, and a huge deal of it wasn't neccessary, in IW there is little more than what you really need to progress through the quests and sub-quests of the game. It's almost like they just didn't want to put in any effort here.

Interaction: In DX1 you have a much larger deal of people and situations for casual interaction. IW has much less (granted more than just about any other FPS out there, but less than DX1). IW is more down-to-business, "I'm talking to you because I have a quest I need to do, if you have nothing to say in relation to that, then say nothing at all", which makes an interesting contrast to the way the Alex character seems more socially acceptable than the utterly taciturn JC. Again, less depth, less size.

Ammo: I'm not going to complaing for the sake of it being universal, I'm going to be complaining for the sake of how it affects the game. It's a lot of fun early in the game, because it means if you find this awesome gun (like when I found the sniper rifle mysteriously sitting in someguys closet) you can use it straight away. It makes the game feel a lot more like a straight shooter with a contiuous flow of ammo (in DX1 I start of with what, six pistol rounds?) but later in the game it becoes a major annoyance. You're sitting there thinking, "hmm, I have sniper rifle with ammo scavenger and increased damage, and I have a rocket launcher; the sniper rifle takes three shots to take the Templar Power Suit down, and the rocket launcher takes two shots, but the net result is basically one clip of ammo either way, so it really doesn't matter; damn I wish I had different ammo so that I could kill this one with rockets and the next with my sniper rifle" granted ammo seems to be cheaper than dift because you find it laying around everywhere, but it's still a pain to know that choosing any weapon really doesn't make a difference. And when you consider that they've removed skills, you could probably play through most of the game picking up whatever weapon happens to be laying around the dropping it ater you've gone through one firefight with it (hey just like Neo in the lobby scene!).

Skills: Again with the lack of depth, it still seems like character development is less important. I know it can leave more room from the plot or whatnot, but with the huge amount of mod cannisters available and the lack of skills, it reduces replayability because it will be close to the same character everytime you play.

Sys Reqs: I realy don't need to go into this, but for those of you who have played the demo and aren't sure if you want to play the entire game with 10 f/s (if you have a "lower range" [lower range meaning mid to mid-high when considering any other game] computer), the full game runs slightly worse than the demo (from what I've noticed). I have a 1.8 ghz AthalonXP 2500+, 1gig DDR RAM, ATI 9600 with 256 DDR Visual Ram, the demo at 1024x768 runs around 20-25 f/s, full game I get around 10 f/s.

Cairo: I just really didn't like this level. And they send you here twice. (Second time around isn't that bad though, it's shorter)

Saves: There is a limited number of saves that you can make! Considering I like to make a new save every 10-15 minutes my first runthrough of a game, this is shear blasphamy! Terrible, terrible. (saves maxed out for me at 60 saves including current save file, so 59 different saves, and one that is from either the last save you made or the last time you changed a map, whichever is more recent) Also, my pc crashed I think 3 times when trying to load a save file (out of the probably 60 or more loads, that's not too too bad, not enough to effect gameplay).
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The Good

Gameplay: The game is fun. It is very open ended with a huge number of choices you can make and ways to do things. A huge part of the developement of how things go is based on what mod you choose as they play (to me at least) a much more prominent role than they did in DX1. Some of the character "finality" is lost however when you consider that you can more than twice the biomod cannisters need to fully max out all five of the choose-able mod spot, so you could rework your character into something else midway through the game should you choose. No hard mindbending decisions on what you're going to chose, because you can pick something else later if it was the wrong decision, more streamlining I guess :erg:. There were a lot of times where I would reload to try something differently and it's all fun and interesting to do.

Story: There are no real forced failures, most people that you want to kill you can (though I remember one instance where a certain Klara Sparks took a shotgun to the face from a templar, then tumbled humourously backward through the air, after screaming "you won't force my hand!" then later showed up to escort a friend of mine from the building), though the lack of forced failures isn't specifically due to the absolute openendedness so much as the lack of oppurtunities to have a more open game (notably in DX1 where Gunther forces you to go back to Unatco after you've warned in the NSF, and by all rights it's possible to defeat everyone there, but for the cuiriously invincible gunther, and speed aug jump over the walls, making it possible to get to the main portion of battery park, where you would expect to find Jock waiting to take you to HK, but instead, no Jock.... it would have been cool if you could have done that and skipped the MJ12 sequence alltogether) but when you are in a situation where you have to make a choice, you are able to. I don't think it's quite the messaih of games when it comes to free choice in what you do (from the beginning I really wanted to work with the omar, I mean neither the Order or the WTO had the decency to even higher a pilot for me, and yet they expect me to do their dirty work, feh, I'd rather be a bouncer or something) but the ability to write the story as you choose is welcome change from most FPS games. (well I've got the, kill the aliens, infilitrate their base, kill the leader games, and I've got the, kill the nazis, infiltrate their base, kill thier leader games, and the kill the vampires, infiltrate their castle.... you get the idea, in IW, man you get to be a fuckin' nazi if you want. Sorta.) The story is also very engaging, and you want to keep playing if for no other reason than to find out what's been happening, what is happening, how it's going to end, etc. It's also got a lot of twists and turns (though nothing as big as you might hope, but there's enough to make you keep second guessing).

Coffee Wars: These are a lot fun, some excellent foreshadowing for the bigger scheme of things (particularly the situation between the Order and the WTO, though you have to uncover some "legal documents" before you get through trier to have a really good appreciation for this foreshadowing). The coffee wars alone would make a fun little mini game, even something to base a multiplayer fan mod around maybe. In any case, where IW lacks a lot of depth that DX1 has, the Coffee Wars add a bit of open rivalry and corporate espionage that DX1 hasn't.

Difficulty: What I mean is the difficulty differences. I played the game through on realistic, which, as I was hoping for from DX1 (and did not get) is not neccessarily harder than hard difficultly, but different.



The important thing in realistic being that both you and your enemies take more damage, which means everyone dies faster (not as fast as I'd like, but faster than normal. Anyway, I like it more than simply having Alex take more damage with increasing difficulty (as in DX1.)

Interface: It gets a lot easier when you played with it enough, trust me.

Trier: I liked this level, very theifish, reminicent of France in DX1. Too bad it's so short.

So basically that's what I have to say, I'm sure I could say more if I felt like it, but that's enough typing for now. Keep in mind that this is based on my first run through of the game, so I'll have more later maybe after I've played through with a few more varying approaches.

BlackCapedManX on 8/12/2003 at 22:27

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Right, I forgot to mention that bit.

I was somewhat expecting to have a game where I would ally with one faction and work for them primarily, but only really at the very end do opposing factions try to kill you outright for not working specifically with them. Up until that point everyone is trying to get on your good side, even if you've been blatantly denying all of their requests. I was really hoping to get on the more esoteric side of whatever faction I was working for, getting with the in-crowd. But none of that I suppose. Feh.

What I really enjoyed though, was how you could complete both Coffee Wars quests in seattle, sorta like playing both ends against the middle, only in kinda felt like they were just two really dumb coffee shop owners.

ZylonBane on 9/12/2003 at 00:30

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How did you know it would be excellent until after you'd read it? How do you know there's not an even more excellent review out there, but you won't see it because you've decided not to read any reviews? Except this one, of course, which you made an exception for because you knew it was excellent from reading it.

My head hurts.

doctorfrog on 9/12/2003 at 01:29

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It's just a great review. There are a variety of viewpoints on Deus Ex in this forum and BlackCapedManX here has managed to sound pretty darned objective by comparison. And I did write that post after I read the review, I just suppose a few words could be taken out of tense. Anyways, I ain't got patience for many gamesites lately, have you seen the damn things? Stuff flying all over my screen, crowded with graphics and other visual mess, ugh. And now IGN and GameSpy merging will no doubt cause a Flash-rendered black hole of mediocre reporting and animated advertising.

Its enough to turn a person into a raving jerk.

BlackCapedManX on 9/12/2003 at 02:55

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I would honor that comment with a worthy remark, if what you had said initially bore any resemblance to the definition of facetious. However instead scathing comes to mind. Unneccesary, rude, pointless. But not merry jest, no, not quite that.

Do you hold yourself in such high regards that when you don't agree with the way someone goes about doing things, you have to make your own way of thinking known in such a hostile manner?