TannisRoot on 27/6/2016 at 19:14
If you like old school games then definitely give it a shot. I'm really kicking myself for passing on this one back in the day! It's reminding me of why I got into gaming in the first place and the amount of freedom and level design is truly something. I'm itching to play it once I get home from work and that hasn't happened for me in a long time!
Nameless Voice on 1/7/2016 at 21:22
The first level or two of Deus Ex are extremely underwhelming, since at that point you have no augmentations, very few tools or weapons, and the plot hasn't started much yet.
You need to play for a couple of levels before it really becomes Deus Ex.
ZylonBane on 4/7/2016 at 15:11
Bah, the first level is great. It's like Thief with guns. Wide-open level design with multiple approaches to your objective, optional areas, secrets, and lots of sneaking.
heywood on 5/7/2016 at 14:31
Liberty island does a good job of getting the player into exploring and finding your own way. There is actually a lot of plot right from the beginning if you're the explorer type who likes to read everything and talk to everyone. It's the deepest and one of the most memorable opening game levels I've played.
But since JC starts out so weak, it forces the player to stealth. A combat-oriented play style doesn't really become an option for a while. It can also be a bit intimidating for new players who aren't used to sneaking. I know I did a lot of saving & reloading in the beginning until I got the hang of how the game worked.
Pyrian on 5/7/2016 at 14:40
If you're expecting to be able to run-and-gun, you're going to have big problems, but otherwise going in shooting isn't tough on normal difficulty with some skill points in pistol. ...And the GEP gun. If anything, I'd say stealthing Gunther out is hella difficult.
TannisRoot on 5/7/2016 at 17:41
The first level is great, if a bit (
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1645516.html) problematic for modern gamers.
Tl;dr The non-lethal weapons take some getting used to. Newbies don't always understand why some stuns are immediate and others are not, and since Paul encourages a non-lethal approach this can lead to some frustration when the tools provide an unexpected result.
Pyrian on 5/7/2016 at 18:11
I don't know what's funnier, the OP or the first response who somehow thinks the guy was playing DX:IW.
Thirith on 6/7/2016 at 13:38
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Bah, the first level is great. It's like Thief with guns. Wide-open level design with multiple approaches to your objective, optional areas, secrets, and lots of sneaking.
I went into
Deus Ex expecting the stealth to be pretty much exactly like
Thief and came away disappointed. The differences are subtle, but
Thief is a game built around a specific kind of stealth and
Deus Ex isn't. The level design is very different and much more sparse.
There definitely are parallels, but don't go in expecting
Deus Ex' individual gameplay elements to be as polished as they are in games designed to do one particular thing. The stealth isn't as good as in
Thief, the gunplay is worse than in most FPS games etc. The game is very much more than the sum of its parts in this respect, but it isn't
Thief +
Half-Life +
Planescape Torment.
heywood on 6/7/2016 at 14:32
I don't think the Thief visibility model would have worked well for a game like Deus Ex. Filling Deus Ex with lots of super-dark areas to hide in would have been incongruous with the near-future real world urban settings. And it probably would have imbalanced the gameplay if JC could disappear with certainty as easily as Garrett.
I thought the gun play was better than the FPSs I had played before, simply because the accuracy model had more elements of realism, and because of the weapon mods and skills. I get that people didn't like playing a UNATCO agent who couldn't shoot straight without several upgrades, but I liked the way Deus Ex handled weapon skills.
Thirith on 6/7/2016 at 15:26
There are definitely reasons, many of them probably good ones, why Deus Ex handles its gameplay elements the way it does. Nevertheless, saying that Deus Ex' first level is like Thief with guns may raise certain expectations that most likely won't be met.