There was a short period in gaming time not too long ago where many hyped up games we released all around the same period of time. These include games like Oni, Deus Ex, and Shenmue, to name a few. These games all have one thing in common. All had mediocre everything with one amazing shinny new gimmick. In the end you get a game that more or less sucks except you still feel the need to play it because of this one gimmick. Oni had it’s whole weapons and hand to hand combat thing, Shenmue had it’s whole free range suckage going on, and Deus Ex is sort of a FPS RPG hybrid.
I’ll admit, I didn’t really play this game the “correct way”. I cheated right out at the start and beefed up my player to the max after failing the Liberty Island mission 20 or 30 times in a row. By “Liberty Island mission” I mean killing more than 5 guys and making it past the first 2 or 3 enclosed areas. That said, it also means I got to play a game that was nothing but pure game play, a game that consisted of everything else besides Deus Ex’s one gimmick, the experience level up system. Frankly after playing through without it I sure as hell don’t want to play through with it.
Even as an invincible combat god the game started to DRAG immensely by about halfway through. The plot in this bitch just goes on and on and on and on and on. By the end you won’t know what the hell is going on because the plot also changes completely every five minutes or so. It’s unfortunate that Tracer Tong’s ending was the worst one since he was the only person I could remember out of the supporting cast. After New York you think you’re done but no! On to Hong Kong. Then it’s back to New York, then to some gas station in the middle of nowhere. Then some undersea lab. Eventually you end up god knows where fighting some guy in a bubble. Whoop de shit. That is what I get after all that playing?
Really the plot isn’t the only thing that I didn’t like. Honestly the character models left something to be desired as well. Every person has the same weird bulgy stretchy look to them. Also the enemy AI was pretty weak to. Not really weak in that is was easy to beat, just weak in that it seemed like it was a computer AI and not a person trying to kill me. It was not good like say, Half Life. Though it was also not as shitty as say, Shogo. Shogo being the only game I can think of where a boss killed HIMSELF through no act of my own. I just stood there just after encountering him as he blew himself away.
Anyway, Deus Ex 2 is in the works, let’s hope they can put an understandable plot in this time. The graphics I’ve seen seem pretty improved, so that is one flaw down at least. Anyway, I literally had to force myself to finish this beast just so I could uninstall without ever feeling the guilty need to install it again.
