Deus Ex
- January 12, 2001 15:02 PM PST
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Deus Ex takes elements from action, adventure, and role-playing games and blends them into a great and distinctive first person shooter that, with any luck, will receive better treatment than hybrid games have traditionally received in the past.
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The plot for Deus Ex reads like a greatest hits list for conspiracy buffs. In the near future, a mysterious plague called the Grey Death has swept the globe. The exorbitant cost of the only cure means only the wealthy and powerful are safe. Across the world, governments have been destabilized by rioting and terrorist attacks, while powerful cabals and rogue AIs scheme in the shadows to achieve their own goals. The last bastion of order is the United Nations and its antiterrorist wing UNATCO.
You play as a rookie UNATCO agent codenamed JC Denton. Through your choices of skills and cybernetic implants, you can customize your character to suit your playing style. Installing implants like Radar Invisibility and Spy Drone while loading up on Computer and Lockpicking skills will be popular with fans of stealthy gameplay. Combat junkies will probably gravitate towards Heavy Weapons skills and enhancements like Ballistic Skin or Regenerate, although unnecessary carnage will make you unpopular at UNATCO headquarters. Whichever path you choose will have its own merits and challenges.
Stellar level design feeds into the game balance and most objectives can be completed in a variety of ways. Some levels play like well-crafted three-dimensional puzzles, providing tense moments, like deciding if it's easier to try to fight a squad of guards before they can raise the alarm or to use three lockpicks to get into an airduct and sneak past. You can even hack into the security system and use the automated turrets to take out the guards for you.
Deus Ex doesn't follow the standard 'mission is complete now you're teleported back to headquarters'. You still have to make it to your extraction point. Nor do your injuries magically heal just because you're done with your objectives. This sometimes makes things more challenging, but it really adds to the tension.
Graphically, Deus Ex may not give Unreal Tournament or Quake III a run for their money, but it's still more than capable. The Unreal engine has aged well and handles the urban landscapes with ease. The cinematics are all done with the game engine. Camera angles for conversations are dynamically chosen, and character's mouths move when they speak.
For the most part, Deus Ex is also solid acoustically. The effects are great, the weapons sound believable, and the sound of your footsteps changes as you walk across different surfaces. Even the pigeons are right on. The voice acting is a mixed bag. JC Denton speaks with a Joe Friday 'just the facts' deadpan that takes a little getting used to (until you realize he's a cyborg). Most of the other major characters are well-voiced, but the same cannot be said of some of the minor characters. In the world of Deus Ex, the streets of Hong Kong and Paris harbor some truly cheesy accents.
Hybrid games like Deus Ex often have a hard time finding their market. Bucking the current trend of shoehorning multiplayer options into games may have allowed Ion Storm to create a more compelling single-player game experience, but consumers just looking at the bulleted features list on the box may be turned off. If Deus Ex can find the success it deserves, it may keep Ion Storm from disappearing into the pool of red ink and mediocrity created by Daikatana.
