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Deus Ex: Invisible War Review December 14, 2003 |
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Summary: Deus Ex: Invisible War is here! With all the controversy stirring around the game, it must be difficult to tell what to think. Well, our resident gaming blabbermouth... er... reviewer, Jakub, busted out his Monopoly money, picked up a copy and now he's all cool like the rest of us because he's bashing the game. (No, he's not. Read his 'reasons' why and lynch him. -ed.)
 Overview | Page:: ( 1 / 7 ) |
First word
Deus Ex: Invisible War takes place a generation after JC Denton made the choice to hit
the reset button on civilization by disconnecting the Aquinas Router and thus severing all communication – that much becomes obvious early on. You are Alex, a trainee cybernetically enhanced agent in the Tarsus corporation who was evacuated at the last minute before a devastating attack destroyed the city of Chicago.
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The game begins in Seattle, with another attack on the Tarsus facility there, which sets Alex free of Tarsus’ hold. From there on in, the player, as Alex, makes choices to back various factions. Initially, only the WTO and the Order, two organizations that sprung up from the ruins of the old world, one embracing regulated commercialism and the other a combination of religions, are the two that attempt to sway Alex to their path. The most impressive part of this and all other plot decisions is that the decisions are made based on player actions, rather than words.
As Alex progresses through a level, he’ll receive communiqués from the leaders and representatives of these factions, urging him to take certain actions. At no point is the player forced to say “ok, I’m going to do X” and then is put on a railroad path on that decision. During any time in the mission right up until the inevitable deciding choice, the player can change his mind as often as he wants. This seamless integration of plot and action is a carry-over from Deus Ex, but it’s one of those subtleties that few other action games have picked up on, though quite a few RPGs have this system in place.
Back and forth
Deus Ex: Invisible War is a much more compact and streamlined game than the original. The maps are smaller though a lot more happens on any given map than ever did in DX, and the game is significantly shorter. In many ways, it seems like ION Storm made the decision to cut a lot of the unnecessary aspects of Deus Ex out in order to provide a cleaner, trimmer gaming experience.
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There were certainly compromises in order to fit the game on the Xbox – the levels and interface are examples of such. Despite the huge public outcry, however, it isn’t such a big deal. The game has enough performance problems with the levels as it is, and enlarging the levels might not be the brightest idea. Besides, there’s the added benefit of having the levels small – almost every door hides something, a lot more characters have something to say. There’s very little waste, but also little pomp – a theme that repeats itself throughout the game.
The interface is much harder to forgive. Although the HUD isn’t a big deal, the inventory/item management is god-awful. There’s absolutely no reason a drag-and-drop to move, double-click to select inventory couldn’t have been implemented in the month between going gold and shipping. The limited inventory slots are a bit of an annoyance at times, though at least they do force the player into tactical inventory decisions. A lot of immersion was sacrificed for gameplay; a gigantic flamethrower takes up as much effective space as a knife? Although this does make inventory management an art, we can’t say the sacrifice is worth it for everyone.
SIDEBAR: I think a lot of people are going to be pissed at me after this article.
| The Issue | Page:: ( 2 / 7 ) |
Tough calls
It’s become hip and chic to bash Deus Ex: Invisible War. If you don’t cynically talk about the gameplay decisions, you obviously don’t “get it”, are a “lickspittle fanboy” or “clueless noob”. Is this a fair attitude? Obviously not. But is it justified…
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I think not. Deus Ex: Invisible War would fare much better with its audience if it didn’t have the Deus Ex name attached. DX: IW and DX are completely different games, it’s like comparing apples to oranges. The original Deus Ex was, in fact, a gem with flaws of epic proportions, yet everyone cut it a mile of slack because it was so unique. The world was so fully realized, the game so completely different from anything else on the market, everyone gladly overlooked the flaws in order to enjoy what was there. If Deus Ex: Invisible War was simply “more” of the original Deus Ex with a nicer graphics engine, odds are gamers would be upset at how flawed it is, forgetting the issues with the original.
Does Invisible War deserve the Deus Ex moniker then? Another tough call. Deus Ex might have been a so-so game, if you discount the deep immersion and the thrill of playing something so revolutionary, but it was extremely ambitious. There’s absolutely no doubt that while much of DX was a hack to provide a “real” world, it was a hack that worked and gave people enough to suspend disbelief – in much the same way that the Ultima games created a living world with scripts for work, sleep and leisure activities of its citizens. Invisible War retreats from the boundaries that Deus Ex pushed; it focuses a lot more on being a good game than being an experience.
That precisely is the dividing issue in the community and the key point of this review. If judged solely based on the actual gameplay, Invisible War is a stunning success. Sure it’s got a few bugs, interface and performance problems, but the gameplay is really quite fantastic. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as immersive as Deus Ex, and that, I think, was the key draw for people. Deus Ex tried so hard to create a world, it became less of a game than an experience to go through. The skills – silly as they were (who ever heard of a covert agent who couldn’t hold a sniper rifle steady or wield a baton?) – were another layer of depth and realism that made the game oh-so-much more immersive through its sheer complexity.
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In their own way, Deus Ex fans are the grognards of the FPS genre. They want detail, realism, useless but cool features – everything that made Deus Ex into “Deus Ex”. If they had been born 10 years earlier, they’d be the grognards who’d laugh at fans of Panzer General while they played Gary Grigsby’s War in Russia. Does that mean Panzer General isn’t a good game? Not at all – it’s just nowhere near as deep, complex and intricate as War in Russia. ION Storm simply misjudged their target audience and what they wanted.
With that aside, let’s move onto the review.
SIDEBAR: Please don’t hate me.
| Gameplay | Page:: ( 3 / 7 ) |
Small maps
As mentioned earlier, Deus Ex: Invisible War is a much slimmer and less ambitious game than Deus Ex, but it still goes far beyond what most first-person shooters nowadays do. In addition to the standard RPG elements present in so many games, portrayed in Invisible War with the biomods, the new Deus Ex usually has three paths through most challenges.
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The player can sneak through, bust out with the Glock or try hacking and/or dialogue. Many challenges require a specific solution, so obviously when you have to kill your target, you use the gun, but the way you get here is generally up to you. Most of the sneaking is accomplished by oh-so-conveniently placed air vents, suggesting a deeper conspiracy than any uncovered in the movie – that the Air Conditioning guys are preparing a world-wide takeover. Hacking is done through computer terminals or using multitools. The former method requires a biomod, the latter needs the multitool, which is a scarce and valuable resource.
In fact, everything useful in Invisible War is scarce. Biomod canisters, money, multitools, health packs, weapon mods and ammunition clips are all rare and valuable. Speaking of ammunition, as you may have heard, it’s all standardized ammo. Through the magic of nanotechnology, ammo plasma is converted into whatever you specific gun needs. The same material is used to arm a pistol, poison rifle and flamethrower. Although we can believe those with enough faith in the power of nanites, we’re a little confused as to why a regular stun baton would need ammunition.
The biggest problem with the ammo is that there is really never enough. You may walk into a new level with a full load, and even with the ammo scavenger and damage increaser mods, using only the sniper rifle (the most efficient way of killing organic targets), but by the time you’re halfway through, you’re getting low. Enemies fire constantly and never run out, but once you’re done killing one, he has very little to no ammo on his person. This is just one of several small inconsistencies that drags at our suspension of disbelief.
However, the scarcity of items adds quite a bit of depth. When preparing for an encounter, I’d often find myself planning ahead for the most efficient way of doing things. Usually this meant the sniper rifle, but there is a threefold balance to maintain in DX:IW. Health, ammunition, bioenergy (which powers your biomods), and to a certain extent money have to be weighed against each other. If you’re low on health, you’ll be quite willing to expend bioenergy and ammo in order to preserve yourself. If you have a lot of health but little ammo, it’s quite possible to make an attempt to sneak or run past a foe rather than make a wasteful kill. This contrasts with my virtual need to clear out every enemy I encounter for fear that they’ll all converge on me if the alarm sounds, but it adds tremendously to the suspense of the game.
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Tension is always with the player, in this way DX is much like Thief. You never know if what you say will lock out future plot options, or trip an alarm and bring the whole level down on your head. It’s always a temptation to explore risky areas, to discover perhaps another clip of ammunition, a biomod, or perhaps a new piece of the plot puzzle. You don’t have to, but you certainly want to.
SIDEBAR: I’m really looking forward to Thief III, almost in development by ION Storm.
| Gameplay 2 | Page:: ( 4 / 7 ) |
Story and AI
The story is great – you’re thrust right into the middle of things and forced to muddle your way through with little information to start off with. The player really feels like he has been a coddled child suddenly thrust into the real world after a prolonged absence. At the end of the game, everything ties neatly together and there are four absolutely amazing ways to end the game.
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The AI is actually quite impressive – a marked improvement upon the original. The problem is that when most gamers look back on Deus Ex, they recall its great AI when in fact there was no such thing. Any game that has human beings or other otherwise intelligent creations running around immediately has higher expectations placed upon it – we expect the figures that look like humans to act like humans. If these were zombies or green squares and red triangles, we’d all be impressed – but they’re not, they are “human”. The most obvious failings of the AI are when it comes down to spotting player actions and reacting properly. After you snipe a target, another might come in to investigate, look around, raise alarm… and after a while settle down, in order to be sniped in turn. This really isn’t how things would happen with real humans, but it’s also what makes the game playable.
Although we may complain about the relative lack of immersiveness in Invisible War compared to Deus Ex, it’s still a deeper, fuller world than most. Talk to the pop star holograms in the game, and pick a side in the coffee shop war to get an idea of the side plots that really flesh things out.
Problems?
The puzzle game approach of the designers to Deus Ex is a little too obvious. The only truly legitimate criticism we can level at the gameplay is that it is very clearly a game and the choices are too obvious. That’s not to say the plot is poorly implemented, the problem is the way the level design works. Look hard enough, and you’re bound to find the “sneaky” path, and there’s very little reason why you shouldn’t sneak rather than fight. As stated earlier, Invisible War is a better game, but it’s a much less immersive experience than Deus Ex.
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Minor complaints would definitely include pushing the scarcity of resources too far. The SMG and other weapons with a lot of ammo consumption for the damage they deal (more, when you consider missed shots which are likelier with an SMG than a sniper rifle), are really not worth it at this point. In essence, this means that an action-heavy method of play doesn’t really work since you’ll run out of ammo or health very quickly. Given that Deus Ex is about freedom of choice in the way you play, this isn’t good for the game.
SIDEBAR: Saddam is screwed. I wouldn’t trade places with him for all the whiskey in Ireland.
| Graphics & Sound | Page:: ( 5 / 7 ) |
Graphics
Deus Ex is a nice-looking game, the lighting is really quite fantastic, but it’s not all that. It fits a nice median between current technology like that in UT2003 and Call of Duty, and what’s coming up with Doom 3. Despite the small levels, the game is extremely punishing on both CPUs and video cards – you’d better have the big guns to play with, or don’t come to the party at all. Without multisampling or the bloom effect, I suspect my 2GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a GF FX 5950 Ultra is lucky to achieve 30fps at 1024x768, and likely chops down to 10fps during the harshest bits of action (which are fortunately few and far between.)
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Models are quite nice but seem a bit flat from certain angles. It’s not that a character’s face is all flat, or that his cheek is a large square, but the faces never seem quite perfectly realistic – perhaps it’s an artifact of the lighting. At any rate, animations are quite smooth though it’s hard to tell given the framerate, and there doesn’t seem to be much variety in the way a character runs – it’s almost like playing a multiplayer FPS that uses the same animations for 10 different models. The biggest disappointment with animation remains in combat, as with the original Deus Ex – everyone is so stiff, nothing like in other games such as Call of Duty. There’s no leaning around corners, melee attacks are always identical and feel artificial, and taking characters don’t react to hits as they should.
Special effects are an odd bunch, some can be quite nice but others are downright … ghetto (sorry, Harvey). The night vision/see-through-walls biomod couldn’t be simpler – it just highlights viable targets with a bright green. That’s not exactly how low-light vision or heat-sensing vision work; both were done much better in Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield.
Sound
Sound effects are a little worse off. There’s no knocking the speech, which is remarkably professional – there’s none of the over-the-top acting you might expect in most games. The voices of both the male and female Alex characters are perfect as are those of most major NPCs.
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The biggest disappointments come with the actual sound effects – weapons sound ridiculously weak. It doesn’t matter if you use the SMG, sniper rifle, flamethrower or pistol, the sound is dull, muted and distant. I’m currently addicted to Call of Duty multiplayer, which has the absolute crispest, most clear and powerful weapon sounds in any game – so the contrast may be skewing my opinion further against Invisible War than it deserves but I doubt it. Music is decent though somewhat generic. It could come from Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri, which weren’t really known for their soundtracks.
SIDEBAR: Don’t walk away Eileen!
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 6 / 7 ) |
Pros
Graphics
Not perfect but certainly better than most games. Now if only they performed…
Gameplay
The three-fold path is too obvious, but purely as a game, Deus Ex: Invisible War improves upon the original. The coolest part is experimenting with new ways of beating challenges, like discovering an explosive crate, throwing it under a turret or along a bot’s path and then blowing it with a bullet.
Immersion
Every level is packed with content, all it takes is a curious mind to find it. The world isn’t as fleshed out as DX, but it’s fuller than most.
Story
It’s fantastic, though some may be disappointed at the effects (or lack thereof) their decisions throughout the game may have had.
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Cons
Performance
Awful. Terrible. Slow. Inexcusably bad.
Sound
A disappointment all-around, except for speech.
Deus Ex?
Is this a Deus Ex game? It’s much less ambitious… what it tries to do it does better, but it tries for so much less. A better game, but a lesser experience. DX faithful have already expressed their disappointment, biased and nostalgic as it may be.
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SIDEBAR: I played without the patch.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 7 / 7 ) |