Deus Ex - A Legend

The game that set off  the 21^st millennium. Does it still hold up to modern standards?

          Deus Ex is a first-person RPG developed and published by Eidos Interactive on December 1999. It has received critical acclaim and is widely regarded as the best PC game of all time. The emphasis of the game mainly revolves around stealth and exploration as the enemies can take a chunk of your health and even kill you if you’re not careful. Health is also a resource, unlike most modern AAA games your health does not regenerate. You have to find food or health packs that will replenish your health.  The way you take damage is also quite unique for its time, different parts of your body take damage individually kind of like the WWE damage system. For example if your legs get injured, you will move slower and be a head shorter.

            Stealth is favoured in this game, early on you are quite weak at combat and pretty much have no choice, unless you play on the easiest difficulty, but to sneak around or try to confuse the AI of the enemies since their line of sight is pretty low even at the highest difficulty with the exceptions of the snipers which can see you coming for a mile away if he happens to look at your direction.

Exploration is rewarded in the sense that you gain experience points if you go to certain areas and complete quests. This incentive to exploration forces the player to think of different strategies and go to different paths making the gameplay feel more open ended.

                The experience you gained goes towards the improvement of your different skills.

A brief overview of the skills:

1. Weapons Heavy – Allows you to effectively use heavy weapons like rocket launchers.
2. Weapons Pistol – Allows you to effectively use the most versatile weapon in the game, the silenced pistol.
3. Weapons Rifle – Allows you to effectively use the long ranged sniper rifles.
4. Weapons Low-Tech – Allows you to effectively use low tech weapons like melee weapons and the tranq dart. A personal favorite of mine.
5. Weapons Demolition – Allows you to effectively use grenades and mines.
6. Environmental Training – Makes the suits for gases better and last longer.
7. Lockpicking – allows you to effectively lockpick locked doors.
8. Electronics – allows you to easily bypass some electronics.
9. Medicine – allows you to gain more health when you use healing items.
10. Computer – allows you to hack computers faster. The most useless skill in my opinion.
11. Swimming – allows you to swim faster, actually useful in some levels where you need to not drown but I have no idea why anyone would ever max this skill.

To aid you in your espionage or massacre there are different active augments that you will receive eventually.  These augments take from your power, a resource that can be replenished by taking batteries. The augments determine your playstyle so choose carefully as you only have 9 augments installed into your body.

The weapons are also varied, there are melee weapons that do not make a sound, range weapons like the silenced pistol which are silenced, throwables and traps like the gas bombs and grenades and the Heavy Weapons built to annihilate your enemies. Just keep in mind that you need an acceptable skill level on the types of weapons you use to use them effectively, as you need to aim at your enemy and wait for the crosshair to be small and accurate.

                But above all else, the best parts of this game are the small things. When you do something in Deus Ex it usually has effects and repercussions later on. For example, if you steal an item from somewhere, a person might have a remark later on that would not have happened if you didn’t steal the item. This makes the game feel more dynamic, as it conveys to you that your actions have an impact to the world around you whether big or small.

The story is alright. It’s your typical action, sci-fi mystery in a sort of dystopian future where terrorists ravage the various states of the world (Sounds familiar). Sadly none of your actions have any effect on the story, it all boils down to your choices at the end.  

                The UI is a bit clunky, thankfully there are mods for that. The graphics are also quite funny, especially the running animations of the NPC’s and enemies, it shows the age of this game however there are also mods for that.

                Deus Ex is a phenomenal game even to today’s standards. Be sure to pick it up in the future.