Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003)

Deus Ex Invisible War, for PC

Rating: 8.7/10; Great

Played: Feb 2019

Highly recommended for anyone who has played DX 1 or a later series entry. DX 1 should be played before this game.

Deus Ex 2 takes place years after the events of the first game and is the same type of game; that being a story focused first person shooter with stealth and RPG elements. Compared to the first game some elements have been simplified, particularly in the RPG department.

The largest and first noticed change is the complete removal of skills, and by extension XP. You will no longer gain XP rewards for completing objectives and exploring. Instead, all rewards are either: augments, money or items. This gives less incentive to explore for those alternate paths (there are almost always multiple ways to get through an area and complete objectives). The lack of skills also means that there is less variation in which alternate paths are suited for your build. All weapons are used at the equivalent of master skill level and lockpicks and multitools have been merged into a single item, with each lock taking a fixed amount of tools to open. Hacking has been changed into an augment.

The augment system is less complicated than the first game. Whether or not it is better and more balanced is debatable, though I believe it to be an overall improvement. Rather than having augment items fixed to specific slots, you are free to install them however you want. Each slot has 3 options to choose from; one of which is always a black market option which requires a special black market canister that is entirely separate from the regular canister items. The same items are also used to upgrade augments, so you can fully customize the order in which you obtain and level up your augments. An interesting feature is that you can replace augments with others by using the canisters; a kind of respec.

The inventory has been changed to a simple system where every item takes up a single slot; a rocket launcher and grenade take up the same amount of “space”. This means you can carry more weapons but limits the amount of small consumable items that you would be able to carry in lieu of a variety of weapons. There are 2 features that stand out: one is that food stacks in a single slot to a high number, such that a full stack of food might offer more healing than a full stack of med kits (I did not test this). Like in Dx 1, you can simply pause the game to eat as much as you want to restore health, even in the middle of battle. The other is that multi tools seem to come in 2 varieties that will not stack. I suspect this is a coding holdover from the lockpicks and multitools from the first game; it is annoying and should not have made it past testing.

Most of the weapons from the original return and all guns have a Perfect Dark style alternate fire mode bound to right click, which are useful and fun to use. The sniper rifle is the only weapon with any kind of aim down sight/scope, though there is nothing wrong with the gunplay. All guns use the same ammo in varying amounts. This feels like an actual futuristic innovation because universal ammo is tactically and logistically superior; kind of reminds me of the ammo blocks from Mass Effect. Upgrades are stronger, often come with unique effects and multiple copies of the same cannot be installed. Grenades and mines have alternate fire modes but otherwise lack the universal nature of ammo; each type of grenade and mine takes up an inventory slot making it difficult to carry a variety.

Stealth is a major focus of the game and has been improved from the first game. Firstly, stealth is more difficult because your own footsteps can alert enemies, even while crouched. This is more pronounced on hard surfaces (which are the most prevalent surface) and makes the move silently augment more valuable than it was in the first game. Enemies will become suspicious and make comments on some unusual things, such as disabled cameras and turrets. There was one time where I took out a guard and hid the body. When another guard walked by he became suspicious, possibly because he could see the other guard’s dropped weapon and ammo. This only happened a single time so I am not sure of how deep the stealth system actually goes. I can say that the enemy AI is reasonably good.

Hacking is simplified from the previous game. Computer passwords are treated more like physical keys in that you are not able to use a computer without first finding the password. No guessing or looking up passwords outside the game. I like this system better precisely because you can’t cheat by looking up the passwords! The main structure of the levels and how the game plays is largely the same as the first game; there are plenty of optional things to do, multiple ways to complete objectives, actions that have repercussions later on and different factions to side with.

Invisible War both simplifies and innovates upon Deus Ex while giving an overall similar gameplay experience. Though there are a few bugs and steps backward, the only really lacklustre aspect of the game is its length, which is significantly shorter than both 1 and 3.

Pro

• Great user customization for augment progression
• Can climb up onto things like crates, and into vents that are not at floor level
• All weapons use the same ammo pool, which gives a strong sense of future tech
• Good story, setting, characters and voice acting
• Alternate modes for each weapon/explosive
• Levels and objectives with multiple routes
• Good immersive enemy AI
• Can mostly freely backtrack through current level and you choose when to progress to the next level

Con

• Fewer inventory spots for small items
• Less keybinding options. Unable to rebind some keys
• Consumable items stack to small sizes (except food)
• Some problems with items not combining into a single stack (multitools)
• Ammo is displayed as a visual representation which is a little confusing
• Bug where Omar trader npc mysteriously dies every time I enter the nightclub
• Aiming down sniper rifle scope with vision augment on has much higher sensitivity
• Augments do not display the effects of all upgrade levels (only the next upgrade level, which hurts planning ahead)
• Every time you get an augment canister, an icon shows on the screen which will not go away until you go to the augment screen (even if you are entirely maxed out)
• Seems to be some collision problems related to moving near robot corpses (feels like lag rubber banding)
• Can go into inventory and freely use healing items

Beat on Realistic difficulty not long after my first time playing the first Deux Ex. My first augment choice was vision, and I upgraded it to max as soon as I could. See through walls is awesome. Then I got the passive EMP melee. I had no idea how effective it would be; I got it because I like boosting melee and it sounded cool. It was amazing for dealing with cameras, turrets, trip lasers and bots. I loved at max rank running in to smack a bot, and then laughing as it killed its masters for me. After that I got hacking; looting ATM and vending machines, and even used turrets to kill enemies when I could. Fun times. Then I got strength for melee enhancement. In the late game after all my other augments were maxed, I chose my last; silent running. I was torn between those options, though I found moving silently to be difficult so I chose that.

I kept a baton for the entire game for use against bots. I found using a sword often caused them to explode, thereby damaging me. I used the sword (and later dragon's tooth) for other enemies as often as I could. I kept a pistol with silencer and glass break for most of the game for break and entering though I ended up ditching it later. I used the bolt caster somewhat often in the early to mid game as a sneaky way to kill, though I ended up not using it in the late game because of how easy it was to get melee kills. Sniper rifle (silencer and +damage) was my preferred weapon after melee, though I pretty much only used it if a melee kill was risky. I kept a shotgun (with +damage and area damage) for when stealth failed. I found its smoke screen alt fire combined with augmented vision and melee to be a winning combo. I later found the widowmaker smg and never used the shotgun again (though I did keep the shotgun). I also used the magrail (fairly often in late game) and rocket launcher (which I never used). I did not use many grenades and missed a number of unique weapons.

I did not like either of the early factions and ended up doing missions for both, and sometimes refusing ones that I felt were evil. There was one evil choice that I was forced into because of a bug (the Mako lab level). By the end of the game I sided with the AI faction and killed everyone else. I liked all of the endings in their own way.

Deus Ex 2: Invisible War is in all aspects the lesser version of its predecessor and will easily be forgotten.

The Good

• DX2 tries to offer player choice, through the main quest but also while working on puzzles/quests. Though not at all as much as DX1.
• There are (of course) lots of references to DX1 that are fun to see as a DX1 fan.
• Graphics are slightly better than DX1. Even though that one is 5 years older! There is also a physics engine now that tries to add some realism.

The Bad

• The game suffers from Console Dumb Down Syndrome. The inferface is very clunky. Game mechanics are simplified compared to DX1: universal ammo, less augmentations, no skills, bad menus. Maps are very small to fit in the XBOX its memory, but still take a long time to load, even on SSD.
• The story is quite bland and tries to continue on from DX1. Characters are very one dimensional and unlikable. Result: you don't care.
• Despite using the same engine family as DX1 (Unreal Engine), this implementation is not as flexible as the one in DX1. No custom resolutions or FOVs without modifications. The interface also does not scale well to different screen ratios.

The second Deus Ex game luckily appears to have a higher quality successor that I'm looking forward to: Deus Ex Human Revolution!