Deus Ex: Invisible War

Title: Deus Ex: Invisible War
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: December 2, 2003
Date Played: September 2011
Time Played: 8 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 3/5


Opinion:
I jumped in to Deus Ex 2 (Invisible War) right after finishing the original Deus Ex. It is known as the bastard child of the franchise, and most people outright say to skip it. Nevertheless I wanted to see where the story goes after such a crazy ending in the first one.

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I will start with things I liked about Invisible War. Firstly, it has quite impressive physics, especially for a game from 2003.

Secondly one of my main criticisms about the first Deus Ex is addressed, you are given 90% of the weapons you will be using for the rest of the game in the first 30 minutes, along with a ton of augmentations to spec out your character however you want. This allows you to use the guns you like from the very beginning, as well as allowing you to spec a character you want to play, all of which makes the gameplay fun right from the get-go. I hated sneaking around with a crowbar and a dart gun, neither of which were able to kill the enemy properly in the first game.

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In Invisible War you actually end up feeling like you are playing a genetically modified human, and not a whimp. The guns themselves feel great, they are really fun to shoot and modify. There are 8 gun upgrades, from range to ammo to silencer. I ended up using the sniper rifle with a silencer and ammo mods as my primary, and a rifle with anti-electronics rounds as the weapons of choice through the whole game.  This is a good and a bad thing, the bad thing is that you are extremely limited on your gun choices, the good thing is that the guns dont get boring.

Character models are significantly better looking and animated than the first game, as is the voice acting, but this is to be expected (the environments in general look really good), what is also to be expected is a variety of NPC skins, yet there are a ton of instances where everyone is a clone of each other, the security chief looks like the president, who looks like the office clerk from another part of the level. Simply unacceptable.

Now on to "what were you thinking?" part. Some of the textures are inexcusably terrible, for example elevator button textures. The first game had very sharp and good looking textures. Why is the sequel released nearly 4 years later has worse textures?

The storyline gives you options on who to side with right out of the gate, you have no chance of becoming attached to any of the characters or ideas. I found it frustrating having to pick sides without knowing any of the background. You can switch your allegiances multiple times through the game; however without knowing that ahead of time Invisible War creates a frustrating situation, acting as if your decision 30 minutes in to the game will determine where the rest of it goes.

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A lot of the systems have been streamlined, the augmentation system does not have nearly as many slots or choices, the inventory system is very limited and leaves you wishing that you could expand it somehow.  Lock picking is completely gone, and instead you use multitools on everything now. The health system is simplified, you no longer take damage to individual body parts, and instead you just have a life bar.

Every place that needs something open with a multitool will have a multitool available somewhere around. This makes the game extremely easy, as you can always break into everything. And speaking in general the game is a lot easier than the first Deus Ex. Invisible War on hard is probably easier than the original Deus Ex on easy.

All of the levels are extremely small, which makes it apparent that the game was designed for consoles, this wouldnt be that big of a deal, if not for another major, and I mean freaking huge issue with Deus Ex: Invisible War. That issue being the fact that anytime you go to a new area the game literally closes itself (.exe gets closed in the Task Manager), and loads up a new level. So you are taken to your windows desktop for a few seconds while the game restarts. And this is not some fluke, this is by desgn... the stupidiest design in the world. Oh and did I mention that the game will not load if you have Chrome (web browser) running? Dont ask me, I dont know. I just know that it sits at black screen until I alt tab and close Chrome.  This unloading/loading levels is extremely strange, and would probably be shocking if happened in a game released today. It is extremely annoying and creates situations where enemies will respawn in an area you have already cleared, because it closed that instance of the game and then reloads it when you came back.

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Just like the first game there is a lot of running around and backtracking, you will find yourself running from point A to D through B and C. Pressing one button then running back tfrom D to A through C and B, every single time having to deal with the game re-launching itself for a new zone. Needless to say that whoever implemented that is incompetent.

One of the worst decisions I feel was to make all ammo unified. Meaning if I am out of ammo in my sniper rifle, I am out of ammo in all of my guns. It discourages carrying more than 1 or 2 guns, and is frustrating.  It was always exciting to find that rare ammo for that gun you have been lugging around in the original Deus Ex.

The original Deus Ex was a 25-30 hour experience (as it should be). Invisible War however is surprisingly short. I managed to finish it in just under 8 hours, and thats with doing majority of the side-quests.

Overall I loved the environments, combat and story of Deus Ex: Invisible War, but I do take a big issue with its inexcusably poor design decisions.  As the fans of the series say, this is a skippable experience; however it is not necessarily a bad one. I feel that there is definitely fun to be had within Invisible War; however it should be approached as a mediocre shooter with minor RPG elements, and a sequel to the original Deus Ex only in its story. I am definitely glad I took the time to play and finish it.

PS - Out of the 5 endings I chose the Renegade one.