Sunday, August 29, 2004

Deus Ex Invisible War Mini Review

It is so easy to hate this game. The biggest annoyance for me thought the game was the loading times, but this is confounded by the fact the levels are so small. For example the last level in the game is Liberty island, (the first level from the original Deus Ex) and it has both been shrunk, and split in half! Plus you can't even explore the statues base anymore. So the levels are endanger of feeling claustrophobic.

There are only six weapons in the game, a pistol, shotgun, SMG, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and an experimental rifle that can shoot through walls. I suppose it's an ok selection, but you can now only apply two upgrade mods per weapon. There is also a good selection of grenades, but you don't have room for them in your inventory unless you upgrade your character's strength.

The personal upgrades for your character are a joke. You get to pick five from things like health regeneration to cloaking devises, but you can only upgrade each three times, so once you have picked up fifteen upgrade canisters you are maxed out. And this happened to me very early on.

The level exploration and problems faced with a hostile facility are basically all gone because the levels are so small. I remember exploring facilities and picking off the occasional guard, hiding their body and then finding the next guard. This isn't even necessary anymore as their is probably only seven guards in the entire facility, so any use of a grenade is overkill.

The endings where all a disappointment, and I think I spent more time watching load screens than actually playing, but I did enjoy it and I don't know why. Maybe it was the characters or maybe the war between the different factions, made it interesting, but in the end, not as good as the original, not by a long shot.