Poll: Deus Ex is 19 years old

[BFG10K]

So I’m replaying Invisible War and enjoying it a lot. It looks and runs beautifully @ 5K:

Spoiler

• Really advanced graphics at the time that still look great today. The city of Trier looks gorgeous. Burning barrel shadows look awesome as they move against walls.
• The maps are packed with things to do and explore multiple routes. No open spaces for the sake of padding out length. The "upper" and "lower" societies created a nice contrast.
• Lots of side quests. At one stage I literally had 15 things to do in Cairo. The other installments usually only have one or two side quests at a time.
• You can be a real mercenary and work multiple sides to your advantage. E.g. bribe an official, then turn them in to get both rewards.
• The weapons feel nice to use, especially the SMG and Magrail.
• Voice acting quality is very good, especially the main characters. Dumier sounds like a smart charismatic leader instead of a doped up junkie from the first game.
• You get a few biomods right at the start so you can start enjoying some abilities quite early. You are, after all, enhanced compared to normal people.
• The Templars are cool enemies. Sunglasses, power armor, and all that.

My main gripe was that money and biomods were far too easy to obtain, so by mid-game the economy was basically broken. Also biomods like regeneration and bot domination were far too overpowered, while environment protection was virtually useless.

DX was pretty solid. I really liked how simply exploring would grant bonus XP as I always like checking out all of the paths in these games anyway. It was also good they split out health into a lot of different HP areas, so healing was always useful and never overpowered. Also finding biomods and money remained useful right up until the end of the game. My main gripe was the absolutely weakling start, and even on normal difficulty any common terrorist would frequently one-shot you while they were running.

Human Revolution was also pretty solid. They did a good job with the hub exploration. I don’t like the Missing Link portion where they removed all of your gear and biomods. For such late game, that really crippled gameplay.

I haven’t played the other games and probably won’t.

This is an easy vote for one of my favorite games of all time: Invisible War.

 

[KB]

I remember spending half of Invisible War staring at a loading screen. Everytime I entered a building, it got so annoying.
Everytime I finished a mission I had to run back across the map and witness 3 loading screens to tell the person I completed it.

Mankind Divided was just HR 2. More of the same, but a worse story.
Human Revolution is the winner for me. Great combo of hiding and fighting.

 

[EXCellR8]

I'll go Human Revolution as well, though I did like the original game and Mankind Divided. I didn't care for Invisible War but the original Deus Ex is still a great game and I recommend it.

I played through HR many times and I loved the style and game play. Many players hated the boss encounters but I thought they were fun. MD improved upon the formula but wasn't as captivating or memorable.

 

[Mai72]

They need to redo Dues Ex with modern day technology. Just like they redid RE2.

 

[Adawy]

Human Revolution for me, even though i'm not much of a Shooter fan, but I liked the Gameplay, Story, Main Characters, Settings and Atmosphere, the Soundtrack was pretty good too. I just wished it had a new game plus mode.

 

[BSim500]

Original all the way. It was ground-breaking in so many areas and still looks great with updated DX10 renderer + various HD packs. Whilst it has a few fans, DX2: Invisible War was dumbed down in a lot of ways. UI is the least appealing & most consolized (and was heavily criticized in reviews at the time), it was half the length (10-17hrs vs 25-35hr of DX1 & 3), and IW's level sizes had to be shrunk 50-75% smaller than 3 year older DX1 (Unreal 1 Engine) in order to "squeeze" into the original XBox's 64MB memory limit. Thief 3 (Deadly Shadows) suffered from exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason (huge sprawling single-piece levels of Dark Engine based T1-2 replaced by tiny micro-levels separated by blue glowing fog on the PC version purely because the XBox couldn't handle it) - like Invisible War, Thief 3 was an "OK" game in itself but also very much inferior and noticeably more consolized compared to its 4-6 year older predecessors for level size, level design, modding, and general feel and "fluidity" of play.

As for Mankind Divided's 0 votes, highly unsurprising. Massively unoptimised performance turd aside, from what I understand the devs (Eidos Montreal) wanted to make a proper +30hr long single game release like DX1 or 3 but the publishers (Square Enix) essentially forced them to pseudo-episodic-style break it up into 2 parts or basically planned to charge $120 for DX4 & 5: MD parts 1 & 2 for one DX1 or 3 class plot... If you look on howlongtobeat.com, although "total game length" appears just as long, MD's main plot is actually only 15 hours (vs nearer 25hrs of Deus Ex 1 & 3) and it suffers from the same cheap padding that Dragon Age Inquisitions "100hrs gameplay" did in being more side-quest spam than plot (ie, has that "all froth no beer" feel to it). To many, spending 15hrs running round shooting low-level lackeys minus half the 'peeling back the layers upon layers of deep conspiracy' of earlier games only to end on a pseudo-"to be continued" didn't even feel like a Deus Ex game. It was supposed to be wrapped up in "DX5: MD part 2" but due to poor sales the whole franchise has now been shelved which makes "DX4: MD part 1" look even weaker than it did at release. God I miss the days when Eidos Interactive were their own publisher and not a Squeenix branded tissue to blow the Japanese stock market's nose on...

 

[Igo69]

Deus Ex! what a brilliant game. Great story and gameplay. Played that game many times, explored everything and read everything there is to read. Every time i played it i found something new, like on the 3rd gameplay I found out that I could save a black helicopter pilot Jock, that was a total surprise for me.
Invisible War was mediocre and don't even remember much about it. I liked Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. Still the original Deus Ex is a masterpiece. Still today nobody can even make a game that comes close to it.

 

[BFG10K]

Whilst it has a few fans, DX2: Invisible War was dumbed down in a lot of ways. UI is the least appealing & most consolized (and was heavily criticized in reviews at the time), it was half the length (10-17hrs vs 25-35hr of DX1 & 3), and IW's level sizes had to be shrunk 50-75% smaller than 3 year older DX1 (Unreal 1 Engine) in order to "squeeze" into the original XBox's 64MB memory limit.

I've finished up Invisible War after a solid 21 hours of gameplay:

Very enjoyable all the way through.

 

[zinfamous]

They need to redo Dues Ex with modern day technology. Just like they redid RE2.

I agree with this. I tried playing it, twice I think, many years later because of all the praise and of course, I got it for cheap. It was the type of game that I would have loved had I played it in its era, but the key binding and mechanics were just so horribly dated, already 8 or more years ago.

I never got halfway through the intro mission with either of my two attempts. I just couldn't deal with the mechanics.

I did play HR and thought it was pretty good. ...also took two attempts, but mostly because the first start already had me burning out from that type of game at the time.

 

[Starbuck1975]

The original is still the best. A far better cyberpunk atmosphere and the player character is not as intrusive with narration animations

The sequels felt more Alita: Battle Angel grim dark, and the dialogue cut scenes and mission intros were just poorly written and cliche.

 

[Igo69]

If anyone is interested there is a mod that renovates a little and makes a game look better. I highly recommend it...
https://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-revision

 

[Modular]

I've started the original one a few times. I had some issues with it in W10 last time I tried to run it.

What are some of the must-have mods for the original game?

I don't mind the graphics if the story and game play are good. I've played the original Half-Life and expansions several times since they were so enjoyable.