Deus Ex

Many claim Deus Ex to be the best video game of all time. I knew, even before playing, that I wouldn't think so, simply because of its genre: it's not fantasy. I'm not too good with first person shooters either. Luckily, Deus Ex is not a pure FPS game.

In fact, Deus Ex seemed to be much like Thief: Deadly Shadows (another game from Eidos). Fortunately, Deus Ex has character stats (in form of skills) -- a feature I was missing in Deadly Shadows. The game also provides nano-augmentations to further improve your character.

I didn't want to have a too similar experience to Thief, so I tried to make JC Denton a proper fighting machine but I ended up sneaking around anyway, and like in Thief, constantly quickloading if things didn't go perfectly enough.

I mainly used the sniper and assault rifle as my weapons. The latter seemed quite underwhelming in the beginning, but became alright towards the end when I mastered the rifle skill and had upgraded the weapon enough. Speaking of weapon upgrades: a silencer on an assault rifle seems really silly. The gun started to feel really weird after I upgraded the weapon with it.

And on the sniper rifle the silencer was just too good -- the weapon was powerful enough even without the option to make it shoot silently.

I played in Normal difficulty, and I'd say it was a challenge enough. Not too hard but couldn't go fooling around too much either.

The age of the game and its old engine didn't really bother me; only when dropping crates down -- they just felt too unreal. Where Deus Ex lacked in visually, it gained back with its soundtrack. While it wasn't really my favorite genre of music, it did a good job managing to not annoy me even if it was constantly looping. And it did a large part in creating the atmosphere of the game.

Deus Ex was predictable in its plot twists, and the missions got slightly too repetitive towards the end as the game is quite long. As the final choice in the end, I decided to side the Illuminati: a new Dark Age didn't seem that great and joining your mind with an AI sounded fishy.

I'd say Deus Ex was very enjoyable but not that great. Not my choice of genre either; I just like sword & sorcery too much. I could maybe play it again and do something differently. I doubt the experience would change enough to be worth, though.

One thing that bothered me was if I could've saved Jock the pilot. It was rather obvious the mechanic put a bomb in the helicopter as there was another dead mechanic lying next to him. Maybe I should have talked to Everett of it or something.

Edited: 2023-06-21: Improved language, grammar, and post layout.