Deus Ex: Invisible War

The sequel to Deus Ex takes the original game and cuts down every aspect of it; areas are smaller, there are less biomod slots, and the game is much shorter. This lead a number of fans to dislike the game, some even deny the whole existence of Deus Ex: Invisible War.

DX:IW certainly doesn't feel quite like its predecessor. The console-oriented development certainly didn't help in that. For instance, there's no proper grid inventory but instead some slot-based thing that s'posedly suits console controller better.

However, the biggest thing that set me off was the story. The different factions of the game are present from the very beginning and push the character, Alex D. (who can be female by your choice) to their own goals through the whole game. But, no matter who you decide to side along the way, in the end, as far as I can tell, all the different endings are available to you. None of the factions leaders care if you killed a score of their minions as long as you end the story in their favor, which, by the way, ends at the location where Deus Ex began. Quite poetic isn't it.

There are no good guys in the game. At least in Deus Ex during most of the game MJ12 felt like it. This is interesting but also somewhat unrewarding. Also, JC Denton evidently decided to join with the Helios AI (I sided the Illuminati) back in his days, so this time I chose that ending aswell. It also seemed the best of the worst. JC and Paul Denton both make appearance in the game so I guess I could have saved Paul in DX? Damn. The brothers don't look nor sound quite like they used to, which is a bit upsetting.

I played IW on normal difficulty and occasionally found it challenging, mostly towards the end when the tougher opponents started to be plenty. I wish I had not put a freaking glass detabilizer on my sniper rifle with a silencer (only max of two weapon mods per weapon). It could have used the increased damage mod. I stacked a whole lot of weapon mods with me but evidently silencers are only found in the beginning of the game.

Likewise, biomod canisters are everywhere; I maxed all of my augmentations and still had ten unused ones. That's definitely unlike the first game where a long while I wondered if I had missed a ton of them. Deus Ex's length was definitely longer than Invisible War's, though. The latter I finished almost exactly in ten hours. (I like games that track the time played.)

I wonder if the developers re-used some of the textures in Thief: Deadly Shadows. Some places in Cairo looked so familiar.

One another thing that seems absent is music. I was barely aware there was any soundtrack playing at any given time. In Deus Ex, music was constantly present.

Deus Ex: Invisible War is not as good as the first game, but that doesn't mean it's not worth playing. It's entertaining enough, it just lacks the depth it could have had. Like, why they dropped skill system off?