Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This game has merits that make it worth playing, but it's still vastly inferior to the first game (Which I gave five stars). This game has a lot of good ideas, but they are largely negated by some really bad design decisions.
There are two HUGE faults that keep this from being a great game. First: the role-playing system is bad. Plain and simple. It's not very useful, flexible, robust, or strategic. The skills system that helped make the first game so great is gone, and that was a huge mistake. The replacement, a carved up biomod system and a weak weapons mod system, requires little planning or thought. There are only five biomod slots now, and the weapons mod system is cheap and underpowered. The system in the first game was so wonderful, because it was loaded with choices and tradeoffs. You could spend your skills system to become a tank, a hacker, a ninja, a frogman, or any combination that you wanted. It's nonexistent here. There is no sense of power development like what you get in a good RPG, where you start off as a complete wimp and end up the game as a demigod. That is why "Deus Ex: Invisible War" is very shallow as an RPG.
The other major fault of this game is the size of the maps. They are ridiculously tiny. Most of the areas are tight, indoor cramped spaces. You have to get to the end of the game before you encounter any big open outdoor areas. Exploring an area to find the alternate "secret" entrance to a well-guarded facility is laughably easy. Part of the fun of the first game was wandering around the huge open maps and maybe sneaking into a huge building through the roof. In this game, the front door and the air vent that takes you around it are only five feet away. What's the point? Small maps also mean frequent (and long) loading times.
One welcome change from the first game is a big improvement in the voice acting. Both the male and female Alex voice actors sound very good. Except for voice acting though, the rest of the sound in this game takes a big step backwards. Alex Brandon's music is scaled way back. Forget about hearing another great soundtrack like the first game. The weapons sound like toys, and the noises in the game don't do a good job of letting you know how stealthy are your being. That's part of stealth just not being very useful in this game. The riot prod is useless and the tranquilizer dart gun takes two shots now instead of one to take down an enemy. Silent takedowns are too hard, but you don't need them anyways, since most enemies aren't much of a threat to you. You can take most of them out easily with the overpowered sniper rifle.
Deus Ex: Invisible War has some saving graces that make it worth playing. The storyline is still excellent. I think that it would have helped to make the game longer and give it more character development, but it's still great. The story has one or two very surprising twists in it, and it gets you to think philosophically, just like the first one. It all makes for a good legitimate sequel story, instead of just a thrown-together rehash of the first one (which is common for sequels). Warning: if you did not play the first game, then you will be totally lost, since the plot for "Invisible War" is pretty convoluted too.
The developers had some good creative ideas too. Some of the "black market" biomod canisters that you find are wicked, like one that lets you control bots, and one that imparts EMP to your melee attacks. The rocket launcher has a guided missile mode that puts you into the first-person view of the missile. I also got a lot of amusement out of the NG Resonance character, a holographic AI that provides some comic relief, as well as some hints and side quests. And, even with the scaled-back role-playing system, "Invisible" still has tons of good dialog and lots of open-ended problem-solving. Plus, there's nothing else like it out there as far as action/RPG games go. It's too bad though, that there was so much removed for this game. If it had been a full-fledged sequel instead of "Deus Ex Lite", then it could have been as good as the first one. I would love to see a third Deus Ex game that combines the best elements of the first two.
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Deus Ex: Invisible WarSequel to the mega award winning DEUS EX 30+ Game of the Year AwardsProduct InformationIt is twenty years since the end of the global conspiracy depicted in Deus Ex. In the aftermath a catastrophic depression has crippled the world and warring corporate governments use terrorism as the primary tool to enforce their own violently destructive agendas.A few days before the start of Deus Ex: Invisible War Alex D is roused from sleep and rushed to a secret airfield to be transported away from the only world he (or she if the player so chooses) has ever known. Confined to a new training facility in Seattle "for his own safety" Alex learns that the city of Chicago his home was completely destroyed by a terrorist nanotech attack.The only fragments of Alex's former world are now confined to the training facility in Seattle: Billie Adams (a fellow trainee from Chicago) two other students from the Seattle program and - always - the expectation that the mysterious rites and trials of his training will lead to a lucrative job as a corporate mercenary and spy. These things too are about to fly apart however.As covert anti-terrorist operative Alex D. you are thrust into a hornet's nest of conflict conspiracy and doubt.In the huge free-roaming world of Deus Ex the challenge is in choosing your allies and your enemies.Product Features Sequel to the mega award winning DEUS EX - over 30 Game of the Year AwardsYou have DECISIVE POWER to create your own experience in an open gameplay environment. With multiple solutions to problems the game changes to the players method of problem solving - sneak hack bribe or kill.Use biomods to customize upgrade and exploit the superhuman powers of your character - see through walls leap 40 feet into the air regenerate critical body damage or render yourself invisible.RPG character creation and advancement
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