Deus Ex 2.....oh boy
[NOTE: I posted this at the MacLedge forums and I'm trying to garner some opinions here as well]
Dues Ex was one of those landmark titles in gaming that made it's mark instantly and found a place in the hearts of a small, but fiercely dedicated group of gamers. Part FPS, part RPG it offered a long, paranoid ride through a near-future clouded by terrorism, disease and social and political unrest. It's non-linear gameplay combined with its knack for letting the player make up their own solution to each situation made it one of the best titles to appear in the late-'90s.
Deus Ex 2 is not that game.
Not by a longshot.
Over-inflated expectations aside it is a poor successor to DX1. As with the transition from Sid Mier's Alpha Centauri to Civilization 3, there is a sense that you are getting less this time 'round.
What you will notice first in the game is that there is now one type of ammunition. It can be used on a pistol, a flamethrower or a rocket launcher. Next, you will realize that there is no longer a skill system of any kind. You are allowed a precious few bio-mods and that is it. Your inventory is made up of a few generic slots...very few. And unlike Halo, it doesn't come across as a wise decision. You often find yourself without the right tool for the job and no way to carry it.
After you manage to digest all of this, you will notice something else, the areas in the game are ridiculously tiny. Opening virtually any door requires you to sit at a loading screen for 30 seconds. I would say this is due to the fact it was developed on the Xbox, but if you play Morrowind or Halo on the Xbox you will notice how incredibly huge and detailed all of the areas are and how loading screens are few and far between. And when they do appear, they are gone in a flash. This is not a case of "underpowered hardware" but lazy developers.
If you did Halo this way, every level of the first ship you find yourself on would be split into 3 or 4 sections.
What's worse, you find yourself going back and forth between different areas very often, so you spend an agonizing amounts of time just sitting there. You actually find yourself hesitating to do nearby quests because to do them requires anywhere between 2 and 4 loading screens at 30 seconds apiece just to enter a room in the building across the street.
The vast, expansive levels of Deus Ex are gone. You are constantly finding artificial limitations to where you can go - runining any illusions of being a part of a living, breathing city. The disparity between the two games in this regard becomes very apparent near the end.
What's worse, you don't have the little details of DX1. The volumes upon volumes of books on the shelves. The little bits of decoration scattered about. And just put the entire Hong Kong level out of your mind. DX2 doesn't even attempt something so detailed and full of life. Which brings me to my next point....you are more or less alone in the game. There are hardly any other characters milling about. you will never see more than 5 people on the screen at once.
After all of this, the framerate still suffers on high-end PCs and the Xbox.
The attitude of the developers seems to have been "To hell with optimizations, let's just screw the gameplay".
The story line itself avoids the forced-failure moments of DX1 (Think: The showdown in The 'Ton) but it never allows you to pick one faction to support exclusively. By doing one quest for one faction, you find yourself inadvertently fulfilling some objective for another faction which makes the one you are trying to stick with accuse you of being untrustworthy. And at the end of the game, all of your work in this regard is thrown in your face...I won't say how, but it will leave you wondering why you put in so much effort.
If, by now you really dread playing DX2, here is the final kicker....it clocks in at about 1/4 of the length of DX1. You will be lucky if the gameplay time counter hits 10 hours.
Have fun.
Dues Ex was one of those landmark titles in gaming that made it's mark instantly and found a place in the hearts of a small, but fiercely dedicated group of gamers. Part FPS, part RPG it offered a long, paranoid ride through a near-future clouded by terrorism, disease and social and political unrest. It's non-linear gameplay combined with its knack for letting the player make up their own solution to each situation made it one of the best titles to appear in the late-'90s.
Deus Ex 2 is not that game.
Not by a longshot.
Over-inflated expectations aside it is a poor successor to DX1. As with the transition from Sid Mier's Alpha Centauri to Civilization 3, there is a sense that you are getting less this time 'round.
What you will notice first in the game is that there is now one type of ammunition. It can be used on a pistol, a flamethrower or a rocket launcher. Next, you will realize that there is no longer a skill system of any kind. You are allowed a precious few bio-mods and that is it. Your inventory is made up of a few generic slots...very few. And unlike Halo, it doesn't come across as a wise decision. You often find yourself without the right tool for the job and no way to carry it.
After you manage to digest all of this, you will notice something else, the areas in the game are ridiculously tiny. Opening virtually any door requires you to sit at a loading screen for 30 seconds. I would say this is due to the fact it was developed on the Xbox, but if you play Morrowind or Halo on the Xbox you will notice how incredibly huge and detailed all of the areas are and how loading screens are few and far between. And when they do appear, they are gone in a flash. This is not a case of "underpowered hardware" but lazy developers.
If you did Halo this way, every level of the first ship you find yourself on would be split into 3 or 4 sections.
What's worse, you find yourself going back and forth between different areas very often, so you spend an agonizing amounts of time just sitting there. You actually find yourself hesitating to do nearby quests because to do them requires anywhere between 2 and 4 loading screens at 30 seconds apiece just to enter a room in the building across the street.
The vast, expansive levels of Deus Ex are gone. You are constantly finding artificial limitations to where you can go - runining any illusions of being a part of a living, breathing city. The disparity between the two games in this regard becomes very apparent near the end.
What's worse, you don't have the little details of DX1. The volumes upon volumes of books on the shelves. The little bits of decoration scattered about. And just put the entire Hong Kong level out of your mind. DX2 doesn't even attempt something so detailed and full of life. Which brings me to my next point....you are more or less alone in the game. There are hardly any other characters milling about. you will never see more than 5 people on the screen at once.
After all of this, the framerate still suffers on high-end PCs and the Xbox.
The attitude of the developers seems to have been "To hell with optimizations, let's just screw the gameplay".
The story line itself avoids the forced-failure moments of DX1 (Think: The showdown in The 'Ton) but it never allows you to pick one faction to support exclusively. By doing one quest for one faction, you find yourself inadvertently fulfilling some objective for another faction which makes the one you are trying to stick with accuse you of being untrustworthy. And at the end of the game, all of your work in this regard is thrown in your face...I won't say how, but it will leave you wondering why you put in so much effort.
If, by now you really dread playing DX2, here is the final kicker....it clocks in at about 1/4 of the length of DX1. You will be lucky if the gameplay time counter hits 10 hours.
Have fun.
Comments
1) No reload - $$$$s up the gameplay, reduces the incentive to be stealthy
2) No gunspread - stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid
3) $$$$ed up weapons to attempt to correct the lack of gunspread
4) Crappy console port
For shame, Warren Spectre, for shame!
Barto
Take the new inventory screen, for example. What was wrong with the old 5x5 grid? It determined the number of heavy weapons you could carry without imposing some arbitrary limit... and best of all, if I wanted to carry a greater number of smaller, stealthier weapons, I could.
Unifying lockpicks and multitools was another bad design move. The player's route in the original game was influenced strongly by the respective numbers of lockpicks/multitools carried. Do I pick this door, or chance my way through the security grid from the side?
Yuck.
So far, no one's mentioned my favorite aspect of Deus Ex - the stealth action! I loved sneaking around, and lurking in the shadows, waiting for a guard to walk by, and taking them out without alerting everyone else.
First-person shoot-em-ups just bore me - shoot anything that moves, whatever.
I've ordered Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell in the hopes it can re-create the stealth Deus Ex experience.
If anyone else knows of a sleath-action game for the Mac, please let me know!
I borrowed Deus Ex from a friend about a year ago. I liked it okay - took me forever to do the first level because I was being really paranoid about getting noticed. Lots of sneaking around. Oh yeah, and those "non-lethal" weapons like the crossbow are totally useless.