The first thing that I did after installing and booting up the game was spend ten minutes cheerfully singing 'Durr na na nurr nuh!' along to the theme tune as I cranked up the resolution and changed the controls. Then I spent another five jigging along to that dancey bit in the middle as I faffed around with the colour of the interface. This is a proper old-school PC game right here, with hot-keys for everything under the sun. There are even keys for looking right, left, up, down and for centering my view, which I admit is pointless but it's nice to have options.
Finally finished with my setup I started a new game.
Satisfyingly, I'm greeted straight away with more options for customisation, getting to choose my face, race and hair colour before being moved on to choosing my skills; most of which I decided to pump into low-tech weapons use. My plan was to get it up to master level as soon as possible so that I could 'Render most enemies dead or unconscious with a single blow', which frankly, sounded awesome. I didn't have quite enough to get me there from the paltry amount allocated to me at the start, so I dumped what was left into hacking.
One of my biggest quibbles with DE:HR was that despite all of the different augs available to choose from, it's apparent that you will always end up the same as everyone else by the end. There were so many praxis points on offer that by the time you were 25 hours in, you had already unlocked everything that you wanted. There were no more hard choices to make about my characters development, and that took away a large part of the fun. Hard choices that force you to consider carefully and effect how you will be playing the game are fun. Feeling like whatever choice you make will ultimately not matter, is not.
Deus Ex has a lot more options available. For example; instead of hacking being a catch-all skill that allows you hack all PC's and door locks with the same repetitive mini-game, there are separate skills that influence doing things like, unlocking mundane doors, bypassing electronic devices, or if you wanted; blowing them to pieces altogether. The need to find consumerable multi-tools, lock-picks and explosives to do this only adds to the gravity of the choice that you make. Sure, this one in particular is only about how to open a door, but that's the point isn't it? If even the smallest task presents you with interesting options then that can only be a good thing. This sort of complexity is often shied away from in modern gaming. It's a shame.
The first and most obvious thing that struck me when I finally got going, was that the engine is definitely looking it's age. It wasn't exactly a looker when it was released, and unlike a fine wine, time has not been a friend to it. No anti-aliasing, dodgy unnatural looking shadows and walking animations that make people look as if they have been mounted rear-end first onto a metal rod and wheeled around flailing their arms and legs to make it look authentic. It didn't matter though. I've always had the imagination to ignore stuff like this, as long as the situation that I'm in is suitably exciting and the things I'm doing are suitably interesting. So after grabbing a mini-crossbow from my brother Paul (in the game unfortunately), I set about interesting-make-believe-ninja-sneaking my way forward.
The first try at tranquilising a terrorist didn't go so well. Without the cover system and radar from DE:HR, it was much easier to be surprised and spotted by a guard that I didn't know was there. Also the rules about whether they spot you or not sometimes seem quite arbitrary. For example; I was told in a training mission that sticking to the shadows would keep me hidden, but when I did just that and fired a silent dart into an oblivious terrorists head, he instantly seemed to know where I was hiding and pole-bum-wheeled his way towards me like an angry pistol waving marionette. If marionettes had bum-poles instead of strings. Justifiably terrified, I ran in circles around some packing crates until my tranq dart knocked him out, nicked his gun, and cursed Anna Navarre for providing me with the most useless stealth training ever. So sure, the AI is bollocks. The thing is, and maybe I'm just being ignorant out of sentiment, it didn't matter again. Just because the AI isn't acting realistically doesn't mean it isn't acting interestingly. I was still having good fun predicting their patrol routes, and once I mastered the crossbow-and-run-like-a-girl tactic I was golden. Apply a little bit of imagination and you can still be a stealthy killer from among the shadows; it's just not quite as aesthetically pleasing as in more modern games.
When I had stealth-dicked my way close enough to the wrecked shell of the Statue Of Liberty that I was supposed to be getting into, I stopped and checked my objectives. So far so like Human Revolution. Find and interrogate terrorist leader... check. Rescue hostage from terrorists...check. Massive island with multiple avenues of approach...check. Except the last one only applies to Deus Ex. In DE:HR on multiple occasions you only really have one path to take. Sure you can move along that path in more than one way, but you are still essentially on the same straight path. Worse; because a lot of the time this means crawling through an air vent, it's often significantly less fun to take an alternate route. Why would you crawl through a dull, grey vent when you can have fun sneaking around a bunch of guards? There isn't one vent that I found on Liberty Island.
I got in by sneaking around the back and piling up boxes so that I could scale a wall. I then stealthily set about disabling security cameras and alarmed laser grids with my multi-tool before making my way to the prison cell where they were holding the captured agent that I had to rescue. The mighty Gunther Hermann. He wasn't happy, so after taking my pistol, he went upstairs and killed every living person there. It rendered my philanthropic entry slightly redundant, but fuck me it was hilarious. The great thing is, this part wasn't even scripted (I don't think). Gunther only went mental because I neglected to see the guard standing in the next room. Who decided it was a great idea to fire a pistol into Gunther's back. So, after being severely bullet-ridden, the guy ran upstairs with my half-robotic friend in tow. There were guards upstairs. When I followed, there was only a big gory mess with Gunther standing in the middle of it. Bravo, augmented Arnie, Bravo.
I didn't even need to rescue Gunther. I didn't need to give him the gun. I didn't need to stack the boxes and climb the wall, I could have learned the code for the front gate and tip-toed past the bot patrolling in front of it, or I could have shut it down with an EMP grenade, or I could have put more points into hacking at the start and turned the security systems upon themselves. The list goes on. When I reached the terrorist leader, I listened to what he had to say and arrested him. I could have just shot him in the head, It all counts.
In all fairness Human Revolution gives you similar freedom at various points, and often how you approach these sections have far reaching effects that change how later events pan out. But somehow, it feels more contrived in that game, as if when you reach these points you are being presented with a cleverly disguised menu that gives you a flat choice of how to proceed. Of course, this IS what is happening in both games, but Deus Ex seems to do it far more often and not just with the big choices, but with the insignificant ones as well. As a result, the illusion of being able to do what you want is made so much stronger.
In conclusion then; yes, Deus Ex is the classic that we think it is. I've only done the Liberty Island mission upon writing this but I've been sucked back into it just like I was the first time. Sure it looks dated, the voice acting is terrible and the action can be a bit stunted, but i'm enjoying it as much as its newly released prequel and not just because of nostalgia. It really is nice to be transported back to a time when games were just for geeks, where menus weren't chunky designed-for-television affairs and it was impossible to unlock and upgrade everything on the first play-through. It was a geekier time, a more contented time, and apparently I've written this whole thing wearing those rose-tinted specs I was trying to avoid.
Bugger.
One of my biggest quibbles with DE:HR was that despite all of the different augs available to choose from, it's apparent that you will always end up the same as everyone else by the end. There were so many praxis points on offer that by the time you were 25 hours in, you had already unlocked everything that you wanted. There were no more hard choices to make about my characters development, and that took away a large part of the fun. Hard choices that force you to consider carefully and effect how you will be playing the game are fun. Feeling like whatever choice you make will ultimately not matter, is not.
Deus Ex has a lot more options available. For example; instead of hacking being a catch-all skill that allows you hack all PC's and door locks with the same repetitive mini-game, there are separate skills that influence doing things like, unlocking mundane doors, bypassing electronic devices, or if you wanted; blowing them to pieces altogether. The need to find consumerable multi-tools, lock-picks and explosives to do this only adds to the gravity of the choice that you make. Sure, this one in particular is only about how to open a door, but that's the point isn't it? If even the smallest task presents you with interesting options then that can only be a good thing. This sort of complexity is often shied away from in modern gaming. It's a shame.
The first and most obvious thing that struck me when I finally got going, was that the engine is definitely looking it's age. It wasn't exactly a looker when it was released, and unlike a fine wine, time has not been a friend to it. No anti-aliasing, dodgy unnatural looking shadows and walking animations that make people look as if they have been mounted rear-end first onto a metal rod and wheeled around flailing their arms and legs to make it look authentic. It didn't matter though. I've always had the imagination to ignore stuff like this, as long as the situation that I'm in is suitably exciting and the things I'm doing are suitably interesting. So after grabbing a mini-crossbow from my brother Paul (in the game unfortunately), I set about interesting-make-believe-ninja-sneaking my way forward.
The first try at tranquilising a terrorist didn't go so well. Without the cover system and radar from DE:HR, it was much easier to be surprised and spotted by a guard that I didn't know was there. Also the rules about whether they spot you or not sometimes seem quite arbitrary. For example; I was told in a training mission that sticking to the shadows would keep me hidden, but when I did just that and fired a silent dart into an oblivious terrorists head, he instantly seemed to know where I was hiding and pole-bum-wheeled his way towards me like an angry pistol waving marionette. If marionettes had bum-poles instead of strings. Justifiably terrified, I ran in circles around some packing crates until my tranq dart knocked him out, nicked his gun, and cursed Anna Navarre for providing me with the most useless stealth training ever. So sure, the AI is bollocks. The thing is, and maybe I'm just being ignorant out of sentiment, it didn't matter again. Just because the AI isn't acting realistically doesn't mean it isn't acting interestingly. I was still having good fun predicting their patrol routes, and once I mastered the crossbow-and-run-like-a-girl tactic I was golden. Apply a little bit of imagination and you can still be a stealthy killer from among the shadows; it's just not quite as aesthetically pleasing as in more modern games.
When I had stealth-dicked my way close enough to the wrecked shell of the Statue Of Liberty that I was supposed to be getting into, I stopped and checked my objectives. So far so like Human Revolution. Find and interrogate terrorist leader... check. Rescue hostage from terrorists...check. Massive island with multiple avenues of approach...check. Except the last one only applies to Deus Ex. In DE:HR on multiple occasions you only really have one path to take. Sure you can move along that path in more than one way, but you are still essentially on the same straight path. Worse; because a lot of the time this means crawling through an air vent, it's often significantly less fun to take an alternate route. Why would you crawl through a dull, grey vent when you can have fun sneaking around a bunch of guards? There isn't one vent that I found on Liberty Island.
I got in by sneaking around the back and piling up boxes so that I could scale a wall. I then stealthily set about disabling security cameras and alarmed laser grids with my multi-tool before making my way to the prison cell where they were holding the captured agent that I had to rescue. The mighty Gunther Hermann. He wasn't happy, so after taking my pistol, he went upstairs and killed every living person there. It rendered my philanthropic entry slightly redundant, but fuck me it was hilarious. The great thing is, this part wasn't even scripted (I don't think). Gunther only went mental because I neglected to see the guard standing in the next room. Who decided it was a great idea to fire a pistol into Gunther's back. So, after being severely bullet-ridden, the guy ran upstairs with my half-robotic friend in tow. There were guards upstairs. When I followed, there was only a big gory mess with Gunther standing in the middle of it. Bravo, augmented Arnie, Bravo.
I didn't even need to rescue Gunther. I didn't need to give him the gun. I didn't need to stack the boxes and climb the wall, I could have learned the code for the front gate and tip-toed past the bot patrolling in front of it, or I could have shut it down with an EMP grenade, or I could have put more points into hacking at the start and turned the security systems upon themselves. The list goes on. When I reached the terrorist leader, I listened to what he had to say and arrested him. I could have just shot him in the head, It all counts.
In all fairness Human Revolution gives you similar freedom at various points, and often how you approach these sections have far reaching effects that change how later events pan out. But somehow, it feels more contrived in that game, as if when you reach these points you are being presented with a cleverly disguised menu that gives you a flat choice of how to proceed. Of course, this IS what is happening in both games, but Deus Ex seems to do it far more often and not just with the big choices, but with the insignificant ones as well. As a result, the illusion of being able to do what you want is made so much stronger.
In conclusion then; yes, Deus Ex is the classic that we think it is. I've only done the Liberty Island mission upon writing this but I've been sucked back into it just like I was the first time. Sure it looks dated, the voice acting is terrible and the action can be a bit stunted, but i'm enjoying it as much as its newly released prequel and not just because of nostalgia. It really is nice to be transported back to a time when games were just for geeks, where menus weren't chunky designed-for-television affairs and it was impossible to unlock and upgrade everything on the first play-through. It was a geekier time, a more contented time, and apparently I've written this whole thing wearing those rose-tinted specs I was trying to avoid.
Bugger.
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