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Deus Ex: Invisible War
The future is what you make it.
by Susie Vee
| PLATFORM:
PC,
XBX |
| PUBLISHER:
Eidos |
DEVELOPER:
Ion
Storm |
GENRE:
RPG |
ESRB:
Mature |
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The first Deus Ex game was one of those ambitious titles
that everyone said nice things about, but didn’t really give
great reviews to (although it did win a few Game of the Year awards).
It generally got credit for trying out a lot of new ideas, but was
knocked for a somewhat cumbersome execution.
With its fairly deep RPG elements and upgradeable abilities, and
a supposedly non-linear storyline, we also enjoyed Deus Ex,
up to a point. After playing through a good deal of it, we saw that
the storyline was really pretty linear, and the only choices became
weather you were going to use stealth or brute force to get through
an area. (And, not that we judge games solely on their looks, but
the character models were butt-ugly.)
 Now,
the long-awaited sequel takes the same concept and refines it, creating
a new game that’s more accessible than the original, but sadly,
even more trapped in its own linearity.
Developed for consoles rather than PC (although its available on
both), Invisible War takes place decades after the original
game, in a world torn apart by factional in-fighting after a giant
economic collapse. This time around, you get to choose your gender
and select one of several faces to customize your character.
While playing through the game, you’ll be able to upgrade
your abilities with different biomods, and your choices will determine
your gameplay style, from stealth to action to melee fighting. You’ll
also get assignments from the different factions, representing corporate
conglomerates, back-to-nature religious types and other groups.
Since pissing one faction off with mean that its member often come
gunning for you, most of the time, your natural inclination will
be to do just enough to keep everyone happy.
 For
all the talk about the open-ended nature of Invisible War,
we were able to get to all four endings by merely backtracking to
the final ten minutes of the game – as if all our decisions
leading up to that point left us right back where we started.
Graphically, the game sports some very nice lighting effects, but
character models are again below par. The PC version also runs pretty
choppily, even on a high horsepower system. We also quickly got
tired of the lengthy loading screens when moving between areas of
the relatively small maps.
But, despite these issues, we still found a lot to like in the
new Deus Ex. There’s a good deal of NPC interaction,
and a variety of interesting subplots to take on, if you’re
interested. We also liked being able to choose a female character
model (why isn’t this standard on every game by now?) and
we liked the subtle differences in the script when playing as the
girl version of Alex.
If you can overlook its overly ambitious aspirations and enjoy
it as a densely plotted action/stealth RPG shooter, you’ll
find a lot to like in Invisible War.
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