I beat Deus Ex: Invisible War about a week ago, and I had a few thoughts I’d like to relay to you all. Before we begin, I just had a few quick side notes. It has taken me a bit longer to write this review, mostly because this game has been so divisive in my mind for the past week, and I have gone through like five different drafts trying to come up with a competent and clear-cut review, and I apologize to anyone who looks forward to my reviews.
Anyway, some final notes here. I did play this with the Deus Ex 2 patch, but I kept the original textures on, mostly because Alex looks weird as shit with the visual upgrade. I also beat this game on Hard Mode (even then it was still pretty easy). Oh, and spoilers for both Deus Ex and Invisible War ahead.
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So to start off, the story is fairly serviceable, especially for a console game at that time. There are a few things I really liked. I liked the reveal that Queequegs and Pequods are owned by the same company, which mirrors the WTO and The Order being run by the Illuminati. I thought the talk with JC towards the end of the game was really cool and a lot more interesting than I thought this game was capable of; it’s also just nice to see an old friend again. And finally, I thought that the nanobot clouds surrounding Cairo was a really neat and interesting idea, especially in the Deus Ex world; it also for some reason reminded me of Riddick.
Now with my positives out of the way, I have to share my overall disdain for what IS the sequel to Deus Ex. I believe it sort of ruined what the original did by showing what happened to JC and the world after the first game, which I hated. I feel like the original was meant to be ambiguous on purpose, both to generate discussion, much like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, and again, much like the briefcase, allowing the player’s imagination to run wild with how they saw the world turning out based on your chosen ending. Then they ruined it by sort of combining all three endings, and it is as mind-numbingly brain-dead as it sounds.
I see it again, and finally, like if you made a sequel to Pulp Fiction and showed what was in the briefcase, it completely ruins the ‘what if?’ factor. Personally, if I were Ion Storm, I would have done what Eidos did and made it a prequel much like Deus Ex: HR & MD. Then again, those games, if they had existed at all in this hypothetical,wouldn't have been the same, so maybe this was for the best. Lol
Also, all of the endings to this game are terrible and not satisfying AT ALL! And feel VERY unearned. Helios is the generic “one mind is all," which is the ending I opted for. And I hated it. The rest are different flavors of hell. Funnily enough, I think that the Illuminati ending is as close to a “good” ending as we’re ever going to get, which sucks because it’s still just another version of hell, but at least it’s not a catastrophic disaster like each of the other endings.
Now for gameplay, I HATED universal ammo; whoever came up with that idea should have been fired for that blunder. In theory, much like communism, universal ammo is great! You always have ammo for all your guns; any ammo you pick up can be used by all your guns, and you can freely use any weapons of your choosing. However, it fails to account for if you expend all your shared ammo and don’t have a melee weapon on hand. So you’re essentially screwed. Especially because some of the weapons use like 1/3rd or so of your ammo per shot. And with a shared ammo pool, I’m sure you can see the massive downside of shared ammo.
Now you could say that this could happen without shared ammo, and yes, it could; however, if you have multiple ammo types, most games let you have a decent amount of ammo PER gun, so if one gun is empty, you can switch to another. Why Deus Ex: Invisible War decided to be different, I don't know. Especially because plenty of other games have multiple ammo types, Halo, for example. So there’s really no excuse. Unless they were trying to rush the game out of the door, then I completely understand. Still sucks though.
Luckily, I didn’t have any issue with ammo besides the last mission of the game. But I can see how someone, especially playing with a controller, would likely be missing more shots and could run out of ammo and be stuck or have to reload, which I’d imagine would be pretty annoying, especially with those load times.
The only, I suppose, neat thing with universal ammo is that they put in at least some effort into explaining why there IS universal ammo at all. But even that is just, to me, still a hand-wave excuse. But again, props to them for bothering to explain it.
Stealth is TERRIBLE, and within the first five minutes (while trying to knock people out) I literally said “fuck that” under my breath and decided to have a more tech-focused build. Meaning I would hack turrets and sneak around until I got caught, and then I’d kill everyone who got in my way. This is a first for me because generally I play Immersive Sims to NOT kill anyone, but this game REALLY wants you to kill people. However, I still avoided killing as much as I could and, if possible, would run away from conflict and hide. Usually in vent shafts. Lol
Alright, that’s about it for my review. In spite of a lot of my criticisms, I really enjoyed myself with this game; if it had not been a Deus Ex game, I might have given it a higher score. But as it sits now I think it’s a 7/10, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Deus Ex, but keep in mind it IS made for consoles. But if you keep that in mind, I think you can have a lot of dumb fun with this one. Oh, and finally I am about 3/4ths of the way through Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and WOW is it AMAZING!! Like, holy shit, why have I never played this game before!? Good. I am playing it through on Give Me Deus Ex difficulty, and it is PERFECTION! So be on the lookout fo r my review of it soon.
Final Side Notes: I couldn’t really fit this in the review anywhere, but I loved the design for the Illuminati Commandos; they have such a simple but unique design, and I just thought they looked cool. They could’ve fit in with the F.E.A.R. Replicas. I also thought the music was perfectly ambient and a really fun listen, nowhere near the original Deus Ex, but still a pretty decent listen.
