A worthy succesor !
User Rating: 8.5 | Deus Ex: Invisible War PC
Being a great fan of the original Deus Ex, I have for a long time been looking forward to playing Deus Ex Invisible War. Frustratingly Deus Ex Invisible War has been standing idly on my shelf for several years, due to the game mysteriously crashing every time I had installed it and tried to run it. In the end I had given up...it was most likely something video card related issue, DE IW was infamous in its day for its high videocard requirements, yet it simply mystified me that the games installation menu told me my video card was fully adequate (and well it should be, the pc being from 2009 with a 1gb video card, far beyond DE IW´s 2004 releasedate). In the end I accidently found out what was wrong and why the game stubbornly crashed...it was´nt video card related afterall. I found a solution to the problem and finally : I could play DE IW. I had read a lot about the game. Generally negative comparisons with the original Deus Ex : DE IW gameplay and story was not as good as the original game; it was disappointing etc. So I had lowered my expectations from the start. But even if the game was inferior to the original DE, I was still looking forward to playing. Now that I have completed it, I must say that my relatively negative expectations was not fullfilled : The game is a worthy successor to DE. Sure, there are certain gameplay elements and design choices which are controversial and can be criticized: The absence of the skills system from DE; the relatively small levels (generally rather disappointing given that the Unreal 2 engine which was used for DE IW should be able to handle large outdoor scenes); and the A.I of the enemies which was somewhat weak. But also a lot of improvements to the original DE, apart from graphical side (both games of course falls short of todays standards, but that is hardly surprising given that DE are from 2000 and DE IW from 2004, and cannot hope to compare to the new fabulously looking DE 3) : More gameplay choices and sidequest than the original game and generally more freedom of playing style; good story, probably better than the original, and the whole atmosphere : music, leveldesign, the snippets of political and philosophical thoughts which also characterized the original DE game and the whole general "feel" of the game, sneaking around, taking guards out and avoiding surveilliance hardware - very much a worthy follow-up to DE. So give this, by now ageing, game a try, if you like games with a complex storyline and freedom of play.
