Deus Ex Game Review By Todd Pugh The story of Deus Ex begins with a plague called the Gray Death ravaging the world There is rumored to be an unconfirmed cure known as Ambrosia Conspiracy theorists claim that the governments of the world are hording for wealth and powerful of the world Riots have begun in many large cities demanding that something be done about the Gray Death Recently there a shipment of Ambrosia was delivered to New York City on its way to Washington where it was hijacked by a terrorists group You are Paul Denton the newest field agent for UNATCO You are a new type of agent capable of upgrading your body using what is known as Nano Technology You have been sent to New York to subdue the riots eliminate the terrorist threat and recover the shipment of Ambrosia The Basics Company Edios Author Ion Storm Release Year 2000 Type of Game First Person Shooter with parts of Adventure thrown in Price 19 99 Minimum Requirements o 300 MHz Pentium II or equivalent o Windows 95 98 o 64 MB RAM o DirectX 7 0a compliant 3D Recommended Requirements o AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III processor o 128 MB RAM o 3D accelerator with 16 MB VRAM accelerated video card o DirectX 7 0a compliant sound card o 4X CD ROM drive o 150 MB hard drive space plus o 8X CD ROM Drive 750 MB hard drive space plus space for saved games space for saved games Game Summary Quick Overview In Deus Ex you walk around cities or installations where you interact with people and objects trying to complete objectives Now to be a bit more specific you can interact with any person in the game in some way or another You can actually have conversations with specific characters where they will say something you pick a response from a list of responses and so on You solve puzzles like opening doors trying to figure out who is actually good or bad find a specific item find specific information and so on You do this by finding information through talking to people hacking computer finding secret documents finding keys picking locks and other tasks of this nature All the while you are fighting terrorist groups secret societies state of the art robots and people who are more than the seem There are a tremendous amount of items which you can pick up and use not all of which will help you But you are forced to choose what you want to keep and what is not as important because you have a limited inventory space As you go along you earn skill points which can be used to learn new skills Skills allow you to do things such as hack computers pick locks use a specific weapon better override electronic devices swim faster and use health packs more efficiently You also come across body augmentations which you can install on your body Augmentation abilities range from jumping higher and lifting incredibly heavy objects to becoming invisible and launching and using a robotic drone from your body Installation Installing the game is fairly simple All you need to do is put the game CD in your CD Rom drive and when the Deus Ex screen comes up push the installation button and follow the directions given to you User Interface Above is a screen shot showing the user interface In the upper left corner is health meter Your health meter is shown as a picture of your body when a part of your body is green it is at full health when it is black it is at 0 health Next to the body is a green bar which shows your bio energy which is used to power your augmentations Below these is a compass which shows the direction you are facing Along the right side of the screen is the list of your current augmentations and what F key they are mapped to Along the bottom of your screen is a list of the number keys from 1 to 0 with a picture of what inventory item you currently have mapped to that key Game Play The game play is a little different than most First Person Shooters You do walk around the environment in first person mode and you do shoot things The difference is that killing everything in sight may not actually always be the best solution There is more than one solution to most problems you encounter in the game Most times when you have to attack an installation there is more than one way to attack it You can choose to walk in the front door with guns blazing and destroy everything in sight or you can sneak in the back door and take out only those you threaten to keep you from completing your objectives Not only is completing objectives important but in what way you complete and objective or possibly not completing an objective at all will change how certain characters in the game react to you Your actions in the game can actually change the story of the game Scoring There is no true score in the game The way to tell if you are doing well in the game is by how many skill points you have received and by how many augmentations you have You gain skill points by completing certain objectives which range from exploring a certain area you did not have to enter to completing the main objective Augmentations are found throughout the game Some augmentations can even be found in more than one place Artwork Sounds and Music I found the artwork to be quite exceptional especially for a 3 year old game The people look and act in realistic ways The cityscapes are mostly based off of real locations and actually look like those locations The sound effects where appropriate If you smashed a mirror you would hear it If you shot a gun it made an appropriate noise for that specific gun The music was great Each city had its own music and the music would change if something significant happened like you were being attacked Special Features Non Linear Story Line Multiplayer Mode Interactive Enviroment Artifical Intelligence that reacted to your past actions Evolving Story Manual The manual was short and concise It did a good job of explaining how to use each interface in the game and how to perform each action They did not use the manual as a means of telling you the story which I appreciated Bugs The version of the game that I purchased did not contain any bugs The game had been out for several years and the bugs had already been removed from retail copies of the game Review Good Points Evolving story line Non Linear Story Number of Useable Items It Used Real Life Locations Multipule Playstyles Realistic Problems with Realistic Solutions Bosses are Not Unbeatable Interaction with Characters Bad points Forced into Certain Story Arcs Limited Inventory Size Multiplayer Too Easy to
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