If you haven't played Deus Ex at all, it's an interesting FPS/RPG hybrid that focuses around player choice and narrative in a near-future setting riddled with computer- human enhancements or “Augs” for short . It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend you try the game out, it's well worth every penny.
But, just as even the prettiest of gems has flaws, even great games have their issues.
The game focuses around the possibilities of choice. The ability for you to play the game how you want to play. You can be a stealthy fast-talking hacker, a rocket-launching tank on legs, or anywhere on the spectrum between the two. This opens up a lot of options in the game as to how you decide to tackle situations or approach opposition. While this translates into a great and enjoyable situation, it is not executed without issue. In nearly all situations you are presented with the overarching decision of "lethal vs non-lethal" or Metal Gear Solid vs Quake.
This theme plays a lot into level design and your character growth. Every area of the game seems somewhat formulaic in its design, there's the open corridor with tons of enemy opposition for the Quake players, and additionally there are multiple side paths through vents, elevator shafts, and ladders for the Solid Snakes out there. The problem here is that these options are not at all equally rewarded.
Let's look at the first area in the game, there are a few guards outside of a building, and your goal is to infiltrate said building. First and foremost is a little tutorial on stealth and takedowns. Let’s pop around the corner and shoot the guard. Look at that! A “Man Down” experience bonus, 10 free XP.
What if I’m even better and pull of a headshot? – An extra 10xp for marksman.
OK, let’s try it again with a “lethal takedown” (basically sneak up behind him and kill him sliently). Ooh, Man down again, and Expedient for a total of 30 xp! Nice.
Now let’s be nice and not kill him, just rough him up a bit and knock him out. What’s that? Man down, Expedient, AND merciful soul for a total of 50 xp.
OK, ok, maybe I’m jumping the gun, maybe these are just little bonuses. Let’s complete the area shall we? Let’s go down the corridor, killing everyone and waltzing in the front door. I get a 200xp bonus for “getting things done” and end the area with a total of 640 xp. Let’s assume I headshot everyone and bump that up to roughly 700 xp.
Now let’s be sneaky, let’s not combat anyone and go the long way around up through the roof. Oh, what’s that? A bonus for taking the long way around? Don’t mind if I do, that’s a free 100 xp.
And finally, once I breach the building through the roof and the vent, I end with Getting things done again for 200, and ghost for 500. Ending the area with a total of 1210 xp.
That’s almost TWICE what the lethal paths would have given me. At this point, it feels to me very much like that choice has already been made for me. In a game with RPG elements, the accrual of experience is king, giving me two options sounds appealing, but when one option is clearly so superior, where the real choice in that? Not to mention this voids any concept of Risk vs. Reward. In fact I'm actually rewarded for NOT taking risks. Clearly I feel like the non-lethal and stealthy style of play is favored and the desired way to play. This is completely ok, if you’re playing metal gear solid or a game based on stealth, but this game is based on choice.
The same concepts seem to apply to other aspects of the game as well. Look at the hacking mini-game, it's a fun little game that encourages quick thinking and quick clicking.
But it also provides boatloads of experience over the course of play. I have the codes to this door/safe/computer, sure. But if I open it with a code, sure the door opens but I’m left with nothing to show for it except access to whatever.
But if I hack the door I'm looking at bonuses from data stores and experience points for the simple act of hacking.
Oh look, 50 xp. This doesn't include a hack with data stores, which there can be multiple of, that can give up to 500 additional xp each.
Again, I felt like this choice was pretty much made for me. Why couldn't hacking simply give hacking related items (stop worms, nuke viruses) and no XP bonus? Or using the door code would give me an equivalent bonus to reward my exploration and reading of pocket secretaries?
The game has a great theme of trying to juggle Adam's humanity. This theme is so central that Eidos has included it in the title of the game and the TV commercial. I love that Eidos is attempting to tackle such powerful themes, but again it feels like much of the choices surrounding this theme are absent. Take a look at this penny-arcade comic :
That's exactly how I felt while playing the game. I'd spent hours trying to preserve life, trying to avoid hurting anyone, to be a genuine humanitarian. The first boss fight was exciting; I couldn't wait to see how I could get out of this situation non-violently. Turns out, there wasn't any way. I could shoot him with the stun gun a good 20 times sure, but in the end the cut scene took away any sense of humanitarianism. He died, and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. Why couldn't I try to talk my way out of the fight? I've got this awesome CASIE mod that pretty much lets me hypnotize people into doing what I want. I'm an expert hacker, why couldn't I try and find some solution that involved remotely hacking his augmentations while running around hiding from his huge machine gun? There were so many options, none of which were available to me. In fact, I'd argue that cut-scenes in general hurt the game. Any type of forced dialogue from the cut-scenes was inappropriate for the character and the values that I had been building and holding dear.
For all of the attachment to the character the game begs of you, I felt relatively little connection to the world. Visually, it’s gorgeous. But the world itself doesn’t seem to have much of a pulse. There were droves of nameless “hobos” or “punks” hanging around the game that provided little more to the game than just someone in my way. Seeing a character with a non-generic name told me, clear as day, that they were used for a quest at some point or had nothing more to offer than a repeated one liner about how they hate augs. I would have liked to have seen a bit more character from these npcs, maybe a few could be doing more than standing in the same spot and chatting for 20 hours.
After seeing Detroit the second time it was nice to see that the world had advanced, but rest assured those punks were still standing around that barrel by the apartments doing absolutely nothing. Add a little spice to the world, give every npc a unique name, make me wonder if they are important to the story later or wonder if I missed something. Make me want to talk to them, make them move around a bit, make me believe they are human.
At this point, I feel like I've just complained about the game’s short comings. I do feel there are a lot of really great things about this game that should be noted and rewarded.
The cover system, for starters is great. The decision to pull out of first person into a third person cover was excellent. We’ve seen games in the past that try to use a “lean” system or some jarring camera tricks to give first person the feel of cover, but I found the hybrid perspective to be comfortable, functional, and fluid. Aiming from cover could be difficult at times, (not sure if it’s just the pc version, but my aiming reticule often just disappeared for a couple of hours.) but with the use of zoom it became possible. Moving around while in cover felt efficient and effective. I never felt that I was caught or seen through no fault of my own. If I got spotted, I know exactly why and exactly where I screwed up.
I really enjoyed the stealth play as well, I felt proud when I was rewarded for not setting off any alarms, or not being seen in any way. Sneaking up behind people and using a takedown felt really good, and the stun gun is probably one of the more enjoyable and rewarding weapons I’ve used in a FPS in a good long while. I was pleased when the game rewarded my exploration and my crawling through vents or hacking computers (though, as mentioned before, I feel the other method of play should have been rewarded as well).
All in all, the game is loads of fun; and I really enjoyed both play-throughs. Any game that has taken 60 hours of my time over the past few weeks, I must give it some credit. It’s definitely worth a purchase if you’re on the fence in any way, but at the end of the day for a game that heralds choice so highly, I feel like a huge number of those choices were either made for me or taken away from me.
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