Before I started playing today I dug out the manuals for this game to see if there is much backstory I’ve been missing. Steam appears to be a dead loss for this but I find the 2 manuals on replacementdocs without any problems. They offer a bit of general background but nothing too major. The manual is all about instructions on playing the game, which I’ve already figured out for myself. The newspaper does have some interesting bits and pieces and I always like it when games give fake newspapers or magazines in the box as it all adds to the atmosphere. I remember Alone in the Dark for instance having the deceased painters final mail wrapped in a tag with his name/address and deceased stamped on it. AITD’s paper manages to set all the backstory for the game in an interesting way. This doesn’t succeed quite so well as it doesn’t really tell me much I don’t know by now but it would have helped at the start.

The moment I walk into Hell’s kitchen I get a message that there is a hostage situation at the Ton hotel where I stayed with my brother apparently. I’m asked if I remember Mr Renton and funnily enough I don’t but apparently I should do.

I don’t really know where I’m going but I end up in the bar. It’s a large bar but it’s not exactly full of people. I can go up and talk to every single person in here which makes up for this to some extent. I get a lead on a warehouse to the South for my NSF generator. I also get a side quest to go and find a woman who has gone off to an alley somewhere and not returned. The side quests are mounting up now for this area. I’m being sent off to do other peoples little tasks so this really is starting to feel like an RPG.

I attempt to find the alley and instead find the hotel so I decide to get this sub mission out of the way first.

There are two hostages being held on the first floor with a terrorist guarding each. It takes me a few attempts to rescue both as the terrorists tend to kill them off the moment I attack the other one. Sneaking doesn’t seem to help and I do better just running straight in. I’ve very much given in on the non-violent approach by this point. It’s not much use sneaking around in this game and it worked better in Thief. The rewards for sneaking are non-existent also as far as I can tell. I’m sure its all avoidable but if there’s no particular reason not to, I’ll use the quickest option I can see which is more often than not the violent one.

I’ve not talked about the combat system yet. It’s an unusual hybrid of RPG and FPS. You have the usual array of weapons including machine guns, pistols, crowbars, knives, grenades, etc.. but you also have a skill for each one which affects how much damage you do and how accurate you are. The accuracy is strange in itself, in that you have crosshairs that show the area your bullet will go in which shrink gradually as you stand still. When I say gradually, I really mean it. To get any degree of accuracy I have to stand still for about 5 seconds. Fortunately the enemy always appear to run straight for me (after struggling to get around corners) so the best strategy is usually to get their attention, back off and wait, then get them when they come round the corner.

Aside from my own stats, the weapons themselves have more stats which I can sometimes alter by modding them with scopes, laser sights, etc.. They don’t appear to break down and need repairing (thankfully).

I use my knife on these two NSF guards as I’ve been training up my melee a bit. As far as training goes, I receive skill points for certain actions in the game (usually going to key locations). I also get the occasional bonus points for exploring but these have been trivial so far. I can use these points at any time to train in the same skills that I had at the start of the game. I’m assuming that if I get my pistol skill up to maximum I won’t have to wait forever for my crosshairs to shrink down but I’ll need a lot more points before I find out. I’ll use the strategy of maxing out a couple of my combat areas (probably small arms and melee) on the basis that I’ll be better off being a master in a couple of areas than a jack of all trades.

One of the freed hostages gives me a password for the NSF warehouse although I don’t remember ever using it. I talk to the hotels owner and he tells me his daughter hasn’t come home and he wants me to find her for him.

His daughter is the same girl who I heard about in the bar. I find her + a pimp in an alley. The pimp has her cornered and is trying to force her to work for him but I sneak up and zap him with my stun baton.

She gives me the password to get to talk to a weapons dealer who lives in a nearby basement. I head here next. There is an EMP field to get past which I do by hacking his systems with a multitool. This leads me to yet another mini-quest where I have to go and rescue his buddy from a base in the sewers of all places.

I soon find the sewer labs although I have to shoot my way through a load of guards and swim through toxic waste to get there. The smugglers buddy tells me they have been experimenting on people and forcing him to do anti-body work. When I return to tell the smuggler, he claims the CIA runs the lab but I’m sceptical. This is more suggestion of a corrupt government and I’m clearly on the wrong side here given the way the government is being portrayed and the fact that everyone on my side is a bloodthirsty goon. I expect I’ll be swapping over to the NSF or an equivalent at some point.

I run out of subquests and get to go for the main mission. I picked up a key to the warehouse from one of my quests a while back so I head straight in and after a bit of running around the rooftops and down alleys this leads me to the building I’m looking for. There are a lot of NSF in here and dealing with them all presents a bit of a challenge.

Once again I use the fact that they always come running for me against them, trapping 7 or 8 of them in a small spot, tossing in a gas grenade then picking them off at my leisure. I’m not too impressed by the AI for these guys, it’s not much different to playing Doom and it’s not the games strong point.

I take out the generator by shooting a conveniently placed exploding barrel. I’m sent to a chopper which is waiting for me on the roof so I make my way up past a load more NSF.

Gunther is waiting up here with the chopper. He hints that my brother hasn’t been doing too good a job with the other part of the mission but I’m not sure if he is just complaining about his lack of violence again or if something has gone wrong. I fly off back to base. The poster in the background with the word “Savioriffic” on it doesn’t half look like Richard Garriott incidentally but it’s not too clear in this screenshot.

I expect I’ve got a much better feel for what Deus Ex is about today. I’ve enjoyed playing this but the levels just feel too small for the system of subquests to work well. There is no room for wasted space and while this keeps things fast paced, the quests all end up being on top of each other and there is no feeling of realism or any real role playing. It would be easy to say that the technology didn’t allow for more but Underworld managed on a much more basic machine years earlier. I think its yet another example of higher spec machines restraining gameplay. The Unreal engine was probably a good choice rather than starting from scratch but the constraints it has imposed are very obvious.

The game is a strange mixture of Ultima style questing, System Shock style FPS/RPG with a bit of Thief’s sneaking + a sci-fi comic book story. On paper, this should be fantastic but it hasn’t quite managed to pull any of those elements off. It’s not far away and I can see why it got the hype it did but I think it’s possibly aged a bit less well than a game like System Shock. I get the impression my opinion might be somewhat based on the way I like to play the game since I’m playing this as a FPS. If I was taking a less violent route there would be less comparison to a modern FPS and it would maybe hold up better.

I’m sure I’ve still got a long way to go anyway and the best may still be to come. Hopefully the engine is capable of some bigger levels as this is a clear limitation so far.

My first task is to meet up with my boss (Manderly) but I take the opportunity to explore the UNATCO base first. This part of the game is just about adding to the games plot and meeting a few of the other people who work at UNATCO. I have my own office here and can log onto my machine to check my email. The emails hint of people resnting the new nano-tech agents like myself as they have sacrificed their own limbs and appearance with the old technological enhancements.

I meet my partner for my next assignment (Anna Navarre). She is the usual ridiculously endowed, leather clad type with a Eastern European accent that I’ve seen in far too many games. She isn’t too unhappy to have me as a partner given my performance on the last mission and the fact that I wasn’t afraid to kill.

I meet up up Manderly in a nearby office. He is also happy with my performance and sends me for a health checkup and to get armed for the next mission. The medic gives me instructions on using augmentation cansisters (I found one at the end of the mission) with medical bot’s to upgrade my systems.

I basically have two options with the upgrade. I can either give myself a strength boost or a combat melee damage boost. The combat damage has to be the most useful as I’m not intending to take the pacifist’s route through this game. I only get these boosts by activating the system which will drain energy.

I pick up a stealth pistol from ex-General Carter who is apprently something of a hero of mine. It appears that I definitely haven’t been grown in a tank as he mentions my parents being killed in a car crash.

I run out of places to explore so I head back up to Manderly’s office to get my assignment. We are chasing after the stolen Ambrosia and now know where some of it is. Pauls team is going to be sent after it but I have to kill the power generator and shut down the defences before he can go in.

I take a police boat to Castle Clinton where I’m told by Anna that there is a single barrel of the Ambrosia which I have to head in and recover.

I decide I’ve had enough of the sneaking style and make a frontal assault on the terrorists holding up in the castle. I’ve got backup from my partner + a couple of cops so I just nudge myself far enough into the entrance to attract some attention, back out while the NSF guys run out of cover and let everyone else handle the fight.

A quick bloodbath later and the place its cleared. I get to pick up all the ammo off all the corspes and this approach seems to have paid off for me. There is a locked hatch in the castle which I struggle to find a way to open. There is a child in here who wants some food but I can’t find any to give him. Next to him is a locked container which I open with a couple of lockpicks and this gives me the keycode to enter the hatch (666).

The Ambrosia is just down here. There are also a load of NSF. I sneak past them through the vents do a bit of exploring, discovering an alterative entrance by the vending machine on the docks which would no doubt have been a less bloodthirsty route to go down.

I head back out to meet up with Anna. Despite being my partner she has just sat at the entrance for the whole time. She is pleased with my performance and the fact that I’m not afraid to kill. This violence/pacifist stuff is feeling a bit forced. I can’t see a particular reason why we would be overly restrained in this situation given that the NSF aren’t worrying about keeping us alive. Whether I’m on the right side is debatable but both sides are using the same levels of violence as far I can see. Our agents are ludicrously bloodthirsty on the other hand.

The next mission is to rescue some civilian hostages from the train station. The station is mined so I have to use an emp grenade to disrupt the ignition switches on the bombs.

The train station is well guarded with a barracade and three gunmen. It’s not much of a barracade as it must be all of 30cm high. I gun my way through, emp the bombs and rescue the hostages without losing any of them to the NSF.

I take the train out of the station and meet up with Paul for the next stage of the mission which is taking down the power station. He gives me his apartment key if I want to go there and get some equipment. It sounds like we don’t know where this power station is and I have to find it. He suggests a couple of places to ask and suggests I start with the local tavern.

I’ve got into this game a bit more today. The plot is starting to flesh out and walking around the base talking to everyone really helped. This is still a comic book world in every sense but at least it is a detailed one. A lot of effort seems to have gone into making this into a world rather than a set of FPS levels. It’s all in the little details, like the multiple paths or all the guards have something unique to say to me and even wishing me luck and the like when I headed back out to do the mission. It sounds as though the next section of the game will be another non-violent and exploring one. This is potentially going to be much more of an RPG than SS2.

After nearly two months since the last post, I’m back for another game. I should really be having a go at Thief 2 but instead I’m going for Deus Ex since I bought it on Steam ages back and never got around to playing it. This was Warren Spectors first game for Ion Storm which is where the Origin connection comes in. Ion Storm had already released Daikatana at this point which got panned by critics but I never played it myself and probably never will. On the other hand, I heard Deus Ex repeatedly described as the best game ever so I’m expect a lot from this.

Before I start the game I have to manually alter a couple of the config files to get it to run in widescreen. Once done the game runs perfectly. I’m not impressed that this wasn’t added into Steam but it wasn’t too tricky to do myself.

I unintentionally skip the tutorial level and go straight into the game.  I’m going to be playing the cybernetically enhanced government agent JC Denton. I get to spend a few points on training at the start of the game to pick what I want to specialise in.

The game’s intro shows an agent and a high up goverment figure talking about taking over the world. The plot is less than clear at this point but there is a plague ravaging the general population and the government has a cure/treatment called Ambrosia which they control. A terrorist group called the NSF is opposing the government but they don’t have the advantage of cybernetic implants due to their moral stance. They talk about the new agent about to come on-line (presumably me) and potentially retiring the first prototype agent (my brother) and how they will become gods when there plans (whatever they might be) come to fruition.

Knowing little about what is to come, this intro is quite vague but it will no doubt make sense later.

I’m thrown straight into a mission at the start of the game. My brother meets up with me and gives me the story. The NSF have stolen a shipment of Ambrosia but we have managed to trap some of them in the ruins of the statue of liberty (in the future it has had it’s head blown off). To complicate matters they have one of our agents as hostage. I’m to go in and capture the commander. My brother is quite keen on me using non-lethal techniques to carry out the mission although I get the opposite command from HQ a couple of minutes later.

The games interface is simple enough to use and very System Shock 2 like (although perhaps a little clunkier). I have the usual quick access slots for my inventory + a full interface screen with logs, full inventory screens to upgrade my augmentations, etc… It’s simple enough to use.

I’ve got a few options for getting into the statue. I can sneak round the back, carry out a frontal assault or talk to an operative and get the key. I decide to go for stealth. In true thief-like fashion I can listen to conversations between terrorists as I approach. There is a lot of room to move in the level so I can just sneak past most of these guys. Their eyeight isn’t too good and this is very easy.

I find my contact and get the key off him after promising not to kill the NSF commander who is his link to trade with the NSF. I’m getting a lot of these messages not to use violence.

He gives me the key but I don’t need it as I’m going via the back. I find a security bot here but I sneak past again when it moves away from the door.

There is also a security camera and turret guarding the door but using a password I found earlier I can log into a security panel and get the turret to attack my enemies + turn the camera off. There is a surprising amount of detail in the game to be able to do this sort of thing. I can even pan and zoom the cameras.

I use the same technique to free our agent. I have a choice of giving him a gun or keeping it for myself. I give him the gun and he clears out this level for me.

I make my way up the statue using non-lethal tactics as much as I can. I don’t have a blackjack like in thief but I do have an electric prod which I can use on opponents at short range. It only has limited ammo though so the blackjack was better. I also have tranquiliser darts in a crossbow which are very effective but take about 10 seconds to drop an enemy.

The NSF commander surrenders the moment I see him. He makes a convincing case against the government when I interrogate him. He even claims that the plague has been created by them and they are using it to claim even more control for themselves. It’s not clear that I’m on the right side but he may of course be lying. He says they have sent the Ambrosia to be used by the general population.

I let my team know he has been captured and they move in to secure the area. I make my way back to HQ on the edge of the island. All the NSF that I left behind are gone now and our guards are patrolling the areas. This sort of detail is a nice touch in a game this old.

I don’t feel like I know exactly what is going on in the world of Deus Ex at this point and its a slightly confused start to the game. I could of course have read the manual (or played the tutorial) which might have helped. As a newly created agent maybe I’m not supposed to know what is going on.  I’m not clear if I’m a normal person who lived a life before getting cybernetically enhanced or if I’ve been grown in a tank. I expect the latter.

I’ve not covered them here but I felt like I had a lot of options on how to play this level. There were little environmental puzzles which I’ve not talked about with more than one solution. These solutions were pretty trivial on the whole though. I could pick a lock or climb over crates, etc.. The game plays very much like a combination of System Shock 2 and Thief though which can’t be a bad thing. It looks like there is going to be far more dialog in Deus Ex though. Some of the dialog and acting are pretty cheesy. It feels very cartoony rather than real world when they start spouting some of these lines. Graphically the game isn’t great for 2000 either but it is amazing what they’ve done with the Unreal engine to get the RPG elements and SS2 style interface in there so I can happily overlook it.

All in all then, it’s a so-so start for Deus Ex. It’s interesting but I’d rather I’d started on Thief 2 at the moment. I expect I’ll get into it once the plot gets going and I know a bit more about what is going on.