»5th July 2006

'Deus Ex - Invisible War' Sucks

Everything about Deus Ex Invisible War is wrong. Well, maybe not everything, but certainly a great deal. As this is something close to my heart I decided that I'd share with you my insight on the extent to which the second Deus Ex game sucks. Before I get bogged down in sticky sentences, I might as well make it clear that I'm going to refer to Deus Ex - Invisible war by the various names of DX2, Deus Ex 2, Shit Farm 2003 etc. It should be pretty clear what the hell I'm on about anyway, unless I start talking about how Dungeon Keeper 2 isn't as good as the first one, which considering the topic of this update, is quite unlikely.

The most obvious way in which DX2 sucks is the graphics. Now I can appreciate that it's not brand new anymore and that the Deus Ex 1s graphics were never very good, but I feel that DX2 should have at least made an effort to right the wrongs of its forebear. For a start, it ran like shit on my PC when it only had 512mb RAM, despite the back of the box claiming it will run with only 256mb RAM, quite how well it will run is unclear. On a sidenote, the back of the box is particularly inaccurate on other counts, particularly in stating that the game requires only 2gb of hard drive space despite the only installation option been 3gb. Now that's hardly much of a criticism at the game, but I think it symbolises a greater problem of lack of attention to detail in the game.

Anyway, back to the graphics. The game has no excuse to run so poorly given it's graphics being at a similar level of detail, if not lower, to Unreal Tournament 2003. There's some fancy dynamic lighting and some pixel shaders but the character textures, especially on the player character, are unforgiveably poor quality, a similar level to Quake 3 characters in both textures and polygon count. Alex Denton, the main character, who the player can choose to be either male or female, suffers from particularly poor quality skins, the three skin colours are pretty terrible. The standard caucasian skin is fine, but the black skin is borderline racist, bearing more resemblance to some bizarre cyber-punk blackface, then there's some bizarre 'in-betwen' skin which I think is supposed to be a latino skin or something yet just looks like an off-colour caucasian.

Deus Ex 1 was a pretty dark game, at times it was pitch black and you needed to have your light aug on pretty much continuously, yet I can forgive DX1 for that because virtually all the game takes place at night, and unlike DX2, the rest of the game didn't suck. DX2's lighting is still way too low at times, this could perhaps be trying to keep in with the style of DX games being easier to play in a darkened room whilst drinking copious amounts of carrot juice, but I just find it a particularly annoying flaw of the original game which has not been addressed. The new light-aug though no longer draining your bio-electric supplies gives off a dodgy blue-green light, and seeing as it's going to be on virtually constantly, gives the game a far too under-water glarey look, as particularly character skins suffer from the over-zealous glare and bloom effects in the graphics engine.

A further graphical problem is the pretty lazy character models. All human models seem to share the same movement file, which features a comically bad idle animation where characters arms fall awkwardly at their sides as though some invisible life ring is preventing their hands from touching their waist. Other poor animations include the three or so talking gestures which involve all manner of flailing limbs, twitching heads and fidgeting feet and legs. Particularly noticeable is the doctor in command of the research facility right at the beginning of the game, Dr. Nassif, who calmly addresses the player welcoming them to the Tarsus academy whilst seemingly having a serious bout of Tourette Syndrome and various other involuntary body movements. The cat models just look like scaled down dog models with different heads, several of the male NPCs have bizarre too-much-caffeine stary eyes and the player weapon models are crude and awkwardly positioned on screen. Cut scenes are now noisy affairs as characters all pivot to face the person talking, resulting in a chorus of shuffling feet between sentences. The console roots of the game can be seen in the naff graphics, where the only impression given is of corners being cut and lack of attention to detail which really should be present in a game with so much to live up to and so much potential.

Linked in with the general graphics problems is the particular eye sore of the user interface, which is shockingly poor. Gone are the windows of the old game, with hotkeys clearly shown on the menus themselves, in comes a horrible console friendly interface where everything is oversimplified and obviously geared towards been seen on a TV from the other end of a living room. The standard font in the game is pretty horrible to read and is set permanently to 'too large', forcing you to actually move away from the monitor to be able to read it comfortably, which is a pain when your keyboard and mouse have to stay within the half kilometre distance required for the fonts to be comfortably readable on all but the smallest of monitors. The inventory is now mounted on the inexplicable circular UI menu thing and is now over simplified to six 'active' slots which you can cycle through in game and six regular slots that you can only access via the inventory. It really is difficult to explain just what a major insult to your intelligence this inventory is. Equipping items and moving them around the inventory is done through a series of confusing left and right mouse clicks, no dragging and dropping here. This stupid system is quite clearly a hack workaround to allow the player to operate the inventory via a gamepad, but when you have the mouse and keyboard setup of the PC, you are really left wondering why Ion Storm were so committed to this terrible control system. It's a simple way of using the inventory in the same way it's 'simple' to play a piano with one finger. It really annoys me the fact that the inventory system it replaces was far superior. Instead of limiting you to twelve items of completely different size and importance, the old inventory was based around a grid, so items had to fit into this grid. large items like GEP guns or shotguns took up more grid spaces and had a shape which reflected their bulk. So it was easy to carry around a sniper rifle, sword and various med packs and lockpicking tools whereas you came into problems when you wanted to carry every gun in the game, med packs and all necessary quest items. Both systems prevented you from carrying too many items, which is admirable, however the grid system of the first game made an item limit MAKE SENSE, becuase it is actually harder to carry a shotgun, machine-gun, rocket launcher and sword than it is to carry a nano-key, med-pack, lock-pick and multitool. The old inventory let you drag and drop items, dropping items from the inventory was easy and quick, the new system results in chaos as you struggle to get the right weapons and items into the 'active' section whilst you must battle with the idiocy of a twelve item limit. The idiocy of the UI knows no bounds. Despite the script using words like 'duplicity' and tackling concepts of government, corruption and philosophy, the UI presumes you can't handle the tasks of managing your inventory and seeks to oversimplify the art of keeping the right items for the job to the point of a stupidly arbitrary 12 item limit.

The fancy pants physics engine of the game, which seems to be a such a mainstay of modern FPSs, is pretty terrible too. Despite the run speed not seeming very fast, items have so little mass and weight that running into even large oil drums or crates can send such items flying into the air at incredible speeds. This is at best highly amusing, such as the endless fun that can be had from from pushing the flaming barrels into NPCs, setting them on fire, without aggroing them toward the player, but worst illustrates the complete lack of attention to detail and tweaking that should have been put into the game to alleviate such idiotic scenarios as feather light rag doll bodies been hurled through the air after a player absent mindedly walked over them.

Another source of shitness in the game is the story itself. Gone is the undoubtedly cool character of J.C. Denton, supported by characters that were entertaining and that you sometimes actually cared about like Paul Denton, Helios and Jock the Pilot only to be replaced by the astoundingly dull character of Alex Denton, who instead of being a pretty smart guy making the best of a bad situation is a uninspiring and boring guy/girl who perpetually struggles to keep up with the plot and lacks any semblance of 'style' or 'attitude'. I mean JC was a pretty fucking cool guy, he had the awesome combination of a razor sharp mind tuned in on political philosophy and modern history and the ability to dish out some Arnie-calibre one-liners and verbal smackdowns on the various NPCs who thought they could fuck with his shit. JC knew stuff because he was smart and because the player found out stuff throughout the game. Alex isn't smart, he/she regularly trails in the confused and repetitive political-themed conversations yet inexplicably starts giving background information on the story which the player should learn through NPCs or written information in the game. Along with fighting the UI, the player must fight Alex to coax him/her into giving away enough of the story to make sense.

Immediately, the game throws you into the deep end story-wise, you are immediately forced to side with factions you have no knowledge on. The factions presented, The Order and The WTO have none of the subtleties of earlier factions. In one of the early Order missions you are introduced to the Knights Templar, who as opposed to been the secretive dwellers of European mansions in the previous game are now made into brash, cyborg bad guys. Instead of trying to portray these secretive organisations in the way which conspiracy theorists describe them - which was a strength of DX1, making a world where all real-world conspiracy theories are essentially true - DX2 simply makes them into generic 'internation corporation', 'fanatical religious order' and 'power crazy cyborg army'. It really is dumbing down the story, and it's not as if DX1's story was so labyrinthine that you couldn't understand it. DX1's story was actually developed slowly over the course of the game.

To make sense of DX2's story from the outset you need to be pretty familiar with DX1's story, yet there is precious little continuity from the first game, with the 'collapse' caused by the actions of JC Denton at the end of the first game basically been used as an excuse for a plot watershed and introduction of all new, albeit shit, factions and scenarios. Characters from the first game appear in name only, bearing no resemblance in either their motivations or beliefs, for example JC after merging with Helios was simply made into a psychopathic demi-god, which totally ignores the whole question over who would win in the battle of wills when JC merged with the Helios AI. Any trace of subtlety in any characters is missing, and characters are left as dull and uninviting, it's truly surprising Ion Storm even bothered to get back the same voice actors from the first game as the characters they play are completely unrecognisable.

Conversations with NPCs in Deus Ex regularly ran along these lines:

JC - What do you think about the heavy police presence here in Hong Kong?
Bartender - They keep crime off the streets and let law abiding citizens like me make a living.
JC - But organised crime is out of control? Don't you think they are simply oppressing 'law abiding' citizens like yourself?
Bartender - The police over here could be called 'oppressive' but I'd choose that over the corrupt Unatco you have in America, we may lack civil rights here, but we are free to earn a living, that's what governments are put in place to do.
JC - In America the government is elected by its people, who have rights guaranteed to them, Unatco is accountable to the people.
Bartender - But your government is weak and ruled by Unatco anyway, China is the only sovereign nation left, it may be oppressive, but we are free of your Unatco tyranny.
JC - A democracy is preferable over any dictatorship, even if it is as 'free' as you say it is, our government is ultimately accountable to the people... I'll take a beer.

By contrast, Alex struggles his/her way through most conversations and the lack of attention to detail means that such interesting conversations are now limited to central characters to the story, in DX1, some of the best conversations in the game were completely unrelated to the main quest, such as the long discussion on religion and freedom you could have with the Morpheus programme, who was hidden in a secret room. I mean you could talk Rousseau and Voltaire to hobos! None of that depth and intelligence in DX2, no siree.

Alex - Don't you think the police are oppressive?
Bartender - Do you want a beer?
Alex - Huh? Errr... governemts should be um- representative.
Bartender - Beer is 10 credits.
Alex - Erm...

I mean it's not like that would ever happen in DX2 anyway, for a start they removed the visual effects from alcoholic drinks and zyme. So beer would heal you, but would also fuck up your vision and make you sway around. In DX2, beer just drains your health... Which again, makes no sense, I mean what's the fucking point of them even been in the game? To teach the kids that drink is bad? Please!

Back to the story itself, the whole main story arc through the game feels like a tired re-run of the smart story in Deus Ex 1, which fused real world conspiracy theories with political philosphy and interesting characters and settings which played like a dystopian version of our own present. By contrast, DX2's story just throws the same secret organisations at the plot wall, coupled with uninteresting conpiracy theories and a generic dystopian-future setting which had none of the resonance of Deus Ex's future. DX2's portrayal of the future goes nowhere beyond taking pop culture trends to extremes, like wars between coffee shop companies and manufactured AI popstars who act as spies for shady secret organisations. It's just not as original or smart. By not drawing on real-world examples, DX2 is far more confusing than DX1. JC was fighting Unatco, which was basically an evil and oppressive version of our very own UN. In DX2, Alex can fight either the WTO or The Order, who are kind of enemies, but are actually controlled by the same organistion, the illuminati, who rule the world... It's not cool like how it was in DX1, because it isn't very believable and is an inconsistent re-hash.

Yet more failings of the game lie in the inexplicable 'improved' augmentation, now 'bio-mod', system, which in DX1 was one of the coolest aspects of the game. The bio-mods, or - to use DX1 terminology - augs are basically special powers which the player can use for combat, sneaking and hacking etc. So leg modifications include a mod to let you run faster and jump higher, or a mod which lets you sneak better, so the player has to trade off between speed and stealth depending on how they play. DX2's mod system quickly gets really, really stupid however. For example, to prevent a particularly effective aug setup from the previous game, the health regen ability - easily the best aug from the previous game - is now an eye mod... which makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Other eye mods include nightvision and a remote camera drone, which both make sense, being related to the player's vision. But health regen? What the fuck has that got to do with eyes or vision? Rather than spend time ballancing the bio-mods, Ion Storm lazily found a solution to previously super-powerful character builds by simply moving a mod to a different body part, which completely undermined the game's own explanation of how bio-mods are supposed to work, which is by enhancing body parts to improve their performance. Perhaps I'm just missing the relationship between eye enhancements and circulatory system based cell regeneration.

You're probably noticing a trend here in my mammoth rant. That in DX2, Ion Storm took a cool thing from the first game, and instead of improving it further, removed it entirely or just fucked it up so it isn't cool anymore. This is continued with the removal of the old skill system. In DX1, upon completing tasks, a player was rewarded with skill points which would allow the player to upgrade the character's proficiency with a certain type of weapon or improve skill at hacking computers or picking locks. It allowed players to customise their character and allowed character development, incorporating RPG elements into the game. This revolutionary system was, of course, removed; making DX2 a sub-par FPS/Adventure game as opposed to revolutionary FPS-RPG hybrid.

Another aspect of the original game completely fucked over in this one was the hacking and lockpicking systems. JC could hack into computers to disable security cameras or turn machine gun turrets on enemies, he could access restricted areas of bases by finding out keycodes to doors. DX2 has raped both these systems. Gone is the login screen interface where the player actually had to type in login names and passwords--reinforcing the feeling that you were actually hacking into something--in comes a pointless progress bar which leads straight into a dull menu which lets you disable cameras and control turrets with none of the cool computer interfaces showing security camera feeds or computer code that actually looked like the interface to a security system.

One of the most laughable aspects of DX2 is that despite Alex Denton supposedly been technically superior to JC, she can only hack computers and consoles if she installs a black market hacking bio-mod. Right. This is a recurring problem throughout the game, that you are left wishing you could just control JC instead, that he would make things easier and more enjoyable than suffering through the game with dozy, inept Alex. And keycodes? You can't guess them anymore or manually type them in, now the doors are simply unlocked providing you've talked to the relative NPC or merely opened the relative document containing the code. Before you actually had to input the code (using the keyboard numpad if you wanted); you had to listen to the NPCs tell you the number or actually read it or somehow figure it out from reading a series of emails on a computer you'd just hacked within the time limit before your hacking was detected by the system. They might as well have just give you a fucking red, blue or yellow keycard in DX2, because that's all it is now, just the old keycards from Doom dressed up with dull voice acting and poorly written in-game documents. Similarly, lock-picks are gone and have been merged with the multi-tool, a needless simplification which only serves to dumb down the game. DX1 made you decide whether you wanted to be more skillful in lock-picking or using multi-tools as they were seperate skills and made the player put greater consideration into how to approach problems. Now it's just a case of having enough tools to open a door whereas before you could either search for more tools or try to get more skill points to allow you to use the multi-tools more efficiently.

In a bid to make the game imaginative, Ion Storm did something very strange with ammunition. Basically all guns use the same standard ammo, but one shot of a sniper rifle uses more ammo than say a pistol round or shotgun blast. So the player is supposedly prevented from rocket-snipering their way through the game as was possible on DX1. This new idea quickly hits the rocks. Unless the player uses low ammo-intensive weapons like the pistol or SMG, ammo can become very scarce, very quickly, and when the enemies get so stupidly heavily armoured and overpowered later on, the player is left with no ammo, yet with a stealth system so lacking and inconsistent, sneaking is a dangerous and unrewarding option. The flaws in the ammo system are easily illustrated, as all guns use the same ammo, once you've run out of ammo, you can't use any of the guns, which to me seems pretty stupid. Apart from the pistol and sniper rifle, no damage from weapons is zoned, which is also pretty fucking stupid. Considering there is still a 'realistic' difficulty--which used to mean more sensible damage from weapons, so headshots would kill pretty much in one shot--realistic mode is now basically just 'very hard' with no real commitment in the game to 'real damage'. Why can't any other weapons do zoned damage? I'd blame the fact the game was made for the fucking Xbox. Face it, you just can't aim very well using a joypad, so with that in mind it makes sense that zoned damage is by and large no longer present.

Combat is an imprecise and frustrating affair. The mouse in the game feels all wrong and exiting the menu can often leave the player looking directly up, which is very confusing and often fatal in the middle of a firefight. When it comes to shooting, the crosshair is at best imprecise, and the mouse is so jumpy you really will struggle to conserve that precious ammo. And when you run out of ammo? Well you better be able to run away, because the new nano-sword is truly terrible, appearing just as a see through piece of shit which does fuck all damage. Quite a let down when you consider the blue nano-sword on the original was so cool (and incredibly powerful if you bothered to put skill points in melee weapons.) Combat consistently feels simplistic, frustrating, and clunky-- just like it would on an Xbox. The terrible movement system makes basic navigation a chore too, jumping through windows is made impossible when the jump is so unatural. You don't jump, so much as levitate in a small arc, and the player is set to crouch whenever they get near a low ceiling, because, you know, crouching is a fucking chore on an Xbox. Alongside the problems of jumping and crouching, sloped surfaces present further complications as the character will slowly slide down if left to stand on one. If the purpose of removing all the stats was so that firefights could be more involved than on DX1, then Ion Storm resoundingly failed, since they didn't remember to actually make the firefights any good after the 'streamlining'.

The systematic vandalism which Ion Storm have inflicted on DX2 really pisses me off. At best, DX2 shoud have built on the precedent set by the first game, strapping better graphics onto a FPS-RPG game which could have been refined and improved. Instead the graphics are second-rate and poorly designed and the game is butchered and made into some generic console excrement. The story isn't half as strong, without meaningful passwords anymore, there is little reason not to skip it all and just get down to the middle of the road fire-fights - the actual combat aspect of the game was never DX1's strong point, the same is true of the sequel. All the depth and character of the first game was taken out and nothing put in its place.

Some of the genius of the first game is still there, the story is far more robust and able to deal with say the player killing major plot characters, though still, vital NPCs are made effectively invincible by them hiding out in bars, which inexplicably have a 'weapons lock' which bizarrely stops even the use of knives (or fists? Not that Alex ever thought of using those.) A grim, neo-noir future where you can't have a bar brawl? That's not fucking dystopian. One of the major claims of the game was that you can really effect the story - beyond the opening few missions, DX1's main plot was largely linear, though it was so well-written and involved and supported by enough side missions, that you didn't really care and the game benefitted as a result - yet DX2 only lets you kill important characters once they're no longer essential to the plot, which is kind of cheating. There are only a few occasions where the player can really attempt to fuck the story up, such as when you rescue the leaders of the WTO and Order and have the opportunity to either lead them to safety or - contrary to orders - execute them. That level of choice was painfully lacking in the majority of the story however. Missions can be approached in different ways, yet whilst on the first game, play style was in part determined by skill and aug choices, with this 'limit' on the player removed, there is nothing stopping you from simply blasting your way through every mission save the infuriatingly rare ammunition. Stealth usually has no benefits, and with there being no skill-point-system or similar feature, to limit you to certain styles of play, Quake-style rambo-tactics are the order of the day, and Quake is far better at such explosion heavy action. So whilst stealth or guile can win the day, you're basically just handicapping yourself for no in-game reward.

I really can't understand why so many great ideas were taken out of Deus Ex 2. When Id made Quake 3, they took out many aspects of Quake 2, such as the great single player experience, but instead delivered a lean and perfectly set up multiplayer game which was supported by a great 3D engine which was fast and smooth. Combined with the fantastic artwork, Quake 3 still looks great today. Ion Storm took the soul out of Deus Ex 2: they made it better looking, but untidy, with dull player models, small maps and poor performance. The game was slimmed down, but in all the wrong places. Mediocre shoot-outs and poorly implemented stealth remain, whereas cool hacking, an inventory, and augmentations and skill advancement was removed. The story and characters feel dull and mostly just a re-run of the previous games (far superior) story. Invisible War was criticised by many for being too 'console' and I can see their point, everything is clunky and too big, with none of the depth you'd expect from a PC game. Clunky interfaces and sub-par graphics are things that should easily be improved for a PC release. It is Ion Storm who failed to make such necessary improvements for the platform on which the game can be best experienced. Invisible War isn't a bad game - actually, fuck it, it IS a bad game. It could have been great. Really, really great. Hopefully it isn't so bad that Ion Storm won't make a third game, and hopefully Ion Storm still have it in them to make great games as opposed to rushed and mediocre ones.

Extar, over, out.

13/01/11 Edit: Since this update actually manages to attract visitors to the site, I thought I'd bring the formatting more up to par, make the paragraphing better and just tidy up some of the phrasing. Fortunately, it turned out that DX2 wasn't bad enough to kill the franchise and there will be a third game. Fingers crossed that won't be a total travesty as well. Oh yeah, turns out this update contained spoilers. Oops.

JC gets silent kills with the GEP. Alex just sticks with the prod.