By Alec Meer on April 21st, 2010 at 3:07 pm.
As we inch towards ten years of Deus Ex (10! That’s almost as old as my 48th child), there’s bound to be a ton of fun’n'hyper-nerdy celebrations. The members of RPS, for instance, will each be dressing up as their favourite pair of sunglasses for the entire month of June. Here’s a little pre-birthday celebration, though – Steam’s flogging Deus Ex for a mere £1.50/$2.50 in its mid-week sale. (£1.50! That’s almost as much as I spend annually on food for my 47th child.) Alternatively, £3/$5 buys you a pack containing DX and something called ‘Invisible War.’ Huh. Wonder what that is? It’s not as though there was ever a Deus Ex sequel.
Bought it, if only to make all you bastards stop complaining that I hadn’t.
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Now we will just complain that you have never played it…
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What a shame
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What a Shame.
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In case any non-deus-exers are confused…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAPXMZk2iw
95,668 views!
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Though this is my favourite Deus Ex video…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8SmsrP7QQk
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Nonono, THIS is the best Deus Ex video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWDM0rGxtpY
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My favourite deus ex machinima.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxi7JRJrod4&feature=fvw
OLD MEN!
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What a shame.
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what a shame
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I spill my drink!
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What a shame. I bought Deus Ex only two days ago.
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A Bomb.
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The guy who did that “What a Shame” video has just showed up in an SA thread and went “Why, I had no idea my video became an internet sensation”
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Already had Deus Ex but I bought Invisible war – it’s a decent game, easily worth £1.50 plus I’ve never actually played it on PC!
If anyone else got IW I reccommend using this
http://www.john-p.com/textures/DX-IW/
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They all look good, apart from Alex D himself.
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Yeah I thought that too. Fortunately you don’t see all that much of him, or you can play as a girl can’t you? I may have just imagined that – a very long time since I’ve played IW (I play Deus Ex roughly once a year which tells you something about the difference in quality…)
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That’s what I planned to do but unfortunately the texture pack does not work with the Steam version…
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Quote from website:
“Valve’s Steam version is – as far as I know – supported.”
But if you tried it and it doesn’t work then I’m a bit annoyed now but I’ll still play it.
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Anyone having a problem with the texture pack should run the game without it first. At least thats what you have to do with other steam games.
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I remember trying this game out a year or two ago (it was free on gametap, I think). Obviously big concessions have to be made for the age of the graphics and all that, but the truth is it never really grabbed me. Is this something that I–a hardcore RPG/shooter fan–could really enjoy ten years after the fact, or did you just have to be there?
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How far did you get? If you’re still on the first level or two you should try to keep going as a lot of people (me included) found that part somewhat off-putting on the first playthrough. If you’re much further than that it probably isn’t for you.
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If you’re really a hardcore RPG/shooter fan, then this is right up your alley. Stick with it.
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Veret, you really aren’t missing out on much. The gameplay has a lot of innovations, but DX is let down by fairly empty, angular level design in spots (not just the opening level, which is tremendously un-fun), and flaws with aspects such as the stealth and gunplay. The former doesn’t really seem to work that well – you certainly can’t ghost that first mission – and the latter feels let down by shoddy mouse control and weak sound effects and almost non-existant visual feedback.
Try System Shock with the new mouse-look mod, it’s tremendously more fun and satisfying.
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Stealth isn’t useless just because the game isn’t designed for ghosting (although I’m sure someone has); the first level is so difficult for a lot of new players precisely because stealth is pretty much essential to survive and incapacitate enemies when your gun skills are so low.
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I think that’s the first time I’ve heard anyone criticize Deus Ex’s level design! It’s got great levels.
The actually shooting mechanics are pretty clunky, but that’s not really the focus.
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Still top of my fave game list. The thrill of sneaking up behind naughty people and electro prodding them in the bum has never left me.
On an unrelated matter, I am a happily married man.
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Your time spent hiding in the closet has given your superiour stealth skills.
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Sassed!
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Is the “sequel” worth buying? Serious question.
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If it had another name, it would probably be fairly highly regarded as a decent if flawed game. Sadly, it doesn’t match up to the original by a long way and due to that sort of shoots itself in the foot.
Mostly I like to pretend it never existed.
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I played IW before the original and thought it was okay. Highly exploitable and the levels were pretty small because of the console origins. Definitely worth it for that price though.
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Amusingly. I seem to remember Kieron giving a glowing review in PCG and in fact calling it better than the original.
Ha.
Ha.
Haaaaaa.
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“Mostly I like to pretend it never existed.”
That’s precisely my feelings towards Indiana Jones 3 and Die Hard 2.0.
They never happened.
They were both some horrible cheese induced nightmare.
Don’t eat cheese before bed.
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D’oh. I of course mean Indian Jones 4
Last Crusade was good
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Yup, it’s worth buying, It’s not a bad game; just, as people have said, it pales into comparison to its prequel. But after my initial disappointment with the game, I finished it and enjoyed it.
P.
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It has a crossbow that sets people on fire.
That has to count for something!
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As a counterpoint to the surprisingly upbeat opinion here, my answer is no, it’s not worth the money. Well, actually, at this price it might be worth it just to see how a game can go SO WRONG in so many ways, I guess.
This is, put simply, a game ruined by the XBox. The tiny amount of system memory that generation of consoles could use meant the levels had to be tiny. TINY. You think you understand, but you don’t: we’re talking like four or five rooms and then, even on a modern PC, a 45 second load time. I’m not even claustrophobic in real life, but playing IW, I find myself short of breath and feeling boxed in. It’s THAT BAD.
And we’ll not even speak of the crappy upgrade system, the dumbed-down inventory screen that you’ll constantly battle for space, the finicky nature of stealth, how which NPCs will attack you on site and which won’t seems completely random, how the game actually has too many ways to do simple, obvious actions while still keeping your overall progression depressingly linear, the brown, astoundingly ugly level design, the piss-poor dialogue both in terms of writing and acting, etc. There’s no single redeeming feature to make it worth a look.
Sometimes people say the game is “worth a shot” solely because the buzz surrounding the title was so bad that they’re pleasantly surprised it doesn’t climb out of the tray and give them a botched home vasectomy. Don’t confuse “not actually hewn from the still-warm corpses of stillborns” with “worth a play.”
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Now that’s some good vitriol! I was waiting for someone to really take it apart.
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For a couple of quid? Definitely worth a play. You still get a variety of ways to clear a level, still get a choice of how to refine your character. There are some amusing things to do, some wacky weapons. Better than a lot of bigger, more open FPS games, and with extra RPG trimmings. And I really enjoyed the opening movie.
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Invisible War wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t a worthy sequel to Deus Ex, but it was an interesting game in its own right.
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I kinda like Invisible War, but the original seems like a much different game – there are always a hundred ways to accomplish something in DE, but in IW there are 2 – shoot a lot, or try to sneak and end up shooting anyway.
The unified ammo is just hateful, though. I have no idea why that was put in – running out of ammo for one gun means I have run out of ammo for all? I also hate that I can’t upgrade a pistol to be an unstoppable killing machine, either.
The inventory is just garbage, though. The way it is done is so stupid – I can carry 8 rocket launchers OR 8 packets of crisps*? Really? That makes no sense.
* exaggerating for effect here.
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Oh my god, JC, it’s a bomb!
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“It’s a bomb!”
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It is a shame.
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A bomb.
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That’s where I was going.
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Bought IW for $2.50 which is so cool. Considering I spent $17 on a rather shite game recently, it was so nice to get something rather good for near nowt.
So far I don’t think its as good as the original DX, not sure anything will ever top that all time classic (fave game of all time), but quite good fun nonetheless. To be honest the graphics do not look that dated and it reminds me what decent gaming was like.
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Is it so wrong that I liked Invisible war? Yes, it’s not as good as the first game, but it’s still pretty good I think.
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Not wrong at all – it’s a good game, and I think a lot of people recognise that. It’s just not special like its big brother it.
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As long as you are prepared to look past slightly dated graphics (obviously) then absolutely yes – an absolute cracking RPG/shooter that has stood the test of time. Hi-res texture pack is available for DL and mitigates slightly.
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As long as you are prepared to look past slightly dated graphics (obviously) then absolutely yes – an absolute cracking RPG/shooter that has stood the test of time. Hi-res texture pack is available for DL and mitigates slightly.
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Ugh! There’s something heretic about selling Deux Ex for 2.5 euros.
I do have it already… for 10 years. But I’ll buy this one regardless. Above all to celebrate Ion Storm. But also Eidos Interactive publisher; for the past days fun with Just Cause 2.
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Damn non-functioning ‘reply’ button
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A grenade is a poor choice for close range combat.
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Not to speak ill of Deus Ex (or I’ll get poleaxed with this crowd) but for people used to modern shooters, it will probably be confusing why when you first start out you can’t manage to shoot the broad side of a barn because your gun wobble is so pronounced. As you progress in the game your characters accuracy increases – so it’s one of the only shooter-style games I can currently think of that makes it harder to shoot at things when you first start playing it. Works for the RPG side, of course, but shooter fans aren’t used to their personal point-and-shoot skills being messed with.
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You just described one of my favourite features, I loved how they did that.
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Well, I remember that being kind of weird at the time too. The shooting in Deus Ex compared rather unfavorably to Half-Life and Unreal Tournament. Of course, everything else made up for it by being totally awesome.
Modern gamers will have familiarity to stuff like Fallout 3 and Borderlands, which means they might actually have less trouble with the FPS + RPG feel of Deus Ex than I did when it first game out.
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Well, I remember that being kind of weird at the time too. The shooting in Deus Ex compared rather unfavorably to Half-Life and Unreal Tournament. Of course, everything else made up for it by being totally awesome.
Modern gamers will have familiarity to stuff like Fallout 3 and Borderlands, which means they might actually have less trouble with the FPS + RPG feel of Deus Ex than I did when it first came out.
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@amanda
“it will probably be confusing why when you first start out you can’t manage to shoot the broad side of a barn because your gun wobble is so pronounced”
I seem to recall this being explained quite thoroughly in the tutorial? There was a section where you got a sniper rifle and were shown the effects of different “upgrades”.
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I actually think modern games will be *more* used to some stats in their shootery. Fallout 3, Borderlands, Mass Effect all do this to certain extents.
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Unless, of course, you exploit the pistol training glitch to get to level three in pistols from the start. Makes life much easier.
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£1.50 is a fair enough price for an old, mediocre shooter. The real question is whether or not it’s worth your time (it isn’t).
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That was @Wes
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Alec, Dissing DE:IW doesn’t boost your gamer cred.
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I’ve been lied to all these years.
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bought it off steam but neither will function properly and nobody can tell me what to do about it. ah well only 5 euro
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You didn’t try very hard: http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/
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“http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/”
That’s a great link; to be fair to the OP, is it that well known?
P.
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Thanks for that. Does anyone know what’s the best texture pack to use for the original DE? The’ High Definition Project’ and ‘New Vision’ were both mentioned there.
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Yeah I have been thinking of cracking out my CD from way back. What kind of mods will I need to make the most of the experience?
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@Krondonian
As far as I understand, HDTP upgrades the character models and retextures them whereas New Vision retextures the game world. They’re compatible and meant to be used together.
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Am I the only one still pissed that you couldn’t actually escape the jail by defeating Gunther in Battery park? Me and my brother spent a few hours trapping him between those huge metal crates, so he was mostly harmless, but the rest of the level is completely empty. Still, I can’t remember any other game where breaking it was that much fun.
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@Zaphid
No, you are not alone. :)
In fact, Deus Ex is one of the few games where I’ve made the extra effort in an attempt to ‘break’ it, purely to see if it’s possible. I remember thinking: ‘If I can kill off major characters, then maybe I can alter the plot too”. This probably would have been too much work for Ion Storm though; to accomodate every weird decision a player might make.
At least you get to kill the bastard later on though.
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@ frightlever ,
Here’s a thought to fly in the face of PC elitists. The first time I played Deus Ex was on the PS2. I loved it, even with the elements some of you think are too advanced for console gamers. They ditched that element in the sequel and everyone cried console foul, but the console port of the original game is the only reason I got into the franchise. I couldn’t afford a computer to game on until much later, and would have missed out on the series completely if they hadn’t ported it.
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I think the game did incredibly poorly on the PS2, though, even with the many upgrades they did – the textures being much better, for example. They might have attributed it to fiddlyness, but I don’t know that for certain.
And I recall the inventory screen being very fiddly with a joypad, but it has been a while since I played it – I had the pc version, played the ps2 one at a friend’s place.
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Ditto on PS2 version being my first exposure. I found it fun but not mindblowing. I think I completed 75%. This seems like a good deal but I haven’t even started the first Stalker yet.
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Really, it’s the developers who seem to think that console gamers need things dumbed-down.
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I wouldn’t get your panties in a bunch about PC Elitists so much. The legitimate gripe PC gamers had with the console constraints inflicted was that the game went from having massive levels in the original to the equivalent of the attic in a small terraced two-up-two-down to play in for the sequel.
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I’m sure Alec actually meant to type “Steam’s flogging Deus Ex for a mere £2.17/$3.35 in its mid-week sale. (..) Alternatively, £4.35/$6.70 buys you a pack containing DX and something called ‘Invisible War.’”
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Sure didn’t! Because that would be incorrect.
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Do I hear the sound of regional pricing?
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Alec: if we’re the continent, that makes you the incontinent!
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This comments thread will not be complete until someone posts Kieron’s interpretive dance/mime review of Invisible War from the back pages of PC Gamer UK.
Seriously, I can’t find it anywhere and I don’t think I have it anymore.
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Deus Ex is still one of the best games I’ve ever played. I came to it late – like 2002, but regardless of dated graphics (even in 2000 it looked dodge) it’s one of the most immersive experiences you’ll find in video games. Hence Kieron coining the term “immersive sim”, which is actually quite accurate. Alot of Kieron’s commentary for the original Deus Ex was fantastic. He kinda dropped the ball when reviewing Invisible War though – a game so far removed from it’s predecessor, it just lost the plot. Deus Ex was so progressive a game ten years ago that all they needed to do was get a new graphics engine, fix a few interface issues and just give us more of the same loony, globe trotting, cyberpunk, conspiracy nut adventure the first game offered. Instead, Spector took backseat role and Harvey Smith (who did great work on the original) tried to reinvent the wheel for the lowest common denominator mainstream audience.
Invisible War was a highly pretentious, characterless and unsatisfying game that showed little respect for it’s audience’s intelligence. Instead of recreating the very open possibility space of the original Deus Ex, the designers limited the scope of the game into an easily digestible toy that would appeal to the kinda demographic Eidos marketing was trying to snare with taglines like “The Future War on Terror” – hormonal, gun fetishising, adrenaline seeking teenage boys.
The funny thing is that I was a teenage boy (fifteen) when Invisible War came out at the end of 2003 – but even then I instantly recognised it for what it was, a fatally flawed title from a team who became artistically compromised by pressure from their publisher to seek a larger and more lucrative audience.
It was interesting then to see what difference six months made with the release of Thief 3. A game (designed by Randy Smith) that shared Invisible War’s goal of making a traditionally dense genre game accessible. But unlike Invisible War, Thief 3′s quality, in comparison to it’s predecessor, didn’t suffer.
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Deus Ex sucks?
…
Alright!
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Thief 3 had nothing on the Metal Age…
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In the gameplay area, sure, because the levels are much smaller. It’s still pretty good on its own, though, and the story was really good.
Also, the Cradle.
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It took me two goes to get into Deus Ex. The first time I couldn’t get past the really bad graphics (even when it was first released it was pretty ugly), and the even worse voice acting. Surely some of the worst voice acting in a video game ever?
The second time I finally got into it and really enjoyed the game. Not sure I’ll buy it on Steam though, as I already have a disc version plus I’m not really interested in Invisible War. I tried the demo and hated it.
It’s interesting that publishers always seem to want to widen the audience for their game sequels, and in and effort to do so remove features that alienate the original audience that made the game a success in the first place. Ironically such a move often fails to attract new players anyway.
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Just bought both. I only got halfway through the original back in the day. Lost my saves somehow and it was only a borrowed copy. Can’t wait to finish it! Also, what is the name of the mod for it that is meant to be amazing and is it compatible with the Steam version?
Wow! It only took logging in and writing this message for Steam to download the game.
Great Success!
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I guess I’m gonna’ relive the childhood I never had this weekend. I have three straight days of gaming ahead of me with no interruptions, and it looks like I’ll be buying and playing Outcast and Deus Ex for the first time. This should be an interesting contrast to what I’ve sunk about 22 hours into: Borderlands. Very cool looking game fun game, but, man, it sure is dumb, huh?
After I finish Deus Ex, I get to participate in the “what a shame” meme from now on, right? And I’ll be cool?
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Hm…I already own hard copies of both. A more portable copy of the original for $2.50 is definitely worth it, but I can’t decide about the second.
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Not very good when compared to the D2D sale …
Deus Ex was good, but it’s bloody old now, and Invisable War is just a poor pretender.
How is a 10 year old game going on sale news? Is there anyone out there who doesn’t already own it and intends to play it?
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It should be interesting if any of the major digital distributors one day released information on their back catalogue sales. You would be surprised at how many people buy there. Like, really surprised.
In any case, I buy a lot from back catalogues that I don’t intend to actually play all the way to the end. Most of it serves to satisfy my collector bone.
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There is no such thing as bloody old game for PC gaming. If the game is good enough, there are high res patches, emulators, modded versions and fan patches. Take that, consoles!
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Only nobodies like me are thinking of buying and playing it :-(
(see two posts up)
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http://www.colinfahey.com/deus_ex_mr_manderley_and_me/deus_ex_mr_manderley_and_me_en.html
this.
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http://www.lolsauce.com/RandomBS/Deus%20Ex.jpeg
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOKt1z1TkvU
Still my favorite DX parody video (because I made it.)
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Has anyone ever done a graphical overhaul for Deus Ex? The original was visually dated at the time, though not so badly as to interfere with the excellent gameplay. At this point, though, I suspect I’d find the graphics distracting at best.
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Check this: http://www.helderpinto.com/blog/personal/deusex-ultra-high-quality-mod-v01.html
I haven’t checked whether it works with the steam version.
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@Mr Labbes
Thanks, that looks great. Fortunately it doesn’t matter if it works with the Steam version, as I still have my physical copy. I’m not keen on buying older games on Steam, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to shackle a decade-old game with harsher DRM than it was launched with.
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I very much agree with you, but for that price…I couldn’t resist.
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@Mr Labbes
I can’t really blame you, it’s hard NOT to buy things at those prices, it’s one reason I really do think Steam is the WalMart of digital distribution. I don’t really mean it in a derogatory sense, but they both have a habit of 1) convincing people to buy things they otherwise wouldn’t and 2) convincing people to buy from them even if said person has some practical qualms about doing so by way of staggeringly low prices.
Anyway, for my part if I pick up Deus Ex again it’ll be on GOG because 1) I can be sure it’ll mod cleanly 2) it’ll have great extras (which I’ve long since lost from my physical copy) and 3) it’ll have less DRM than the original. Of course, all that’s rather incidental until they actually GET the damn thing. :)
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When you open steam go in and go in and go in and go in like the Us Marshall ad his 3 daughters and buy it.
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I take this opportunity to renew my call for a Monkey Island-esque remake.
I know it will never happen. I know it would never make money. I know…I know…but it would be a dream come true :)
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@vinraith, there’s a guy who made a port of the unreal engine to direct3d 10 and 11, although the 11 renderer adds nothing compared to the 10 renderer.
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Somewhere in this room, there is still a CD copy of Deus Ex. Is it worth my time hunting it down?
Which is not to say, obviously, “is it good?”, but “if I find it, will it actually work on my 64bit Win 7 box?”
Is that made any different by spending £1.50 at Steam? Only, Morrowind didn’t run on this machine from the CD, but the Steam version (without the dodgy Disc Checking code) runs fine. As does a NoCD crack, mind you…
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What sort of problems did you have installing the texture pack on DX: IW? I had no troubles today… maybe it has something to do with the install location?
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Not sure if anyone’s posted this before but you can find a DX10 renderer here: http://kentie.net/article/d3d10drv/ (also works for other UT99 engine games). It doesn’t have a lot of fancy shader effects but it runs solidly on newer systems and also improves texture rendering and mist effects.
For those wanting more fancy effects (and who don’t mind tweaking the god-awful default settings) there’s an ENBseries renderer here: http://enbdev.com/download_en.htm that adds bump-map simulation and ambient occlusion among other things.
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Speaking of breaking the game… Is it common knowledge that everyone who knows Deus Ex should read this?
http://www.it-he.org/deus.htm
“Board the sub, and make your way to the Captain’s quarters. Play back the holographic recording of Simons and shoot it in the head two or three times. It will escape. Chase the holograph around the ship. If it stops, shoot it again. The Dragon’s Tooth won’t work, it has to be firearms. When you get bored, wait for it to stop and it will deliver its speech and vanish.”
“In the Cathedral, it is possible to climb onto the rooftops via the LAM technique, but this doesn’t buy you a great deal other than a novel way to kill the MJ12 troopers from above. What you -can- do is beat Gunther to within an inch of his life, which will cause him to utter the words “I need a skull-gun” and run off. When you meet him in the courtyard, he will do his usual speech and say he’s going to kill you. As you hear the roar of the flamethrower, he will turn and run for his life, fleeing from you at maximum speed.”
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I’ve been reading that for like an hour, I still don’t understand what his main goal is – or what the actual outcome is. Anywhere I can find a summary? cos it’s very long
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The goal is making a heckuva mess.
Every action is taken for maximum gamebreaking violent fun.
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if only i didn’t already own 2 copies! I’ve got a man crush on warren spector.
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I have two copies too. One of them on Steam, at that. And I distinctly remember buying it thrice…
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Deus Ex is the worst great game of them all.
There are dodgy mechanics, weird graphical shortcuts, appalling voice acting, clunky writing and crappy visual effects all over the place… but if you get past them you find yourself in the world they’ve made and it’s 3AM and the sun is rising in the the game and you take a breath and it’s the best game ever.
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That will be your butt.
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Yes sir!
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All I can say to this news is holy fucking shit and that would make my 4th copy. Original boxed, PS2 version, Cheap game of the year edition and now a digital STEAM copy….what a great game.
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On my 15th Birthday, i got Deus Ex and new graphics card.
It must have been just too sad for my folks to see me playing the demo over and over again in software mode … *gasp* WINDOWED.
Good times. Good keychain that came with the game, too. Had that one for years, lost it when i saw beastie boys live. Worth it. Just a keychain. Nobody can take my fond memories of the game away.
just now, almost 10 years later, my best friend forever gifts me steam versions of dx1+2.
Gotta get up in 6 hours? fuck that.
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I have opened the mayor. When the power drops, go in, and go in, and go in, and go in like the US Marshal and his three daughters.
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Forgive my interruption, my vision is augmented.
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I just installed the GOTY CD edition on my Win 7-64 and it works fine. I also installed the DX10 renderer (http://kentie.net/article/d3d10drv/) and the Deus Ex Fixer(http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/) and it looks great. Oh, and added its settings to Creative Alchemy for surround sound. I’m engrossed already; how the years roll back….
P.
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Thanks! I’ll give it a go now.
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Welcome to the coalation J.C.
I might as well start using coke
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Steam’s bugging out for me, so I guess no DX goodness. I’ve already got 1 so it would just be IW but I guess I can’t really afford it anyway – that’s like the price of a can of soup. Maybe two cans!
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Stick with the prod p p p p prod
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It took at least 5 years after playing Deus Ex for me to be able to fully enjoy FPS games again. After playing it all the other FPS games felt way too linear, constrained and limiting.
Truely awesome game on pretty much every level. They should seriously do a remake with modern graphics.
Statue of liberty level is still one of my all time favorite game levels.
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Welcome to the coalition PROD!
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10th anniversary? And in completely-unaware celebration I started, hopefully, my first full playthrough of Deus Ex this morning. I find it weirdly compelling, every time I start…
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I’m playing it for the third time, and even on the first level have found places I didn’t know about before.
What a game!
P.
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