Finished my replay of this game on hard mode. There wasn't much of a difference with normal except that obviously you take fewer hits before you go down. Perhaps one day I'll play on realistic but something tells me that will cross the line into being annoying for my playstyle.

If you've followed me for a while or even if you've been in the same room as me for more than 15 minutes you might now that I despise stealth games. I've tried, but I genuinely hate them all. MGS, Thief, Dishonored, even stealth sections in games I like (shenmue, max payne, disaster report 4). I've had bad luck with so called Immersive Sims because of it, as most of them are essentially stealth arpg hybrids like Deus Ex, but so far its basically only the OG (and consortium by virtue of not having stealth) that I mess with. Its not exactly a mystery why, and consider this a plea for other games to follow suit : let me murder everyone. Give me an actual choice between stealth and combat and not just stealth and "you fucked up the stealth you idiot! you might as well reload a save"

Importantly, Deus Ex's combat is deceptively fun to get to grips with. Its so simple but really effective the way that you start out as someone who takes 2 business days to line up a pistol shot to being able to run around with the gep gun blowing people up like nothing. I'm surprised no one else has tried emulating the system, with your RPG esque weapon stats determining how fast your crosshair takes to narrow and become fully accurate, presumably imitating how it takes someone to aim down the sights and prepare to fire a shot.

Now, obviously for this kind of game there has to be push back, and even with a combat build your ass is not going to last if you're trying to play the game like half life, which is precisely why its satisfying to completely forgo stealth and murder everyone through traps, ambushes etc. This playthrough I discovered how useful the non lethal gas grenades are for murder runs (ironically) cause it makes enemies freeze up to rub their eyes, lining up to get headshot with the pistol for maximum murder efficiency.

The playthrough did however highlight Deus Ex's biggest flaw : the save system. Its one of those systems which is simultaneously too annoying and too forgiving. Its annoying because I am forgetful, and losing 15 mins of progress because I forgot to save is just... frustrating. On the other hand, there is basically nothing stopping you from hardcore save scumming every 5 seconds. Ironically, there is nothing more appropriately "mean" for a choice based rpg than an aggressive auto save, as it is, you can basically game most of the big decisions and encounters. Maybe even a save room system like RE4 might be appropriate? Could even lock them behind doors with an interesting weighing up of resources if its worth risking a loss of progress for a lockpick or multitool? Idk now Im playing armchair designer but either way.

Area 51 is still kinda annoying, I didnt use console commands to noclip through it this time but I still fused with Helios because it was the fastest way to complete the level, the later bits of the game are kind of a downgrade from the initial half of the game.

Primeiramente, quero deixar claro que minha experiência foi apenas afetada pelas minhas experiências com Immersive Sims anteriores a Deus Ex(System Shock 1/2 e Thief 1/2). Joguei os jogos da Arkane (Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Deathloop) mas faz tempo que joguei eles, e não comparei eles com esse jogo em nenhum momento, tanto por serem diferentes dentro de suas propostas, tanto por eu achar retardado julgar um jogo velho por concepções atuais. Ninguém é totalmente imune disso, obviamente não sou, mas tento evitar

Esse jogo é, pelas pala palavras do próprio Warren Spector, uma fusão de RPG, FPS e Stealth, e pagou o preço da ambição dele, porque ele não é impressionante em nenhum desses 3 aspectos, e assim, pra mim, tornando toda a experiência chata, desinteressante, com diversos picos de interesse onde você reconhece a qualidade do game design e oque eles tentaram fazer. Sim, em 2000 você contava nos dedos quantos jogos faziam metade doque esse jogo faz, mas sempre que eu vejo as pessoas falando dos aspectos que "envelheceram mal" eu sempre vejo elas falando de coisas como controles e gráfico(que sinceramente, é a pior crítica que eu consigo imaginar) e não o jeito que o jogo funciona em si, oque me deixa com uma pulga atrás da orelha achando que eu não entendi algo, eu acharia isso jogando na época ou não? Provavelmente não, mas lembra que eu falei que ninguém é imune a julgar o jogo por concepções atuais? Então, é de se evitar, mas as vezes não dá.

A história desse jogo é outra coisa que não entendi porque falam tanto. Sobre a história, é realmente algo que é realmente muito foda na época dele, e isso eu respeito, mesmo que hoje em dia ela não seja tão foda. A história desse jogo é um enredo até que intrigante sobre todo tipo de teoria da conspiração, que é algo que tava muito em alta na época, então é certo falar que sim: A história desse jogo é massa, mas pra quem fala hj em dia que a história é uma masterpiece, vou assumir que metade jogou na época, 25% teve esse meu discernimento e o restante só não jogou o jogo.

Bom, gostaria muito de gostar mais desse, mas não teve a mesma mágica em mim que teve em outras pessoas. No fim, acho que os jogos da Looking Glass valem mais a pena, por serem mais focados e serem magistrais no que se propõem (não que Deus Ex não valha a pena)

Mas afinal, eu acharia tudo isso se eu tivesse jogado na época? Afinal, System Shock e Thief já existiam, e hoje em dia ainda não vi alguém com uma opinião semelhante a minha acerca dos elementos desse jogo, oque me dá a impressão que eu deixei algo passar. Vou ver se conforme esse jogo vai envelhecendo na minha memória, eu ache a resposta

Um dos melhores jogos q já joguei na vida, talvez seja por q eu acabei de terminar o jogo então talvez esteja eufórico, mas vendo todas as etapas q passei n vejo como n colocar ele no pódio. Uma das melhores histórias cyberpunk q já vi, com uma profundidade absurda, um dos primeiros immersive sim q teve o maior impacto. O game desing das fases são geniais simplesmente recompensando qualquer escolha do jogador por sua criatividade, as possibilidades parecem infinitas, com cada passo tendo uma consequência n só na gameplay mas tbm no enredo. Dava pra falar de horas só sobre esse jogo e seu impacto, ele é quase perfeito tirando q ele se alonga um pouquinho demais, porém isso só é uma gota dentre o oceano de qualidades q esse jogo tem, um divisor de águas se é q da pra entender.

Played the PS2 version but nobody reads that page so I'm reviewing it here.

I loved this game a lot. At first I thought I wasn't going to enjoy it with how rough Liberty Island was (nearly got filtered lol oops) but when I got to UNATCO and spent 95% of the time fucking around, reading random books and newspapers about the state of the world, I really fell in love with it. Sci-fi that's just futuristic/biological word vomit is the most interesting type of sci-fi to me. I enjoyed being handsomely rewarded even if I went a no-kill route one level or slaughtered everybody in my wake the next. I didn't feel pressured to play any specific way and that's what made it so satisfying. Of course, I saved hostages when I could and actively tried not to kill civilians when in the middle of a (considerably laggy) firefight. I wasn't THAT horrible of a person. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack is incredible.
One of my gripes with it, though, was how boss fights weren't really bossfights. The GEP gun basically steamrolls every single fight save for Simons who eats two missiles before exploding into meat, but even then every fight lasts two seconds if you just whip out the GEP gun. Even though Walton was hovering over your shoulder and bragging about his augs the entire game, I blew him to bits with two rockets, so the fights being so mechanically simple was disappointing. Another criticism I had was how Gunther was written. He's meant to be viewed as a tragic character due to the circumstances of his outdated augmentations, his usefulness to UNATCO, and self-esteem issues stemming from that, but the writers make him out to be a bumbling dumbass instead. I also wasn't a huge fan of how Paul just disappears from the game after Hong Kong, permanently glued to his chair, but I guess it makes sense from a branching narrative/development standpoint if he dies in New York.

JC is a new favorite character of mine. He definitely reads as autistic. Simons was a cool villain and his coat was even cooler though he walks like he's severely constipated. Anyway, this game was fun as hell and it truly does break my heart that this series is more or less dead in the water. I'm sick to death of remakes but I'm not gonna lie and say I wouldn't enjoy a potential remake of this game. Not sure if I want to play the sequel though as apparently the writing takes a complete nosedive and it shits itself even on the platforms it was made for. Everyone also looks 10x fuglier in Invisible War than they do in this game which is a feat in itself, since most of them look like cats with their faces pulled back.

I'm so fucking tired of people claiming that Warren Spector coined the concept of Immersive Sims, when the man himself will tell you it was Doug Church, all the while these people bash the concept of such a genre even existing. Their arguments are uniformly rooted in prejudicial ignorance every single fucking time. Often making some idiotic remark about how the name is misleading because flight simulators have nothing to do with them, WHEN THE ACTUAL OG IMSIM DEVS MADE FLIGHT SIMS TOO. The entirety of the Looking Glass output were ALWAYS simulations. I'm inclined to believe that the people who were the original developers at the forefront of Simulation focused game development are right in attaching such a denomination in one form or another to their RPG and FPS outputs as well. There's a very simple litmus test you can employ to discern why the bulk of modern first person video games do not deserve to be brought up in conversation by halfwits mistakenly complaining about the genre being "meaningless" because "all games strive to be immersive" (lmao even) or what have you when that's clearly not true. The litmus is whether or not the game is implementing its mechanics via scripted interactions or SIMULATING systems to allow for a rationally comprehensible and predictable game world. Yet somehow people keep bringing up Elder Scrolls, Metroid Prime, et al, in conversation.
I suspect this is an unfortunate effect of general human neurology struggling with comprehending nuance and abstractions, all the while putting much too much emphasis on definitions. Thus the incessant roundabout arguments throughout all of history that often boil down to nothing more than fucking pedantry.

Anyway, as I see it what makes ImSims most consistently identifiable, rather than pedantic slavish insistence of finding individual shared mechanics, is observing how systemically implemented game mechanics end up informing and recontextualizing a game's Level Design.
I feel the need to point this out because I've seen far too many people think that statpoints and skill trees are of chief significance, when they're really just a tool by which developers can choose to allow players influence over their characters. Too few people have played the OG System Shock which is quite lacking in all the ARPG frills that have come to define a particular subset of this criminally misunderstood peak genre of PC gaming. A genre that arguably IS PC gaming.

Oh, yeah, the game. Deus Ex is okay. I made the mistake of playing on Hard and had to suffer through the mediocre gunplay. It was still good though and definitely a must-play. I willfully restarted the Hong Kong level a few times because I wasn't ready to move on before trying several different approaches just for the hell of it. Truly an excellent level.

For all my complaining of pedantry, I wish such widespread flagrant misunderstanding and misapplication of terminology didn't piss me off so much, but I simply can't tolerate besmirchment of PC gaming's most engrossing lineage.

BioShock is a corridor shooter.