Deus Ex: Invisible War is a much different game than its predecessor as it was in many ways toned down to suit the more mainstream Xbox audience. Most RPG elements were simplified or downgraded and the main emphasis was put on using the five approaches - violence, sneaking, hacking, lockpicking, and bribing - in turns throughout the game while at the same time taking sides in the intricate plot. To force the player to switch between the five approaches, each one was consolidated down to depend on a specific resource of which you would run out. All guns use the same ammo (snipers use more ammo than machine guns for a shot), sneaking requires bioenergy (more on that later) if you use the masking ability to hide yourself from humans or bots or if you don't it is the only and the hardest free way to get by, hacking is a biomod so you need bioenergy, lockpicks and multitools of the first game all became multitools for the second one, and for bribing you need money. Invisible War takes place in much more closed areas than Deus Ex, thus combat, although it has not been significantly developed, is much more interesting and better-looking once you get to it. Additionally, you fight particular bad guys because you have chosen so in the plot, thus there is not the silly killing feeling to it. Other flaws of the first game have not been taken care of though: a guard would still not notice if a bot next to him becomes a piece of scrap metal, all goodies lie around wherever, and almost all sneaking throughout the game takes place through air shafts as if designers were too lazy to come up with more variety. The shelf-version of Deus Ex: Invisible War also came with performance problems, but now in February 2004 patch 1.2 is out which takes care of most of the issues. Overall, one can only hope that after two so great games of different nature the middle road will be found for the third Deus Ex. 17/20 - Based on : 25 HOURS 3/4 PRODUCTION VALUES - An XBox port with long loading times and rather slow performance. Could have used more tuning for PC. 4/4 ACCESSIBILITY - Easy, a lot easier than the original game. Many don't like it, but Invisible War is more for mainstream gamers. 3/4 PACING - The illusion of open-endedness is lost by a lot smaller areas (XBox limitation) with less multiple accesses and repetition which starts to kick in after about 10-15 hours of game-time. 3/4 INNOVATION - All innovations went towards simplification of the original Deus Ex, except for the bribing/money earning system which worked for the first half of the game only. 4/4 IMMERSION - If you are really into the story which is another world order conspiracy plot, it is not too hard to get immersed.
Deus Ex was one of those titles that nobody really expected. Released in 2000 by Ion Storm, a developer whose reputation was in shambles after the massive public failure known as Daikatana, Deus Ex provided a style of ga... Read Full Review
Alright, let's try and get this over with as softly and smoothly as possible. Although I regret having to say it, when you compare Invisible War to the brilliant original of Deus Ex, the follow-up frankly falls painfully... Read Full Review
