Overview

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Review

Release Date: 12.02.2003
Platform: Xbox
Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: Eidos Interactive

Reviewed by Samuel Altersitz on 12.10.2003

Review Rating: 8/10

User Rating: 9/10

Deus Ex: Invisible War is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Deus Ex, released on the PC and the PS2 a few years back. Publisher Eidos Interactive and developer Ion Storm have decided to bring this sequel to the Xbox in the hopes of giving console players a glimpse of what made PC players go ga-ga over the original. In some ways they succeeded, but in others, they didn't.

DX:IW begins 20 years after the end of Deus Ex. After the events in Deus Ex, the world fell into a massive depression, a nearly-Dark Ages time called The Collapse. During this time, all world communications were down, the economies of the world were in chaos, and governments were in shambles. There were two main groups that rose from the ashes to try and bring order to the world: the WTO (there is no explanation to this acronym, but I doubt it means World Trade Organization), which is a very capitalistic organization that focuses on technology and commerce to bring the world together; and the Order, a religious group with teachings of harmony and balance that are opposed the WTO's stance on technology.

DX:IW begins with the player as Alex D., a trainee in a school for corporate mercenaries/soldiers called Tarsus. Players may choose to be either male or female at the onset, but the name remains the same. The game starts out after a terrorist destroys the entire city of Chicago, and the player and their fellow trainees are relocated to Seattle just as the city is being destroyed. As soon as play begins, players are given their first mission: to get to the recreational area of the Seattle branch of Tarsus. Immediately, something goes wrong, as the Tarsus Academy is attacked by the Order.

DX:IW then walks players through their heads-up display (HUD), how to pick up objects, use weapons, etc. The pacing of this is done as is necessary by what is going on around the player in the beginning, and is done quite well. After escaping from the Tarsus Academy, the player is basically on his own. Well, not completely. Players will receive goals from both the WTO and the Order, and they may choose to do them as they wish, depending on how they wish to play. This continues on throughout the game, as players meet up with the differing factions all trying to use them for their own goals and gains.

The fun thing about this is that players may switch sides constantly throughout the game, which leads to interesting interactions between the player and the factions, as they constantly do goals how they so choose. An example of one such scenario occurs when the Order wants the player to kill someone, while the WTO wants the player to question that same person. Players can choose to do either, and it will reflect in how each faction will react later in the game.

There are also multiple side goals that can be accomplished in each area as well, which can lead to credits (money), biomod cannisters, or preferred treatment (half normal price for items) from the Omar black market vendors of the world.

In this respect, Deus Ex: Invisible War improves on its predecessor, which had you do one faction's work for the beginning of the game, then another's, and then finally allowing you to really pick and choose. Invisible War allows players a fairly open ability to pick and choose as the game progresses.

The controls in DX:IW are fairly standard fair for FPS games on the Xbox. The left analog stick moves and strafes, while the right analog stick looks around. A is the action button; B is the cancel button, for when choosing from your inventory or biomods, and also switches weapons while in normal mode; X brings up the inventory screen; Y jumps; the right trigger is the primary fire button; the left trigger is the secondary fire mode. The Black button brings up the Biomod screen, and the white button brings up the goals, maps, and images. Clicking down on the left analog stick crouches. And the digital pad is used for quick inventory or biomod uses. Pretty standard, for the most part, for FPS games on the Xbox; it should take players very little time to become accustomed to it.

One of the most important things in DX:IW is the ability to interact with almost any object in the world. Players will be able to pick up many objects, including dead or unconscious bodies, and throw them away to get to other objects. This can be especially funny as players try and see how the rag-doll physics of dead/unconscious bodies look. When thrown, the bodies will react to the environment and fall accordingly. All in all, while not totally realistic, the bodies do move in ways players would more or less expect.

The ability to move the bodies does serve an additional purpose, besides seeing how the rag-doll physics work. If enemies (and other NPCs) see a dead body, they will react appropriately, including sounding the alarms to summon more enemies. So in order to help alleviate situations where players are massively out gunned, it is best to hide the evidence.

Graphically, Invisible War is very nice looking. Lighting effects are spectacular, and very realistic. Things like flaming barrels also have their light source move with them. The textures are nice, with bump mapping on certain objects where appropriate. Unfortunately, the character models could be a little better, especially the faces. The game is also exceptionally dark, even darker than its predecessor. Luckily, there is an in game gamma setting to help with this.

The sound in DX:IW is nice, with weapons and footfalls permeating the atmosphere. All dialog is spoken within the game, so there is a lot going on in terms of vocals. Something I'm happy about is the inclusion of the industrial-ish group, Kidney Thieves, as the group performing the songs for the pop star in the game, NG Resonance. I know not many people know about the Kidney Thieves, but for those of us who do, it's good to see them get some recognition.

Deus Ex: Invisible War also has a good amount of replay value when you consider how you can go through the game. There are four distinct endings, one more than its predecessor had.

There are, however a few things about DX:IW that are things that take away from the game, overall.

First, there are some frame rate problems, especially when in firefights, or with explosions happening. Most of the time these do not affect game play, but there are times when the frame rate stuttering and jumping can seriously hurt players' ability to survive. This is especially true when in tight corridors (where most of the game takes place).

Then there's the lack of outdoor levels in DX:IW. There are a few, but the original Deus Ex had a lot more, and all of them very wide open. One area in both games, Liberty Island, is actually separated into two separate areas, with a load screen in between them; whereas in the original, the whole island was one open area.

Speaking of load times... Well, there're a lot of them, and they're fairly long each time. At least 15 seconds or more for each load. While this isn't always a horrible thing, when you spend a good deal of time on each area, it can get increasingly annoying when you have to constantly go from area to area to resolve goals. This happens often in a few areas of the game: find an item for a goal, go back two or three load screens to complete the goal/receive reward, then go back those same load screens to complete more goals.

The biggest drawback to the game, however, is in how Invisible War differs from what made the original Deus Ex such a great game. Gone is the skill system and experience points that made Deus Ex feel much more like an RPG than just another FPS game. Biomods are reduced to one biomod per body area instead of two now. Gone are the bonus awards for "thinking outside the box" in areas. Gone is the ability to hack into people's personal computers and read their e-mail as well.

And, most importantly, the individual body part health is now gone as well. This hurts players because this feature also affected enemies in the first game, meaning head shots were much more effective, almost always instantly killing enemies no matter what weapon. Now, the only weapon in DX:IW that is assured of instantly killing an enemy with a head shot is the sniper rifle.

Some of these changes were made to help make it easier to work on a console, since consoles lack the ability of total customization of keyboards. The way of aiming from the original Deus Ex is also gone, replaced with an auto aim, also because console analog sticks are just not as accurate, or as fast as a mouse.

Some people complain that the game was "dumbed down" for the Xbox. And in some slight cases, like the lack of an individual body part health system (this was also removed from the original game when it was ported from the PC to the PS2) and the tailored skill system, this may be true. In other cases, the changes were made to take advantage of how consoles work and how their control interfaces are best used.

Deus Ex is a 10 in my book. Deus Ex: Invisible War isn't quite the same, nor the step up I was hoping for. Overall, though, Deus Ex: Invisible War is a really good game that FPS fans should enjoy. It's not as fast paced as most entries in the genre, and there are multiple ways of doing things much more stealth-like than normal FPS games; which may appeal to stealth game fans as well.

Box art