Deus Ex: Invisible War reviews

[Skanky Burns]

True, Rav. You can check this at the Renton's hotel, among other places. You can hack one atm and then use the other to check the balance of an account you have the numbers to.

[Alex]

That Gamespot review puzzled me; the reviewer said lots of negative things about the game but still awarded it a 8.0. I guess it's something like "hey, this game sucks, but it is one of the 'big bosses' this year, so I'll have to give it a better grade". He didn't like the game but couldn't help falling prey to the hype.

[CapTVK]

Why is it that the average game reviewscore has been creeping up during this decade? Do bad games get screened out or something? Or does every game get a 'few points more' to balance things out?

Only a few excellent exceptional games might go past the 9 mark. So in that sense 8,0 seems correct. However In the old days a good game got 6-7, an average hovered around 6, the turkeys got what they deserved with 1-5 (although a few might be of interest for the fans anyhow).

[DrSpike]

And in my day this 'ere innernet was all just fields.

[CapTVK]

nostalgia mode:

Yeah yeah, yeah in those days bad games got the trashing they deserved (damn right) even if the publishers pulled advertising when they got a bad review. No spine, no moral fiber at all with modern game reviewers these days. Informing the reader!? Pah!~

Damn youngsters don't what's good for them. In my C64 days we had to wait 3-5 min for a game (bought with hard earned cash) to load (with speedloader) from cassette and we loved it!

[Kassiopeia]

After playing for seven hours of game time... I like it. It's nothing like the old Deus Ex, but it's not a total failure. The graphics felt fugly at first, but I got used to them. Mind, my strategy has been pretty straightforward when it comes to guards, just blast them one after another. The AI sucks in that regard. The most enjoyable foes are the bots and turrets, which can be murderous. Taking them out requires some thinking already. I can take them over with a biomod and take out a roomful of enemies with a turret, which does make things a bit too easy.

Altogether the game is ridiculously easy, I'm not too good a shot and playing on hard (easy-medium-hard-realistic), I've got heaps of supplies with me and battles go without a hitch. The biomods are also pretty much out of balance: I can't find any meaningful use for any other mods on one slot except one, so I've got six mods I frequently use maxed out on me. The nightvision thingee that can see through walls is the most useful one. It's a shame I had to install a biomod to do something as simple as hacking. And hacking is pretty simple this time, not even a chance to get caught or trigger an alarm.

Maybe I should switch to console games , since I kind of like the streamlined system where keycodes are automatically entered, multitools act also as lockpicks and guns need not be reloaded and have no separate ammo. It really emphasises weaponry as nothing but an alternative to all other methods.

The plot is pretty good, I'm getting the feeling it's picking off where DX1 ended. Lots of familiar faces and names. All the choices and whatnot in the first parts of the games are, sadly, probably of no consequence. Only a few times have my actions resulted in some changes, and those weren't that big, just cost me a few credits. I do think the game can get very different whether you hire a pilot or get one to transport you by helping her out in Seattle.

Also, what I've heard, the ending will be branched the same way as in DX1 - you have three alternatives, and you can realise every one of them in the last stage, with little influence from your overall actions.

Losing the exp system wasn't that bad a change either, for some reason I'm finishing secondary objectives even though I don't need the credits.

It's not a worthy sequel, at least so far it hasn't been. Perhaps it'll redeem itself. It's a good game, but not brilliant. I'm not taken by nostalgia or anything, I played and finished DX1 for the first time only two months ago. I do wish I didn't have an exam tomorrow...

Edit: The patch v. 1.1 also helped the game performance-wise a lot. It probably won't work anywhere as decently on old systems, though, and I can't recommend getting a new system for DX: IW just because you loved DX.

Oh, and the regions are very small and cramped. The game has to load a new area far too often. Considering the performance demands, that's just silly. Liberty Island in DX1 was huge compared to this.

[ravagon]

The two things that really put me off are the implications that its small, as Kass pointed out, and that its so short that some reviewers finish the whole thing in < 15 hours.
I just can't abide that.

DX1 took me 80+ hours to finish (Ok, so I'm not very good ) and I thoroughly enjoyed it - most particularly the areas with the biggest maps - Hells kitchen & the warehouse, Hong Kong & Versalife, etc.
Going from something that extensive to something so limited is, IMO, just a waste of time.

[vee4473]

Originally posted by ravagon
The two things that really put me off are the implications that its small, as Kass pointed out, and that its so short that some reviewers finish the whole thing in < 15 hours.
I just can't abide that.

DX1 took me 80+ hours to finish (Ok, so I'm not very good ) and I thoroughly enjoyed it - most particularly the areas with the biggest maps - Hells kitchen & the warehouse, Hong Kong & Versalife, etc.
Going from something that extensive to something so limited is, IMO, just a waste of time.

what were the average reviewer completion times for the first deus ex?

Was your 80 hours higher than what the reviewers said it took them? If so, then you can probably say that it will take you longer than 15 hours.

I'm with you, I usually spend more time than what reviewers say...

[ravagon]

IIRC the few references to time I came across were around 50+ odd hours.
It'd almost certainly take me longer than the 15 it took a reviewer - it always does, but I doubt it'd be more than 25 hours or so at a guess, 30 at the outset.
Certainly nowhere near the length of the first though...

[Kassiopeia]

The final verdict on the ammo system: I like it. When you run out - and in endgame it's quite possible - you really run out, and end up improvising all sorts of stunts to get that damn guard killed.

Now, length. I finished DX1 in 23 hours on medium difficulty setting (was my first time). I finished DX2 tonight, in 11 hours of game time on hard difficulty setting. This game is woefully short. I think I was still in the Ocean Base at eleven hours. (Note: I used a walkthrough with DX1 when I got stuck, so that reduced the time. At the time of writing, I haven't been able to find a DX2 guide anywhere.)

It was kind of relieving, however. The endings were very disappointing, as they were shoved in your face: essentially you'll have a menu where you can click which faction to support, or to support none (amounts to four different endings). There are decisions to be made on the second to final area, which can effect some things, but they aren't of consequence to the endings.

I couldn't be arsed to complete more than two of them, took around half an hour extra for the other one, so total game time comes down to about 12 to 13 hours of game time if you do them all. It does puzzle me though - I doubt I missed anything important, yet I played it much quickly than a guy who plays games and writes about them for a living?

Then, the characters, the factions. They didn't have the same pull they had in DX1. I don't know exactly why - maybe because they all seemed to lack proper personalities. The writing in this sense sucked seriously. I did like the entire "completing the circle" theme that was going on,

Spoiler:

the final region is Liberty Island, and three of the endings require killing the Denton brothers - imagine that, your sniper rifle trained at JC Denton, the guy _you_ were not long ago

but it felt somewhat synthetic near the end. Maybe because the milieu was more different compared to our current one than in DX1.

The final region was also very shoddily designed and felt a bit rushed. It was also really small. The size of areas did get better a bit before the final few areas, but you really didn't get to utilise all that empty air.

There is a lot of dynamic gameplay there, though, and the game will have decent replayability when I get around to it, more than DX1 did. Too bad that most decisions had no consequence to your game. A news bulletin you might not even catch is not sufficient.

The difficulty curve also leaped near the end, but it was accomplished through scarcity of items and heaps of enemies, i.e. the boring, old-fashioned way.

All in all, it's a decent game, and it's only major problem is that it never even had the chance to match up to DX1. It does have good ideas and improvements over the original, but fails where DX1 was IMHO at its best: writing and level design.

[Nubclear]

I jus played the demo. I don't want to rehash what everyone else has said, so I wont. But it was bad.
What I found funny though, was that in the options menu there was an option for "Vibration"...

[Sarxis]

You can buy force-feedback gamepads and joysticks for the PC.

[BustaMike]

Well, I played the whole thing through getting absolutely everything and all 5 endings in about 13 hours (this includes running around doing nothing just cause for several hours, it's probably about 10 hours long). The game is ridiculously easy, even on the hardest level.

Things I liked
The graphics were very good.
The physics system is awesome. Throwing dead bodies and crates and everything else around is a blast and I never had any clipping problems.
The game was pretty fun.

Things I didn't like
For all the games "openness" or freedom of choice, it's still incredibly linear. Regardless of any choice made, any ending can be earned by making one choice 5 minutes from the very end.
The different ways to accomplish tasks are superficial at best. There's always a vent or a security pad and I found that I would kill everyone, then use the pad to shut down everything (after I had destroyed it), then crawl through the vent cause I could. The multiple ways of doing things are pointless.
Sniping and sneaking are GROSSLY OVERPOWERED in this game. The sniper rifle will 1 hit kill everything except bots and the elite Templar troopers.
Enemies are STUPID. They just assume you've left after 10 seconds even if there's dead bodies all around.
Presentation wise, the whole game is a night. Couldn't they have used a color other than blue in just one part of the game?

My verdict
The game is a rental. I would not recommend buying it. It has little replay value, single player only, and it's easy and fast to beat. Still, it's worth playing through once. I'd give it maybe a 6 or 6.5 of 10.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
You can buy force-feedback gamepads and joysticks for the PC.

Yes, you can, however the XBOX controller has one built into it.
Seems like a mighty large coincidence

[Sarxis]

I had a chance to buy Dx:IW today, but I'm really looking forward to LoKefiance more.

Got a $30 Best Buy gift cert for Xmas!