This game has merits that make it worth playing, but it's still vastly inferior to the first game (Which I gave five stars). This game has a lot of good ideas, but they are largely negated by some really bad design decisions.There are two HUGE faults that keep this from being a great game. First: the role-playing system is bad. Plain and simple. It's not very useful, flexible, robust, or strategic. The skills system that helped make the first game so great is gone, and that was a huge mistake. The replacement, a carved up biomod system and a weak weapons mod system, requires little planning or thought. There are only five biomod slots now, and the weapons mod system is cheap and underpowered. The system in the first game was so wonderful, because it was loaded with choices and tradeoffs. You could spend your skills system to become a tank, a hacker, a ninja, a frogman, or any combination that you wanted. It's nonexistent here. There is no sense of power development like what you get in a good RPG, where you start off as a complete wimp and end up the game as a demigod. That is why "Deus Ex: Invisible War" is very shallow as an RPG. The other major fault of this game is the size of the maps. They are ridiculously tiny. Most of the areas are tight, indoor cramped spaces. You have to get to the end of the game before you encounter any big open outdoor areas. Exploring an area to find the alternate "secret" entrance to a well-guarded facility is laughably easy. Part of the fun of the first game was wandering around the huge open maps and maybe sneaking into a huge building through the roof. In this game, the front door and the air vent that takes you around it are only five feet away. What's the point? Small maps also mean frequent (and long) loading times. One welcome change from the first game is a big improvement in the voice acting. Both the male and female Alex voice actors sound very good. Except for voice acting though, the rest of the sound in this game takes a big step backwards. Alex Brandon's music is scaled way back. Forget about hearing another great soundtrack like the first game. The weapons sound like toys, and the noises in the game don't do a good job of letting you know how stealthy are your being. That's part of stealth just not being very useful in this game. The riot prod is useless and the tranquilizer dart gun takes two shots now instead of one to take down an enemy. Silent takedowns are too hard, but you don't need them anyways, since most enemies aren't much of a threat to you. You can take most of them out easily with the overpowered sniper rifle.Deus Ex: Invisible War has some saving graces that make it worth playing. The storyline is still excellent. I think that it would have helped to make the game longer and give it more character development, but it's still great. The story has one or two very surprising twists in it, and it gets you to think philosophically, just like the first one. It all makes for a good legitimate sequel story, instead of just a thrown-together rehash of the first one (which is common for sequels). Warning: if you did not play the first game, then you will be totally lost, since the plot for "Invisible War" is pretty convoluted too.The developers had some good creative ideas too. Some of the "black market" biomod canisters that you find are wicked, like one that lets you control bots, and one that imparts EMP to your melee attacks. The rocket launcher has a guided missile mode that puts you into the first-person view of the missile. I also got a lot of amusement out of the NG Resonance character, a holographic AI that provides some comic relief, as well as some hints and side quests. And, even with the scaled-back role-playing system, "Invisible" still has tons of good dialog and lots of open-ended problem-solving. Plus, there's nothing else like it out there as far as action/RPG games go. It's too bad though, that there was so much removed for this game. If it had been a full-fledged sequel instead of "Deus Ex Lite", then it could have been as good as the first one. I would love to see a third Deus Ex game that combines the best elements of the first two. Deus Ex: Invisible War
Veteran hardcore FPS fans will have fond memories of the original Deus Ex - a game which has easily stood the test of time. It's successful combination of Role-playing and First-Person elements won many admirers, and its labryinthe anti-terrorism storyline is extremely relevant to modern events. So when a sequel to this classic PC game was to be produced by Warren Spector and the developers at Ion Storm, what could possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately, the answer is - almost everything. The biggest innovation in the original game were the modifications you could make to both your players skills and his physical abilities. This was implemented using a point system - the points were acrued as you successfully accomplished mission objectives. Another cool innovation was the use of biomods, which you could use to add deadly new abilities to your character. The second game has an inferior dumbed-down version of this system - the points system has been completely eliminated, which effectively destroys the role-playing element which made Deus Ex such a huge success. Unlike the original game, the sequel doesn't allow the player to adopt different gameplaying styles to accomplish the same goal. In general, it seems that sneaking and sniping enemies is more rewarding than outright combat. This essentially limits the number of useful biomods that a player should use during the game - hacking and bot domination being compulsory.
Music is also another big letdown - it'd be hard for any player to forget the wonderfully thunderous bombastic theme that played over the menu of the original game. It seemed that every single map and situation in the original Deus Ex had a piece of music composed for it. It's fair to say that music in the sequel is either non-existent or played so softly it virtually becomes background noise. The only time it's allowed to come to the fore is during the NG Resonance sequences.
Apart from the lack of a points and sophisticated biomod system, the biggest fault is the level design. The opening map of the original Deus Ex was absolutely huge - it comprised the Statue of Liberty, the interior of the Statue, the Harbour, and the entire surrounding environs of Staten Island. And that was just for starters. In the sequel, we're expected to believe that the entire German city of Trier consists of only four blocks of streets - which is patently ridiculous. The sequel's storyline demands big levels - especially during the latter half of the game. I suspect this design decision was possibly due to the perception that the XBox would not have the required processing power. Anyone who has seen the massive levels in Knights of the Old Republic or Halo will realise this is simply not the case.
The biggest mistake Ion Storm made was to simplify the game for the X-Box. As both Bioware and Bungie have proven so successfully with both Knights of the Old Republic and Halo, it isn't necessary to remove or simplify gameplay elements, simply because it's being ported to a gaming console. The result is an insult to the old fans of Deus Ex, who expected the same sophisticated user interface and role-playing elements. It's also an insult to the X-Box crowd as well, who have been lumped with a diluted gameplay experience.'
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