FYI, looks like most places have recently marked Deus Ex 2 down to $19.99. I see it on EB, GameStop, BestBuy.com, and Circuitcity.com for that price, and the latter two places offer free shipping. I just got it from Best Buy. I had wanted to wait on this once since there were mixed reviews. Looks like the price has finally plummeted.
I’ll grab it once it’s under 10$…
Unless its on re-writtable DVD media, its not worth 20 bucks.
Deus Ex 2: Now Only a Waste of Twenty Dollars!
What’s with the hate? I didn’t think it was a bad game.
Eh, I know it’s geek chic to bash this game, but I’ve heard several people whose opinions I trust say it’s a good game if not great. Gotta be worth $20.
It’s worth $20. If you think of it as just a game and not a Deus Ex game, its a solid “B” title. Don’t expect the second coming and you won’t be disappointed.
Futureshop’s got it for $29.99, for Canadians interested in picking it up.
My Cliff’s Notes review of it:
- didn’t like that some of the small levels weren’t joined together for the PC version, something that surely could have been done with only a mild amount of hassle, although of course that’s the armchair game designer in me complaining and I could be dead wrong (this wasn’t a huge deal for me)
- didn’t like the new inventory system and a couple of things about the interface, perhaps the only other time I would agree with those who were screaming “consolization!” non-stop… dear Ion Storm: MY PC HAS A MOUSE, PLEASE LET ME USE IT EVERYWHERE (slightly larger issue)
- the story is good, like the originals’, but the warring factions idea is poorly executed… this caltrops.com post expressed my feelings on it better than I ever could but the basic idea just seemed to be that no one was clearly good or evil, and while I’m all for some shades of grey, DX2 winds up making you not care about serving for/fighting against ANYONE (big issue since it drags down an otherwise fine story)
- physics are a bit out of wack, although this may be because…
- performance on a pretty decent machine was bad when compared to competing FPSs like Far Cry and Painkiller (I bring up the physics-performance connection because with Trespasser, on an old machine that couldn’t play it well at all the physics were laughably bad, whereas on a much better machine they were far more reasonable… maybe DX2 is the same? anyway this is a sort of big issue but the game was definitely playable if not totally smooth)
- you have to tweak the game to get both better performance and more “realistic” gameplay such as altering head-shot damage (not a big issue to me, but I hate the idea of having to edit config files just to enjoy a game - that just seems wrong on general principle)
But all in all, the game is good as everything else is handled really well. I know I’ll be ostracized for saying this but “good” is also how I’d sum up the original game - pretty damn cool in some ways, but quite flawed in others. When I hear how DX2 supposedly destroyed the franchise I just have to wonder whether they’re looking at the original game through rose-colored glasses. At $20, I frankly think it’s a no-brainer.
I do wish Ion Storm would abandon the notion that a game should play the exact same way on the PC as it does on an XBox. And while I don’t care what genre of game is being made for the most part, I can’t deny that this PARTICULARLY holds true with FPS and RTS titles. Yet it sure seemed like IS was determined to accomplish this come hell or high water. The end result is an FPS that’s great by XBox standards, but not by the PC’s.
DX2 is a good game, but this:
…I found especially annoying. Shouldn’t the whole point of physics in a game like this be to enhance gameplay? Yet you can’t do anything with all those boxes. I tried to make a nice stack so I could reach an inaccesible location, but it is impossible to manipulate the pieces accurate enough to do it. Likewise in Thief3: create your own shadows! How? I can’t pick up something and place it in front of a lamp.
Bye,
Steven
“When I hear how DX2 supposedly destroyed the franchise I just have to wonder whether they’re looking at the original game through rose-colored glasses.”
Very much colored…to the point of them not seeing the whole game it seems. DX was a good game. Very fun in areas but it had it own share of flaws that some fans seem to ignore in praising it while bashing Invisible War.
It’s a whole lot easier to accept flaws in a first outing than it is to accept them in a sequel that completely ignored what was good about its predecessor.
Most of the hate seems to come from people who’ve never played the full version. While I don’t think DX2 was nearly as good as the original I though it still had a lot to offer and don’t regret the purchase in the slightest.
You don’t want to go down that road. Just know that there are actually people who not only enjoyed it, but enjoyed it a lot.
Most British shops have it as part of their ‘2 games for £30’ deal too, I was thinking about picking it up myself at that price, but I recently got Thief:DS for my FPS jollies, so I’ll probably wait for a further price drop.
Not really. I’ve played DX through multiple times, including just before DX2 was released. It’s a bit patronising to assume that the opinions of people who disagree with you are faulty, especially with a game that has as many hardcore fans as this series does.
Invisible War was a decent title that wasn’t given enough development time to mature into a great sequel to DX, and because of this, it isn’t as good as its predecessor. Yeah, DX had its own faults, but it excelled in so many other ways, that the faults become relatively less significant. In contrast, DX2 never really rose above its flaws, and it suffers in comparison.
DX’s faults paled in comparisons to the things it did right, though. DX2 was bad, imo, because there was very little it “did right.” Everything was flawed in some little obnoxious way.
Out of curiousity, what do people consider to be the shortcomings of the original? It’s very near the top of my BEST EVAR list, and is what I think of as an example of doing just about everything right in a cyberpunk/fps/rpg hybrid. Except for those ridiculously anti-climactic ending cutscenes.
What did you dislike about it?
Playing devil’s avocado for a minute, a lot of people criticised the NPC combat AI; the way game dragged a bit after Paris; the hardcoded plot that forced you to join factions you (the player) may not have wanted to.
/avocado
Oh, and the utterly dire Direct 3d implementation. Really that’s the only thing that genuinely bothers me about it even now. It wasn’t until I discovered the Glide wrapper for non-3DFX cards that it stopped being a problem.
MY only gripes with DX 1 are that I though the story was cheeseball, and the performance sucked until the last patch.