To this day Deus Ex is still my all-time favourite. It's immersive story line, multiple twists and turns, great game play and length are what make it quite possibly the greatest FPS RPG of all time. I have played through it multiple times in many different ways, have completed it totally pacifistic, sneaky, all guns blazing etc. and still find new and exciting elements with each play through.
10/10
5*****

In 1997, John Romero of Ion Storm Dallas approached the producer of System Shock, Warren Spector, said "Make the game of your dreams. No limits" and the end result was the creation of Ion Storm Austin and their first game; Deus Ex.

Deus Ex is a First-Person Shooter/Role Playing Game with a heavy emphasis on stealth and thinking carefully about your surroundings. The game provides you, from start to finish, with a number of ways to solve every single problem put in front of you. The level design is open ended enough for any method of completion.

The game is inspired by Looking Glass Studio's System Shock and Thief and as a result, the freedom you have to approach and complete your objectives is simply staggering. You are given a huge world to explore, some tools you might want to use to complete your objectives and let loose upon your environment. Careful exploration is needed to uncover all of the hidden gadgets, secret tunnels and small story elements.

The only time you will ever receive a Game Over is if you die. There are no penalties for doing things your way and the game dynamically changes as you play. People in the game may think differently of you if you don't do what they expect of you and may effect certain things as you progress through the story.

Speaking of Story, the story of Deus Ex is one of a heavily political and conspiratorial nature. You play as JC Denton, an agent on his first day with the UNATCO, an organization that deals with the growing rise of foreign and domestic terrorism in the early 21st century. It does not take long however for JC to discover that he is merely a pawn in a huge political game that leans far beyond his own understanding.

He will have to travel far and wide to gather the help he needs from unsuspecting allies. Hong Kong, Paris, New York City and various US locations will be visited, all of which have a fitting Tech-noir feel and stellar music to match. One listen of the music for Hong Kong and you'll never forget it.

Being an Role-Playing Game as well as a shooter, Deus Ex allows you to customize your character to your preference. The game features a skill system that will allow you to improve JC in a number of fields. Like big guns? Master the Heavy Weapons skill and go in with the GEP Gun blowing people and locked doors to bits. Want to silently infiltrate every location with skill and precision? Master Computers and Lockpicking to open doors, hack security machines, ATM machines for money (if you don't find any bank account details lying around) and read e-mails for clues about the environment you're in.

Another notable part of Deus Ex are its unforgettable characters. Every major character in the game has a well rounded personality with their own expectations of you. What you do in the world or tell them can affect how they treat you which might be crucial in your immediate future.

There are boss battles in the game but some may be avoided entirely by learning information from other characters. If you do walk into a boss fight, you even have the choice of running right out the door behind them and not bother engaging them at all! When was the last time a game let you do that? Things might even happen to that character later on if you don't fight them.

With all the above praise, Deus Ex is not without its small faults however. Some of the levels are huge and empty of detail, forcing long walks if you want to get anywhere specific in a short amount of time. The large empty levels also make the game feel a little devoid of life in some places. A lot of areas that look as if they should be full of people, are completely empty except for maybe two or three characters at once.

With every conspiracy theory under the sun under the microscope in Deus Ex, you must learn to question everything and trust no one. You may even find that things that this game was talking about in the Year 2000 are happening right now or have a very real possibility to happen at some point during our lifetimes; wealth and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor across the globe, omnipresent electronic surveillance, technical augmentations that can enhance the human race beyond what nature intended and much more.

It's a roller-coaster ride of a game that everyone simply has to play to experience at least once. Your favourite game was probably inspired by this piece of art so do yourself a favour, set next weekend aside and play this game already. You will never leave the house without your tin-foil hat again!

I'm gonna warn you from the start. This will not be a short review.

Deus Ex is, hands down, the best game I have yet to play in my 20 years of existance. I will go into why I think so in a short while but first, some quick notes about my experience.

-I played this game on Realistic, which is the hardest difficulty-setting.
-While Steam says I've played ~85 hours that is not true. That time includes some AFK-time as well as some occation where I just turned on the game to listen to the music :P
-If you have a modern PC you're probably gonna have to tweak some settings in the deusEx.ini file, such as audio Latency and resolution as the in-game menu only supports 1690x1060 if my memory serves me right. So don't panic if it seems broken the first time you start the game. Also there are plenty of more informative forum posts around on those issues.
-Don't spend any points in Swimming, it's absolutely terrible!

Now, onto the game itself. The year is 2052, terrorists operate openly, a plague is killing of people and everything has gone to ♥♥♥♥. You play as JC Denton, an anti-terrorist agent working for the UN who soon discovers that he is only a pawn to be used in a global conspiracy which he must uncover who is behind it and why.

While the voice-acting is generally quite bad apart from a few exceptions, the story and dialogue is very well written, deep and engaging in a way that I rarely see in other games. A lot of it is helped by the games very open level-design where you can find datalogs, books and newspapers that gives information about the task at hand as much as world you're in. Multiple conversation-options helps this as well as different characters will give different views about stuff that transpires around them and it really helps the immersion.

Another point about the level-design is that it rewards exploration with items or different passages/ways to complete your objective. Any mission can be completed regardless how you decided to build your character. You can choose to hack computers to get past security systems, use lockpicks in order to get past certain doors, or just use your weapons and gun down every hostile being in sight. The choice is yours. And yes, the multiple ways to complete the objective can include putting boxes on top of each other until you can get to a rooftop.

The combat however is not particularly brilliant. As a stealth-player I wasn't really affected by this but I can imagine how a gunguy-build might be a bit frustrating. For example, there is no aiming down sights in this game. Instead it uses time-based aiming which is not that good amidst a firefight. The melee-combat is somewhat better, but still quite clunky and it can be hard sometimes to know if you actually are within range of hitting someone or not. It reminds me of Elder Scrolls combat which I personally hate, but that's just my opinion. However, there are both lethal and non-lethal weapons available, so the choice is yours if you want to kill people or not, and this will affect how some of the characters act towards you. Also you should treat this like an RPG more than an FPS, cause the former is what it really is.

Another thing of note is the games health system. Instead of having one healthbar you have one for each bodypart, meaning that you can blow both your arms and legs off without dying, which can sometimes lead to bizarre and amusing situations. It's not realistic in the slightest to use a medkit and grow out a new arm but we should allow some suspense of disbelief. When it comes to the use of items, let me tell you that there are no acual vendors so it is not possible to sell extra items that you might find. Some of it can be useful to keep though as some characters might ask you for certain stuff. Also, be prepared to play some "inventory tetris" as you have X amount of blocks and each item takes up Y amount of them, so you'll have to move stuff around in order to carry it all.

What more to talk about? The music, as I hinted at before, is in my opinion fantastic. Alexander Brandon & Co has created a beautiful soundtrack that really fits the cyberpunk dystopian society you're in (I've sometimes found myself just sitting and listening to it). It also helps with the immersion which also feels great. Despite the clunky and outdated combat, the level-design combined with the writing and the music really makes you feel like this spy/detective/agent-guy, whether it be from sneaking around in vents to just having dialogues with various NPCs. It feels like a living, breathing world that (unfortunatly) might become reality in the near future, making it quite relatable. As mentioned before, the game is about conspiracies and it is noteworthy to add that every little conspiracy encountered in the game is believed by someone somewhere in our real world.

I've been rambling on for some time now, so to wrap this up I say this. Buy this game, it costs about as much as a pizza (atleast here in Sweden) and will most likley give you far more enjoyment. Do not be deterred by the VERY outdated graphics. The aesthetic and immersion made up for it well enough. I can do nothing but recommend this masterpiece!

After 4 generations of Deus Ex up to now, I still rank this original title as the best in series not just because of the deep and engaging storyline but also because of how complete it is. Human Revolution is a close second but unfortunately it just lacks the completeness that this brings.

Deus Ex is one of the Greatest Games i've ever played. And I remember when space invaders came out!

You are doing yourself a terrible disservice by not trying out this game, even though by todays standards the graphaics may lack.. but the substance, and the depth and ambiance is there.

Dont let my lack of play time on steam fool you. I still have my original ISO and its installed on my laptop.
I purchased this game just in case.. and also so i could write a review of this game.


I can honestly say I will never; not be able to run this game. Even if it means keeping a relic of a pc around 50 years from now just so i can fire this game up on occasion and play it, I will do just that.

Cheers.

literally a documentary

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, INSTALL A MAP PATCH BEFORE YOU PLAY THE GAME! The GOTY Edition has older editions of the maps due to an archiving error at Ion Storm. There is an unofficial patch to restore the maps to the correct versions which fixes many things. Without it, many pathways are missing, bugs unfixed, and an entire ending looks like crap.
http://www.dxm.be/navigator.php5?lang=en&content=202

Also, consider Deus Exe (http://www.kentie.net/article/dxguide/) and the d3d10 renderer (http://kentie.net/article/d3d10drv/) to make it run smoothly at high resolutions on modern monitors.

Deus Ex was a pioneer in the action RPG genre. It manages to tell a great story without ever forcing the story in the way of gameplay. There's a few unoficial patches that let you run this game better on modern PC's. There's a lot of good mods for this game, which is really good.

Deus Ex's gameplay has aged a bit, although it's still very fun. Most notably, the game has a level of interactivity that has rarely been reached even by modern titles. The game isn't very linear, it more or less just nudges you in the right direction. The first few missions are kind of slow, so don't quit before you complete them. Pretty much all of the maps are large and expansive and have tons of items, enemies, and unique NPC's scattered around. There's a huge level of interactivity in the game world, which was a big selling point when this game came out. You have a variety of skills in the game that you can upgrade. You gain skill points by completing objectives or discovering hidden areas. You can also get "augmentations" to give your character new and unique abilities. Some people say that the shooting gameplay has aged - if that applies to you, remember to upgrade your weapon skills. It makes a huge difference.
(You may want to install Shifter or Biomod to improve the gameplay, although I prefer the original.)

The graphics weren't paticularly amazing for the time (they weren't bad, either), but it manages to use what they had to create a wonderful atmosphere. They depict many run-down decrepit buildings littered with homeless, sick people to show a country on the edge of collapse. The music is great and really adds to the atmosphere. Every location has it's own unique soundtrack that fits great and adapts to what you are currently doing. This game has full voice acting along with tons of unique characters, so the voice acting quality will vary. All main characters will have at least decent voice acting.
(If you want to augment your graphics even further, install the D3D10 renderer and New Vision)

(Don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything):
Deus Ex takes place in a cyberpunk vision of the world where high-tech prosthetics and transhuman augmentations are commonplace. You are introduced to a memorable cast of characters. A great thing they do with their characters is that they take care in reminding you that they are still human beings and not just targets or objectives. It's all about uncovering ancient secrets and it's pretty cool in this aspect.

Its story was great for the time - and even today it is rarely equaled in the philosophical depth it has. The gameplay was revolutionary, blending shooting and RPG elements. In summary, I'd definitely recommend this - it's a truly classic game.

Where it all began. Can't believe that this was released on Windows 2000, 15 years ago! Still to this day we are gifted with excellent mods for it, currently Caustic Creative are developing a wonderful overhaul mod named Deus Ex: Revision (be sure to check it out!).

This was one of my first childhood games, I can still remember certain stealth patterns to the levels. Really good to revisit from time to time and like I mentioned, mods really revitalise an old classic. JC Denton the badass! The question is, which ending did you choose?

For those wondering, the storyline of the Deus Ex series is as follows;

2027 – Human Revolution
2029 – Mankind Divided
2052 – Deus Ex
2072 – Invisible War

So the events of the original come AFTER the events of Human Revolution.

Deus Ex has to be one of -the- best RPGs I've ever played. The 30-something-hour story is quite interesting and spans many different locations filled to the brim with things to discover and areas to explore.

The dialogue does have its quirky moments where the recordings feel so off, but it does not impact the overall experience in any significant way. If anything, the corny lines and the questionable delivery of said lines only add to it. The music in this game just kicks ass and fits the mood perfectly.

Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition is most definitely worth your time and money. I don't care how much or little you're planning to pay for it. Just get it, ok? :)

If Steam was Deus Ex...

- I could write this review through the front door, guns blazing.
- I could write this review descending through the rafters of the roof.
- I could write this review while snaking around through air vents.
- I could write this review while picking off targets at a distance.
- I could write this review while slinking around, performing non-lethal takedowns.
- I could write this review while wiring the security systems to turn on my enemies.

I had to go this far back in time to get a game that really understands what choice, flexibility, and options are in a video game... what a shame.