While ammo isn’t usually a problem in Deus Ex (except when trying to avoid killing anyone, as tranquilizer darts and prod chargers can be hard to find), inventory management is, because JC Denton can carry only a limited number of items.
Deus Ex can be seen as logical evolution of those games, especially System Shock 2, although with a reduced need for conserving ammunition and a bigger chance of different builds actually being useful. It’s a feature inherited from the Thief and System Shock series. The levels in Deus Ex are not only well designed from a gameplay standpoint but usually make functional sense – a ship is laid out not like a vaguely sea-themed obstacle course but like an actual ship with a deck, engine room, crew quarters and other places that are actually expected on a ship. Unfortunately, while you’re usually given a lot of freedom, it becomes even more noticeable when the game takes it away from you as you encounter the door that can’t be opened with multitools, lockpicks or explosives or an important character becomes impossible to kill. Funnily enough, the game also keeps track of less serious matters as several characters will remember if you do silly things like going into women’s bathroom. The game even recognizes the different approaches, with some characters preferring you to use non-lethal ways of dealing with your enemies while others are more inclined towards violence. Sometimes, it’s even possible to fight the enemies indirectly by hacking security systems to turn robots and turrets against their owners or release poisonous gas. Or they might go for a more aggressive approach with different firearms, explosives and futuristic weapons, destroying anything that stands in the way whether it’s a human, a robot or a door. Players can sneak behind the enemies and avoid combat by going through ventilation shafts, bypassing security measures through the use of electronic multitools and enter restricted areas by picking locks. What’s great about all this character building (even if it’s quite simple by RPG standards) is that the game’s level design allows for each task to be approached in a different way depending on skills and augmentations. Bonuses that come from skills are passive, while augmentations need to be activated and require energy to use. either being able to lift heavier objects or doing more damage with melee weapons). Skills are fairly straightforward – just increase the ones you’re using the most – but augmentations require a bit of strategic thinking as augmentation of each body part is permanent and usually requires choosing one of two mutually exclusive bonuses (e.g.
The character’s abilities can be modified by distributing experience points (received for completing mission objectives and exploring different locations) to a set of skills ranging from the use of different weapons to hacking and lockpicking, as well as by installing and upgrading ‘augmentations’: nanotechnological devices inside Denton’s body that allow him to use special skills like health regeneration, silent movement or resistance to bullets.
Fortunately, in this case the whole is much bigger than the sum of its parts and Deus Ex manages to be a brilliant game in its own right regardless.ĭeus Ex players control JC Denton, an anti-terrorist secret agent employed by United Nations. This is also true for Deus Ex, which is a clunky first-person shooter, a stealth game that gives more loud and lethal solutions than stealthy ones (and the stealthy ones you’re given are often not the most reliable) and a fairly shallow RPG. A common problem with games that try to mix different genres and accommodate different playstyles is that they end up not being particularly good at any single thing.
0 kommentar(er)
