Deus Ex: Invisible War

by Eidos

Product Features

• Action-packed first-person cyberpunk thriller with intense shooter and role-playing elements
• Go anywhere, do anything--the game adapts to the player's play-style and strategy
• Tools and biomods enable the player to see through walls, run faster than cars, leap 40 feet in the air, and more
• A new benchmark for graphics, sound and physics

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009WDLD
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches ; 8.8 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: December 2, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,576 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Fifteen years following the events depicted in the multi-award winning Deus Ex, the world is just beginning to recover from catastrophic depression.

As an elite anti-terrorist agent, you must fight numerous militant factions bent on violently reshaping the world to suit their own agendas. Using high-tech gadgetry and futuristic body modification (or biomods), you are granted near superhuman powers.

Travel the globe while uncovering fiendish plots of world domination. Unmask the conspirators, while uncovering the shocking truth behind your own origins.

Features

• An action-packed first-person thriller with intense shooter and role-playing elements.
• True player choice provides the most advanced go-anywhere-do-anything freedom in a video game to date. This sandbox-shooter molds itself to the player's play-style and strategy - the real-time choice of violence, stealth, computer hacking or negotiation allow the player ultimate freedom of self expression.
• Countless tools and biomods enable the player to achieve objectives with dramatic flair - see through walls, run faster than cars, leap 40 ft in the air, regenerate critical body damage and become radar invisible to your foes.
• A new benchmark for graphics, sound and physics in a video game. Deus Ex: Invisible War delivers the most realistic atmosphere, effects and environments to date.

Product Description

Sequel to the mega award winning DEUS EX 30+ Game of the Year AwardsProduct InformationIt is twenty years since the end of the global conspiracy depicted in Deus Ex. In the aftermath a catastrophic depression has crippled the world and warring corporate governments use terrorism as the primary tool to enforce their own violently destructive agendas. A few days before the start of Deus Ex: Invisible War Alex D is roused from sleep and rushed to a secret airfield to be transported away from the only world he (or she if the player so chooses) has ever known. Confined to a new training facility in Seattle "for his own safety" Alex learns that the city of Chicago his home was completely destroyed by a terrorist nanotech attack. The only fragments of Alex's former world are now confined to the training facility in Seattle: Billie Adams (a fellow trainee from Chicago) two other students from the Seattle program and - always - the expectation that the mysterious rites and trials of his training will lead to a lucrative job as a corporate mercenary and spy. These things too are about to fly apart however. As covert anti-terrorist operative Alex D. you are thrust into a hornet's nest of conflict conspiracy and doubt. In the huge free-roaming world of Deus Ex the challenge is in choosing your allies and your enemies.Product Features Sequel to the mega award winning DEUS EX - over 30 Game of the Year Awards You have DECISIVE POWER to create your own experience in an open gameplay environment. With multiple solutions to problems the game changes to the players method of problem solving - sneak hack bribe or kill.Use biomods to customize upgrade and exploit the superhuman powers of your character - see through walls leap 40 feet into the air regenerate critical body damage or render yourself invisible.RPG

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

100 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Deus Ex Lite" is an accurate description, December 9, 2003

By 

bayou_hannibal "bayou_hannibal" (West Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deus Ex: Invisible War (CD-ROM)

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.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What could go wrong? The answer is everything., February 8, 2005

By 

David Lim "space_hamster" (Hobart, Tasmania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Deus Ex: Invisible War (CD-ROM)

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.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too much has changed, December 8, 2003

By 

J. M Quiggins "Sole_Fish" (Owensboro, Ky. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deus Ex: Invisible War (CD-ROM)

This is in no way like the original. In some minor ways, that is good. But, mostly, it just takes away from the expectation of the 'follow-up' to an incredible game. The biggest downside for me ... I have an AMD athlon 2800 w/ a geforce fx 5800 128 DDR and 512 meg DDR ram, Sound Blaster audigy 2 card. All have updated drivers, and the required direct X 9 is installed. That being said, i have to pull the graphics setting down to 640x480 to play this. Anything above that creates an unplayable framerate. Why is that? I far exceed all system requirements, and i'm playing this on an alienware computer. They are 'designed' for power gaming. Someone made a grave mistake here. Unless there are some major patches right quick, i fear there may be no Deus Ex 3 in the future. I will try to continue this program and see if i begin to enjoy it. Right now i am only playing it because i'm out 50 bucks. That's a real shame. I would honestly recommend buying a copy of Deus Ex game of the year edition instead of this. Hope i've shed some light.