Customer Reviews

Deus Ex (Mac)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A friend, who clearly knows me pretty well, sent me a copy of this game. I've already returned the favor for a great friend of mine - it's the game we've been waiting for.

The plot is futuristic and 'cyber' - you're a near-future supersoldier, a first-generation nano-bio-augmented replacement for the U.N.'s squad of mechanically augmented black op "robocops." Think Robocop meets Gibson meets X-files, with shades of Heinlein and Delany (there's a reference to 'Ashton Clark') thrown in in the beautifully crafted world that is your context.

The complicated plot unfolds in real time as you progess through the game, and there is a bit of role-playing - choices you make affect how your game is going to go, to some extent at least. You can certainly affect how your character develops - is he going to be a LAW-toting grenade throwing gun thug a la Duke Nukem, or a slip-through-the-shadows backdoor hardware hacker? Choose your own adventure.

Gameplay is based on the Unreal engine, as noted. It's fair to mention that you need a bit of hardware to make this puppy run well. For the scenic parts (i.e. briefings at HQ), I use high detail on textures and objects, but for combat I have to turn the detail down to medium, or else aiming is jerky and the baddies blast me in between frames. I'm running a B&W G3 with the stock Rage 128 card and 128MB of RAM - the game requires disk VM turned on so that its partition can be 160 MB. I run it with most extensions off (it needs RAVE) and it's only hard-crashed me once, although it tends to leak memory at about the 8-hour mark, requiring a civilized reboot.

What else to say? Music is great and the game experience is totally immersive and great fun. The authors have the feel of the genre down perfectly. And having been on the NYC subway system too much lately, I had a bit of a thrill when (in-game) some young punk drug dealer mouthed off, then drew a pistol on me in the Battery Park station.

BLAM.

5 stars. Buy it now. Then set aside a little free time and break up with your significant other. You can always buy him/her a bunch of flowers, after you've solved it.

Deus Ex might be my game of the year. It's an adventure RPG that actually allows you to role-play to some extent. It looks great and plays great. Its closest predecessors are System Shock 2 and Thief, two games the Macintosh community missed.

The missions are open-ended and large. You can explore huge detailed maps, finding the approach to your goals that suits your playing style. Want to sneak and use your silent crossbow loaded with tranq darts? Want to snipe from the rooftops? Or want to go in with assault rifle blazing? You can do all that and more. You can pick locks or blow doors off their hinges with bombs. Your choices affect how the NPCs react to you later in the game. Really!

I liked the NPCs in this game very much. There are a lot of them, moving around, and they often have a lot to say to you. Or you can listen in on their conversations with each other. Some aren't so relevant to the game's plot, but are fun anyway. Listen for two homeless men talking about sculpture...

How good is the Macintosh port? It's good. And what's more, the Macintosh version lagged the PC version by less than a month. Deus Ex is based on the Unreal Tournament engine, which helped make the port fast. Performance is great on my G4 with its Voodoo3 card, and should be acceptable on the ATI Rage cards that come standard in recent Macs. Anything with a G3 processor or better should be able to handle it.

Make sure you check Inside Mac Games or Aspyr's web site for game updates. There's one update already at the time I write this review.

This game is fantastic, don't get me wrong. I rushed out to CompUSA and bought myself a copy as soon as i heard it was released. However-- (i won't get into praising it because that would just be repeating what is known..) the AI is .. moderate.. voice acting is horrid... stereotypes of hong kong are ... racist.. technical issues with equipment (payload, damage, etc) are almost silly.. being that an assault rifle does 1/5th of a pistol per cartridge, map sizes make memory requirements rediculous, and make the game lag when viewing a city street..

but on the upshot, it's a freakin' great game.. very fun. just make sure you have 256MB of real RAM, a decent video card (voodoo2 at the least) and a G3 processor.

As a friend of mine put it, "this game will beat you up and take your lunch money." It's based on the Unreal engine (think UnrealTournament) and the graphics are just as smooth. It has a fairly intuitive interface and a nice plot line. But the real strength of this game is the role-playing slant that it has. By making certain choices in the game you customize your character to be what you want him to be. For example, if you feel like going in guns-a-blazing, grab the huge weapon. Like the Thief approach? Grab the silent crossbow and the lock picks. In addition, you can also augment certain skills such as strength, weapons skills, swimming, lock picking, computer skill, electronics, etc that help you along. Become better at shooting rifles and the sniper rifle won't kick as badly every time you shoot. Get better as bypassing computer security and you'll be able to do it faster and stay undetected longer. Bottom line? Get this game. It's worth it.

Deus Ex is a very difficult game to classify, judging by the shoot-em-up feel of the first mission (which takes place on a destroyed Statue of Liberty, very poignant after 9/11) you would think its an FPS, but the game is much deeper and includes areas where puzle-solving, free exploration and stealth are key.

The graphics are perhaps the weakest point of Deus Ex, the game relies on the somewhat dated Unreal engine, so many of the huge scenes seem a bit pixelated. However, the developers do their best to make the scenery look real, as a former resident of New York I recognized Battery Park, Castle Clinton, Liberty Island etc. and they seemed remarkably accurate. The building scenes (UNATCO HQ, the MJ12 secret lab, etc.) are also very well done and realistic.

The plot of this game is simply the best written and most enthralling of any videogame I have ever played. I won't describe it in detail except to say that after a couple of days I had the following epipheny: "Deus Ex" was not pronounced "dooze ex" but "day oos ex" and was short for the literary term Deus Ex Machina, Latin for "God from the Machine" Also note that the main character's initials are JC and his brothers name is Paul. The plot is very deep, takes many twists and turns and despite its improbabillity it has a way of suspending your disbelief.

In conclusion Deus Ex is simply awesome, but only play it if you have a couple of weeks to blow on a videogame, 'cause this one is seriously addictive.

This is one of the best computer games ever, and the best single-character role playing game.

After the first few hours of playing Deus Ex, I was impressed the complexity of the combat system. The tactical maps reward exploration, the hit point system is body-location specific instead of general (so a critical blow against a head is much different from one against a leg), and there are so many ways to approach a probem that it makes the "multisolution" system of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic look like Tic Tac Toe. The options of long-range sniping, getting up close and personal with melee weapons or unleashing with automatic weapons and grenades also contribute to a great first person shooter experience.

After the first day, I was impressed with how the game went out of its way to set the mood of another world, the fact that if you wander into the women's restroom an NPC will make a sarcastic comment, and how almost every non-player character has something to say. I was particularly blown away by how experience is awarded not for killing things, but for "exploration bonuses", "progress awards" and "achieved objective awards". Too many games reward the entirely unrealistic activity of looking for danger, while in Deus Ex there is little point to looking for an unnecessary fight.

I moved the game from the "really good" to the "ridiculously good" column after it passed the 'toilet' and 'Asian languages' tests. Have you ever noticed that people in computer games almost never have to go the bathroom, and that even large buildings don't have any toilets? And also that games that have a lot of toilets, such as the Fallout series, tend to be really good role playing games? Deus Ex has a lot of restrooms, with toilets that you can flush. The second test is one that I've never actually seen in a game - the use of an actual Asian language rather than a bunch of scribbles. Having spent about 6 years of my life studying Japanese, the fact that most games don't even try to use a real writing system for signs supposedly set somewhere in Asia is really annoying. Deus Ex does in the chapter set in Hong Kong, and it is so well done that I was able to tell stalls in the market apart by their Chinese-language signs. Major respect due to the designers for their attention to this detail that everyone else ignores!

Finally, when NPCs began to give in-depth speeches on the nature of the relationships among society, the individual and government I decided that this game was off the charts. It is the rarest of computer games - a first-person shooter role playing game that builds its foundation on ideas. The graphics are a bit dated, but the graphics are not the reason to play this game. Unless you need your games to be non-stop explosions and gunfire, you need to get this game.

much has been written about the character of this game and is not necessary to repeat. however, once past the rather tedious training, this game grabs you and holds on so tightly that you neither eat nor sleep (it rivals diablo in this respect); the story and play are that good. i have played it four times in a year and a half, the last on realistic difficulty, and it never loses its appeal. i have gotten to experiment with all the skills and all the augs, and i pick up nuances each time. the mac edition was available almost simultaneously with the windows. since this is the best game ever for mac (maybe windows, too) there is no excuse for its not being at the top of the sales, even at this late date. note that NOLF still is, and DEx came out at the same time, and the latter is a better game. if you want to see DEx II for mac, better get all your mac friends to buy #1.

I must say, when i first heard the hype about this game i was sceptical, myself not being a huge fan of the fps genre. Until i played this game that is. It is hands down the absolute greatest game i have ever played. The gameplay is brilliantly unique, half fps and half rpg. The amount of character and environmental interactivity is just superp. Everything, and i mean every single object in this game does something. You can turn on the taps, flush the toilets, you can even play pool and shoot hoops on the basketball court. And character modifications? Marvellous. Just like in System Shock 2, only better. A classic rpg skill points system, plus a wide array of augmentations to improve your character give this game a huge replay value, because once you finish it you almost immediately want to go back and try it again with different skills. And different skills do have a huge impact on the gameplay, as for every obstacle you encounter there are a number of ways to deal with it depending on your abilities. Locked door? Find the key, pick the lock or blow the **** out of it. Laser tripwires? Shut them off, blow them up or go through the air vent to get around them. It has a deep, dark and involving storyline that has the habit of making the player completely immersed in the game, forget eating, sleeping and bodily functions, once you get into this game you will not stop until youve finished it at least once. The graphics are of the highest quality, amongst the best graphics in a first person game today (provided you can meet the system requirements that is) Levels are terrifcally designed to present the player with numerous challenges. The AI is, on the most part, very advanced (varies depending on the difficulty) There is a clear gap between each difficulty setting. Once you get used to the game engine (which happens to be the unreal engine) easy mode is in most parts reasonably easy, whereas Realistic is in some places harder than anything a human being will likely experience in real life. Stealth is incorporated so that it can be a major aspect of the game. Emphasis on the CAN. You can be stealthy, or if that isnt your specialty you can turn your player into a walking tank. The voice acting is mostly well done, even though in some parts it lacks expression. That is about the only negative point i have found, after playing through the game on the first 3 difficulties (which took a long time) From a seasoned gamers point of view, the meaning of life should be to buy this game right now.

I read about the concept of Deus Ex in a Newsweek article and lamented not having a PC. When I found it for Mac, I flipped out and had to buy it. When I played it, it was sooooooo much cooler than I had imagined it would be. The game took a long time to load, but waiting for it was worth it. Awesome graphics, cool action, great interaction, etc.......but the best part of all was the storyline. It just got cooler and cooler. I would recommend this game to anybody.

I would like to withdrawl my last review as it was too hasty. Although this game severly taxes any new iMac it is an outstanding game.

The depth that non-player characters have and the abundance of choices to complete the missions is unlike any game I have ever played.

It combines the best of diffferent genres, role playing like D&D , first person like DOOM, and pure thinking like Zork.

I will buy every sequel to this game and a new computer to play it on if need be!