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One of Computer Gaming's True Triumphs

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 40 / 41
Date: June 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Most of the time when you think of a first-person shooter, you picture fast-paced slaughter and mayhem like in the legendary Quake and Unreal line. Deus Ex, however, adds an unprecedented level of intelligence to a genre previously devoid of any thought other than "if it moves, kill it".
Deus Ex follows Agent JC Denton on his first assignment for UNATCO - an anti-terrorist group with wide-reaching jurisdiction. JC is a special nanotech-augmented cyborg with a wide range of superhuman abilities. You are able to customize your character throughout the game in an RPG-esque style. Want to go in with guns blazing? Increase training in heavy arms and pistols. Want to take out the bad guys from a distance? Focus on Rifle training. Want to hack into the security system and have it eliminate the bad guys for you? Train heavily on electronics and computers. Want to be able to heal yourself instantly? Train up on Medicine. Depending on how you train your character, the gameplay changes significantly. This not only adds tremendous amounts of depth, but also increases the replay value. As if that wasn't enough, the storyline is very intricate and boasts some superb twists. You will end up not knowing who to trust as the game goes on. The plotline culminates in three possible endings, depending on whose side you choose.
Highest possible recommendation.

THE GREATEST GAME of all time . . . of ANY platform . . . Period!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 27 / 27
Date: December 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I believe Deus Ex will be known as the best game ever made . . . ever. I play a lot of games - mostly PC FPS. Some games are very good. Recently I played F.E.A.R., Call of Duty 2, Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Doom 3, etc. They are good games. But they don't have the "soul" of Deus Ex.

In a way, Deus Ex has ruined gaming for me. Every since I played Deus Ex, I have been searching and searching for a game that has even come close to the same atmosphere and "feeling" - only to be sadly disappointed. I am just going to have to accept the fact that Deus Ex was a one-of-a-kind gaming experience that will never be replicated.

I have tried to identify why Deus Ex is so great. I have concluded that the game includes a magical combination of plot, story, characterization, immersion, atmosphere, modifications, action and adventure. It was so well implemented and combined, that such an achievement will never again be realized. It was a freak of fate and brilliance.

Just thinking about the game makes me teary-eyed and yearning to play. In the course of one's life, there may be a song, movie, trip, or (in this case) a game that is never to be forgotten. Deus Ex is extraordinary!

Deus Ex is easily one of the best computer games ever made.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 23
Date: May 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Deus Ex is a fantastic game. The single player storyline is fascinating, drawing one into the story. And you don't want to leave. This game, a combination of heroin and Godzilla, pulled me in, and wouldn't let me out, devouring whole weekends and hours of free time. The gameplay is a lot of fun, and is very open-ended. Many games talk about how there's the option of sneaking in or running in with the guns blazing, but this is the only game where you can see real direct effects of those choices. Run in with an assault rifle and you'll have a lot of corpses lying on the floor. But due to that gun's recoil, one guy runs off long enough to hit an alarm sounder. Suddenly dozens of guards and security robots swarm the area. You're dead very quickly. Everything you do has consequences. Characters in the game will react differently to whether you run into an area and slaughter everyone in sight or slowly approach, and take them alive instead. Because of every choice changing the game, there's a high replayability level to see what would have happened if you had done things differently. The inventory system, the nanotech augmentations (special abilities you can gain) and the skills system (completing objectives gets you skill points, which let you become better in certain areas such as electronics, ability with weapons, and lockpicking) are all intuitive and simple. Bottom line: This is a great game, and you will enjoy it.

AWESOME GAME!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 18
Date: June 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Deus Ex is by far my favorite game. Let me explain why...

The level of realism in Deus Ex is almost unchallenged. There are hundreds of things to do, all of which will keep you busy from completing the game too soon. Not only that, but you will want to come back to the game and play it over, to try out a new path. For example, the first time I played I acted like a total moron. I shot the enemy without realization, I didn't use stealth, and I wasted my resources.

The second time I played through, I used stealth. It was a lot of fun, the rush you get from almost being caught but not quite, from disabling a security system and walking through the front door. The third time I played I tried more of a superagent style playing. I used my augmentations to the full value, I used stealth, and I decapitated enemies like they were yesterday's carcass. I kept on playing, wanting to explore the different paths of play.

The intricate story is also a great reason to get this game. Things that seem confusing at the beginning of the game hit you with realism in the middle, or end of it. The plot is so deep and consuming that you'll forget your a sprite exploring a programmed enviroment. It all seems like a virtual adventure in your mind. Not only that, but your adventure takes you around the world. From Battery Park to Hong Kong, to Paris and other unnamed locales, your adventure is an epic.

NPC's are another strong point. They are an essential part of the game, and help you feel like YOU are JC Denton. You help them, kill them, talk to them, or run away from them. The AI is moderately good, not as bad as StarCraft but not as good as Black & White.

There are at least 50 different routes to take in the game, and lots of different actions to do. This is one of the best games you can buy, if you want proof than put it in your shopping cart and proceed to checkout.

DANGEROUSLY ADDICTIVE

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 18
Date: March 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

"Deus Ex" is an FPS which incorporates large elements of role-play, strategy and adventure. It's also the best game I've ever played and equally good on the PC or PS2.

The story begins in the near future, when society is on the verge of total collapse while powerful individuals and organisations conspire behind the scenes to achieve world domination. You are agent JC Denton and start the game working for UNATCO (a United Nations anti-terrorist force)....

What I like most about the game is that you always have a huge number of choices to make. Most FPS games involve navigating a number of levels in which you have to find a few secrets and/or complete a particular task while shooting whatever gets in your way. In "Deus Ex" you always have primary goals to accomplish, but there's invariably at least 2 or 3 different routes or methods to achieve them, each with its own pluses and minuses. There are also secondary goals which you usually learn about by meeting a particular person and agreeing to help them in some way - which you can decide to go for or not.

You also have a formidable selection of lethal weapons to choose from - but you're limited to carrying just 4 so you have to decide which you're most comfortable with. And acquiring a weapon is only the first step - because you then have to develop the necessary skills to use it effectively. Later on you also get the opportunity to upgrade and customise the weapons you've chosen with various add-ons. So to begin with it will sometimes take you several shots to bring down an enemy, but by the time you've mastered and modified your weapons to the max you can point and shoot with much greater accuracy.

It's also just about possible to go through the entire game without killing anyone, in fact it's often preferable to stun opponents with a non-lethal weapon or use stealth to avoid detection. There's also an array of other skills you need to develop (lock picking, computer hacking, disabling security systems etc)....

And as JC Denton happens to be a human being who's been enhanced by the very latest in bioengineering technology, you can also acquire nanoaugmentations and install them to improve various aspects of your strength, endurance and combat abilities.

Throughout "Deus Ex" you are repeatedly confronted with "either/or" decisions which can potentially change the course of the game. For example, on your 3rd mission as a UNATCO agent (by which time you're already having severe doubts about the organisation you're working for) one of your goals is to kill a rebel leader - which you can easily do. But on the other hand - you can also decide to disobey orders and let him live, in which case a fellow agent arrives to finish the job - unless of course you decide to kill the agent. What you choose to do has repercussions later on....

You can also meet and interact with a huge number of people (with whom you can generally be as kind or ruthless as you like - or you can often choose to ignore them), you can play with many of the objects you see all around you just for the hell of it (televisions, phones, microwaves etc), and you can even smoke, drink and take drugs (although it won't do you much good).

You find yourself constantly trying to work out who the good guys are. Although you need to make alliances with various people during the game, you can never completely trust any of them because they're also to some extent working against each other and could just be using you for their own ends. And for a long time it's not even clear who you're fighting against. Every time you think you've worked out what's going on, something invariably happens to make you question whether you're doing the right thing, and there always seems to be a fresh surprise waiting around the next corner....

There are 3 possible endings depending on who you finally decide to join up with - you choose who wins - and personally I really liked this, but gamers who prefer a spectacular "big bang" type of ending after killing all the bad guys might be disappointed.

The game does have a few flaws - the graphics look a little dated, there's not as much action as I initially expected and the combat is not always as realistic as in other games I've played - but these are very minor quibbles in view of the awesome experience of the game as a whole.

"Deus Ex" also has unparalleled replay value - there are so many different ways to get from beginning to end that you can return to it time after time and it won't be the same twice. I've never played a game which has kept me so hooked for so long and can't wait for DX2. Great stuff!

The game that changed the way I play games.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: March 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the single best game I have ever played, but I am expecting even more from the upcoming sequel. The gameplay is extremely open-ended for a story-driven game. There are certain objectives that must be completed to progress the plot, but others are optional, and in all cases, exactly how you want to approach each objective is up to you. The overall plot of the game doesn't depend significantly on just how you complete individual objectives, but certain details do, including the way some NPCs react to you. I've played through this game four times so far, and there are still more possibilities I want to go back and explore.

One of the things that impressed me most about this game was that all this freedom not only leads to emergent gameplay, it also manages to question the morality of the way the player chooses to play. I actually felt sorry for killing bad guys who could have just been knocked out with tranquilizers or a stun prod, especially after sneaking up close enough to overhear their conversations. For the first time, I found myself trying to determine which of the "bad guys" in a game "deserved" to die and which ones "thought they were doing the right thing."

That's not to say that Deus Ex is all about morality and peaceful, non-violent solutions. That's just one possible approach to the game. If you prefer the Terminator approach, there's plenty of heavy-duty firepower to pull it off with, including assault rifles, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, and plasma rifles. And there are plenty of well-armed security guards, cybernetic soldiers, and giant heavily armored military robots to use them on.

The role-playing aspects of Deus Ex are in many ways similar to those in System Shock 2. You get to choose your favorite weapons and choose which modifications to apply to them. You spend skill points to improve your various skills, including different combat skills for the various kinds of weapons, lockpicking and electronics skills to bypass security, and environmental training and medical skills to reduce or repair the damage you take. And you have to choose which nano-technological augmentations to upgrade yourself with. For example, you can choose to augment your legs to either move faster or move quieter, but not both. And your arms can be upgraded with either enhanced melee combat strength or enhanced lifting strength. Choosing a combination of augmentations, skills, and weapons to suit a particular style of play is part of what gives Deus Ex such vast replayability.

A role-playing aspect that was conspicuously missing from both System Shock games was interaction with NPCs. Not everyone in Deus Ex wants to kill you. Some are allies, a few are friends, and many are just bystanders, going about their lives. The voice acting, with a few notable exceptions, is very good, and the writing is exceptional. The people respond to your actions as well as your choices of conversation in mostly reasonable ways, and you find yourself interacting with them, not just for some extra points or a shortcut to your next objective, but because it's interesting and fun to get involved in their little side-stories.

Between the open-ended freedom of achieving each goal as you see fit, the role-playing of character interaction and style development, and just keeping track of all the different conspiracies tied together in the intricate plot, Deus Ex gives the player a lot more to think about than your average First-Person Shooter Role-Playing Game.

Specifically regarding the Game of the Year Edition, not only is it the final release, so you won't have to worry about downloading and applying any patches, it also comes with an extra audio CD of remixes from the soundtrack. And yes, the soundtrack really is good enough for a seperate CD.

best FPS game ever made.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: November 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have played over fifteen FPS games from start to finish, and this is the best one of them all. Some of the other games I tried were Half Life, Soldier of Fortune, Rogue Spear, Hitman, Perfect Dark, and many others. The thing that sets Deus Ex apart from all the rest is the individual, realistic quality. No matter how good the graphics, and no matter how good the plot, it seems like every time the creators fall back into the same old pattern of setting up targets with no personality and mowing them douwn. I Deus Ex there is so much more to it than that. No matter how much you play it, You always discover something new. As in all good FPS games, there are obstacles that you have to get past, but rather than having to just climb boxes or shoot broken pipes or something, you have to interact with the characters and figure things out. Each of the enemy and friendly characters has depth, and sometimes the success of the entire mission depends on talking to someone on the street or in the bar or anywhere. In parts you have to find a bum standing in a dark alleyway, or an ally in a secret apartment to give you a key or vital information.

The other thing about this game is the incredible depth of the character the player controls. The health alone is more complex, because you have five sections on your body, and each dies at a diferent rate. You could have no legs and need to crawl around until you can find more health. This could be represented in a candybar, soyfood, a medkit, wine, and many other things. In addition, you have a highly advanced technology which alows you to install augmentations. You can install night vision, bullet resistance, even the capability to dispatch spy drones with EMP attacks. The possibilitys range to ove 50 different augmentations, each upgradable to level four. As you complete tasks and discover new places, you gain experience. With this experience, you can upgrade skills to master level. You can learn to pick locks, disable security, heal with more efficiency, hack into computers, and becom more capable with various types of weapons, explosives, and equipment.

This game is by far the coolest game ever invented, and I am now greatly enjoying playing it for the sixth time. Whether you are a veteran gamer as am I, or just want to try an FPS game for variety, go to the store and buy it now, because if you wait you will mourn the time lost without it.

Warning: playing this game will ruin other games for you!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: September 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As someone who enjoys FPS games such as Quake II & Half-Life, games in which the most succesful tactic is usually simply to shoot anything that moves as quickly as possible, it took me awhile to get into the rhythm of Deus Ex. But once I became used to the gameplay style, this game proved completely addictive.

Deus Ex has created an incredible world with a multi-layered storyline. Everything in the world can be interacted with. The choices available to the gamer during play actually change the way the game is played. Who does JC Denton (you) trust? As he gets more information, his choices become more complex. Do you choose to use your augmentation for invisibility to people, or do you opt for the radar stealth cloak which makes you invisible to cameras & spider-bots? Do you give Agent Gunther a pistol when he asks for it or tell him that you'll handle the situation? Should you kill every terrorist in sight, or sneak around them, or disable them with your stun gun? Do you want to break into the bakery to steal "zyme" for the drug dealer, thus putting some credits in your pocket while you're sneaking around in Paris? And what about your brother Paul? Is he telling the truth or a traitor?

The levels of this game are detailed & immersive. Hong Kong consists of canals (fully explorable), bars, tea rooms, a market, a Tong enclave, a secret military lab, penthouse apartments, secret areas...then there's Paris, with a chateau, the old Knights Templar tower and more.

Hacking computers is one extremely useful skill; talking to every single person in your environment will gain you information and sometimes additional missions or ammunition. Exploration is the key to this game, as there is never just one way to get to a location or to achieve a goal; you may find a sewer drain to swim into or a duct to sneak past your enemies. With all the multiple choices, the replay factor on Deus Ex is very high.

After playing through this game twice, and trying the different multiple endings, I decided it was time to play one of my other games. So far I've loaded 4 different ones; each one is a let-down after Deus Ex. The only other game I've played that has been as interesting was System Shock 2. I just wish the sequel to this, "Invisible War" used the same RPG style play!

Please make a REAL sequel to Deus Ex, please?!

Simply the best, hands down

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: June 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I hear people say all the time that despite Deus Ex being such a great game, Half-Life is just the best. I don't see it. I own both, and Deus Ex is larger, better, more complex, more intuitive, more involving, and simply more fun to play.

I've played this game 5 times straight through now. Every time, they are different. Granted, the main crux of the game is still the same (Start with UNACTO, join NSF, etc.), but it is the interactions you make that change how you will have to play it later. For instance, in about the middle of the game, you have to talk to this guy who owns a freighter, and find out how to scuttle it. But to get to it, you're going to have to fight through a lot of troops, or sneak around them, etc. However, by doing one tiny thing, (having a conversation with a Marine in the bar and telling him you'll try to find out what's going on down there), he'll tell his friends at the dock to expect you, and they'll be on your side. If you don't do this, you'll have to kill them, knock them out, or slip past them.

It is this level of gameplay that is unmatched. The story is so involving and deep that you want to keep playing. I've lost many hours of sleep over this game. There is talks of making it into a movie, and the rights have already been sold. If it happens, I hope it is half as entertaining as the game. If it is, I won't be let down.

graphics may get flashier but good gameplay never gets old

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

be warned: many games, even games from other genres, will seem lackluster after playing this one. some of my favorite games that seemed oh so great now seem oh so shoddy compared to this masterpiece. every encounter, challenge and problem in this game can be solved in so many ways it's ridiculous. at some point i started feeling giddy every time i came across a challenge, wondering what secret i'd discover or what clever / zany / funny solution i'd come up with.

personally i thought the graphics on the characters was the only drawback - the people walk in this kinda jerky, unrealistic fashion. they don't look like they "match" the otherwise nice cityscape graphics. however i forgot about this completely about one hour into game play, because i was too fascinated by the complexity of the world.

i definitely plan to play the game a second time, and i think i could probably get 3 runs through out of the game since you can make your character totally different each time by picking different cybernetic augmentations and skills.

if you enjoy smart, challenging gameplay that requires thought, strategy and effort, make sure you pick up a copy. for this quality of game entertainment it'd be a steal at twice the price.

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