Deus Ex: Invisible War (Deus Ex 2)

[madphilb]

IT'S OUT! (yaaaah!)

Ok... after drooling over the screen caps in the magazines, and seeing the trailer (which also doubles as the intro), the game is finally out. For what should be my last game purchase of the year, I picked up my copy of DE2 today...

Here's what's different from the 1st one:

There is a single ammo for all the weapons, but different weapons use up ammo at different rates. The nano canasters are used for either upgrades or installing new abilities (and you can change what the slot does after you've installed something, so if you think something you got earlier in the game was a mistake, you can put something else there. Inventory had been simplified as well (fixed slots for "x" number of items)

This is a good thing and a bad thing. It makes the game more accessable and simpler to use on a console, but it dumbs down the RPG elements from the 1st game.

The levels aren't as big or grand (so far) as the original.

This I think is partially a trade-off for the new graphical features of the game as well as the higher poly counts for the objects.

You can now play as a man or woman in the game.

The character you played in the last game is the stuff of legends in this one, it's quite a few years after... it's a new character and you can choose to play as male or female.


There are a few other things, I'll edit/post additions later if I think of them......

The framerate on the Xbox is a bit slugish when I first started, you get kinda used to it, but you can see it. The engine used realtime lighitng effects as well as nice high-poly models (with textures, etc).... but it looks really pretty. The first game started out on liberty island (one level for the whole thing), this one is much smaller, the 1st "map" you play is a apartment section with only 4 apartment rooms on the floor (and a snack room).

Load times are pretty quick though, they've sectioned off the areas into different "maps," but it's quite differnet from the original game where you goto a single city and it's only two map sections.

From what I understand the game is fairly short (supposed to be only 20 hours or so), but I figure it'll keep me busy for a week at least

I like what I see so far, for every item they've changed, somethings are just the same (data cubes, credit system, etc). The more hard-core RPG fans who really liked the RPG elements from the game are going to be disapointed though.... (I think the skill point system is gone as well, bummer).

I'll keep at it and see where it goes... (maybe I'll even see about doing an offical review )

PHIL