The second of my gaming posts, this time its Ion Storm’s 2000 RPG, FPS, adventure game: Deus Ex.

Let’s start with part of their description of Deus Ex:

Now, that text is pretty spot on and it would be because they're the creators but it fails to mention the Gray Death: a virus that’s rapidly killing a large percentage of the population. And of course Bob Page, your boss and the shit that’s making the plague and holding the country’s President to ransom with it. He also has a whole armada of shit-lings too

Now before you continue I'm going to have to get you to play this MP3 because one of the reasons Deus Ex works so well is the brilliant music by Alexander Brandon.

Back to the text. So, Bob Page's colleauges are:

Walton Simons

A man with similar sense of fashion to JC except that he likes to sport UV rave makeup and continually looks hung over. His negotiation techniques leave a little to be desired, if you hang around the detention cells long enough after the Battery Park mission, you’ll see Walton fill some poor NSF dude's chest with multiple shotgun rounds. He outrageously claims to work for FEMA disaster relief but he’s heavily augmented so you know he’s not a desk jockey from the start.

Maggie Chow

An ex actress, Maggie likes nothing more than to show up in the most random places wielding massive swords and encouraging the Hong Kong Triads to kick the shit out of each other. Quite how a retired actress gets to this level I’m not sure. She’s an accomplished liar and at first I trusted her. It wasn’t until I went upstairs and found the secret Majestic 12 base in her apartment, and had to shoot her cleaning lady in the face that I realised she was a liar. I have to say though that her apartment was very tastefully decorated with stunning views of Toonochi Road.

Joseph Manderly

A puppet of Bob Page and Walton Simons, when you first meet Joe he’s quite stressed. It seems your brother Paul isn’t living up to expectations and he’s getting grief from on high. He gets a bit narky if you hang out in the girl’s toilets too much or go through his private computer while he’s sat there. He also has a tendency to get stuck in doors as we found out below.

Anna Navarre

Bit of an ice queen, Anna harbours little respect for the civilian populace and like her best mate Gunter, is a complete mentalist. She regularly prefers to kill everything around her rather than risk having to listen to a civilian engage her in polite conversation. Pretty tough to kill, the only way I could kill her was during the Boeing 747 section, I’d filled a bathroom up with LAMs and gently pushed her in and by pushed I mean repeatedly walked into her, slowly moving her across the floor.

Gunter Hermann

A complicated, illiterate man (hacking his computer will reveal something that resembles a child’s Facebook conversation), with a craving for orange soda drinks. It’s stated in the game that he’s killed close to 1000 men; you cannot be okay in the head department when you’ve got stats like that. He has no time for vending machines that dispense lemon lime instead of orange.

You have a lot of friends too but for reasons of time, I won’t go into them. You may be asking why the descriptions, well, and like Halo, it’s the people that inhabit this dystopian future that make it what it is. The fact that these folks occupy top government positions is scary; bush administration scary!

Plot splits

By plot splits I mean multiple choice sections. For example: There’s a section where Paul Denton is wounded and hiding in his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. Jock drops you on the roof and you go down to Paul’s apartment where you’re told that the people you work for are actually the baddies. The previously mentioned baddies then crash your reunion so Paul tells you to get out and go to Hong Kong. I didn’t realise at first but you can choose to stay and fight your way out, if you do this Paul survives and meets you in Hong Kong and you discover extra story. However, if you go you hear nothing extra until a later level where you come across Paul's body in a morgue. Multiple choice had existed before but never in a context so well thought out and presented as it was in Deus Ex.

The music

Okay, by now I hope the music and my less than adequate descriptions are helping to build up the atmosphere of Deus Ex. The music is just brilliant; it really fits the dirty, industrial future where it's set. For me though there's always one section where the music shone and it was Wan Chai market in Hong Kong.

You’re presented with a hub, there are different locations coming off from this area but essentially it’s a small area. There are various market stalls and restaurants around this area as well as the monk’s temple. There’s a proper little shit of a kid there who bullies shop keepers for protection money. Thankfully he can be killed but do it quietly and out of site, there’s a lot of security around there.

The music makes this area feel larger than it is, and when you’re browsing the magazine stands, attending the restaurant or entering the police station, You feel like you’re there. I have to mention the canals as well, there’s a curfew in affect so they’re deserted at night and this emptiness is reflected in the music and creeps me out.

I've gone some way to describe all the pros of this game but I think that maybe the weapons proved to be a con. They never really feel that impressive, they don't make you believe you're using them is what I mean. I would always get my pistol up to the highest level because the other guns just did nothing for me. The Dragons Tooth sword was pretty meaty though.

So another one of my all time favourites down. I think Deus Ex is just a pure genius game. The sequel was rubbish in comparison. It had a feeling of being rushed and that they just wanted it to make loads of money. The inventory was greatly reduced along with the customisable options; it was a console game more than the PC game its predecessor was.

We have the third Deus Ex game just around the corner. It's a prequel and its called Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I'm excited but I've been hurt before so I'm not going to get too excited.