C’mon Now, Deus Ex: Invisible War Wasn’t That Bad. …Was It?

FleshEatingZipper writes: With the impending release of Square-Enix’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution – an RPG/FPS hybrid prequel to my favorite shooter of all time – comes a lot of renewed interest in the series. Well, strike that, interest in the original Deus Ex and a lot of brow-beating for its 2003 follow-up, Invisible War. I enjoyed the sequel for what it was worth, but does it deserve all the disrespect it’s received over the years?

[ATi_Elite]

Deus Ex = one of the greatest games ever!

Deus Ex Invisible War = one of the worse games ever!

It's just that simple!

[thebudgetgamer]

really that bad, what do you think went wrong?

[akiraburn]

I think there were some key issues. One big complaint was that they only had one universal ammo which was used with every weapon, whereas the original Deus Ex had individual types of ammo for each weapon, and most of them even had alternate ammo types you could use (such as the mini-crossbow having tranq darts, flare darts, and regular darts).

Beyond that, there were many optimization problems on the PC version. It all was pending on what video card you had, and ultimately many people ended up either not being able to play the game or having graphical problems (one bad problem I had seen often was that there would be a massively laggy response time for movement, even though there were the framerate was fine).

And to add to that, the story, dialogue, and ideas behind the game simply weren't up to par with what they should have been. This point was exacerbated by the fact that the original Deus Ex was one of the best games of all time, and everyone was expecting a stellar follow-up of the same caliber.

Edit: Also, this article raises a bunch of good points. There were a lot of things happening with the development studio and it explains them well.

[thebudgetgamer]

i can see why this bother people. i was watching john carmacks quake-con key note and he was mentioning that at one point there was like twenty companies manufacturing video cards and only like three of them were any good.

[akiraburn]

Yeah there definitely were a lot more video card manufacturers back then. The 3DFX company who made the Voodoo card series was even around until just about a year before the game released, so many people still had those cards as well. However the problems that Deus Ex:IW had actually can be blamed on poor development, because not even the bigger manufacturers' video cards were properly supported by the game.

I remember finding out that only a handful of ATI's Radeon cards (at the time) handled the game, and you needed a specific version of the driver as well (it specifically wasn't the newest, it was something like three builds prior). It was infuriating trying to get the game running right. I can't quite remember how one of my Nvidia cards handled it, but I remember there were problems still there as well.

But in any case, yeah there were some serious issues with the game. The only thing I'd have to disagree with in this article, is that the writer still feels that the game turned out decent if it's not compared to it's predecessor. I'd have to disagree, because even though the original is one of my favorite games of all time, I feel like Invisible War is a flawed, buggy, and overall disappointing game by most any standards.

[jaosobno]

Deus Ex 2 took everything that made Deus Ex 1 a legendary game, took a dump on it and then packaged it as a sequel.

[Pozzle]

Worse than Superman 64? :D

[ATi_Elite]

No it wasn't that bad.

Only E.T. is worse than superman 64!!

[GusBricker]

It wasn't that bad, but when the first game was that damn good, IW's flaws look that worse in comparison.

[usualjay]

I think it's easier now to be less harsh on IW than in 2003, but remember how hyped the game was. I found it to be a very stripped down version of the original, which was something slightly less than advertised. Even playing it a few years later, the initial plot choice system seemed very contrived. So maybe it wasn't the "worst game ever," but it was decidedly mediocre by comparison to Deus Ex.

[Brownghost]

JC Denton wasnt the playable character and didnt have the feel of the first one

[Sidewinder-]

Bad, Bad game.

but the music was pretty good.

[mobijoker]

Invisible war was an average game...but it was sequel to Deus Ex...arguably the very best and most innovative game ever.....that made it look worse than it really is...

[Baka-akaB]

Yes it was that bad . THere is no excuse for how the game levels were designed , and its to easy to lay the blame on the xbox

Halo1 and a bunch of unreal engine games happned .after all . No excuse they couldnt even design levels half as good as those .

The hero looked like a douche fratboy , and was very unappealling , like most of the story .

There was no good whatsoever to this game , and the article doesnt even try to disprove hat , as it can't .

[General Shrooms]

It wasn't all that bad.