It's nice to play the sequel to one of the most epics games ever created, but it turned out not as I expected.
The game is set 20 years after the first game, where you play as a nano-augmented agent, Alex Denton. A terrorist attack hits the city of Chicago and Alex got evacuated to Seattle. Another attack occurs and this is where the game starts off.
Throughout the game, you learn that things are not what it seems and a conspiracy is beginning to unfold and later learn that it has something to do with JC Denton and the events of the global collapse 20 years ago. Alex sets off to find out to uncover these secrets and different organizations give different objectives, completing one and not the other objective, shapes the story within the game.
Firstly the graphics are beautiful, Ion Storm did a good job modifying the Unreal 2 engine to bring the game to life, especially the light sources used in the game to create real time dynamic shadows.
The sound is a good change from the sequel, no more techno from the first game and it sets the tension of the game.
The gameplay was totally dubbed down from the original, the developers decided to take out the skills options out, so it loses it RPG elements and a part, to something that made Deus Ex the game it was intended in the first place. It takes a biomod to hack computers and ATMS.
Also the inventory slots been shorten, you can only take up to 12 items at a time. It does however work, since the levels are much shorter. The ammo works on all weapons, this is called universal ammo, this can be a pain, because if one weapon runs out of ammo, all the weapons don't have ammo.
Objectives are given to you from two different organizations but conflicting towards the same goal. The player can choose which goal to complete and this changes the direction of the game. This gives the game an open ended gameplay and has been put together nicely.
Considering the player is a nano-agent, you can collect biomod canisters, which you can install and update augmentations. Augmentations give the player special abilities throughout the game and it does affect the gameplay in a huge way. One example is a cloaking augmentation, which the player can use to bypass many enemies to get to the next location without being caught.
The game was extremely short compared to the original, the first time playing the original took around 15 hours to complete first time around, meanwhile this game took around 8 hours. The levels were also short, mainly because of the real time lighting in the game.
Considering many of the options were taken out or were dubbed down, this decreases the original Deus Ex experience however, it is still the same Deus Ex experience with the open ended gameplay and story, this game is worth play and does offer a different approach in this game.
The game has 4 different endings so it's worth playing the game again so see the different endings. If you want a game with a good story, pick this game up.