A nice blend of genres
User Rating: 8.3 | Deus Ex: Invisible War XBOX
I picked up Deus Ex: Invisible War a long time ago, but I never got around the playing it. This past month that's pretty much all I have been playing. I went in with no expectations and that is probably the right attitude to have, because the game doesn't fit with any other genre really. It's a blend between stealth, action, first person shooter, and role playing. At it's heart I guess you could say that it is a first person role playing game, but I hesitate to say that because the role playing elements are minimal. Those elements come in the form of "biomods." You play Alex D, a soldier of the future. You have been genetically enhanced in such a way that you can install biomods to your body that give you certain abilities. Those range from the ability to hack any computer, to night vision, to walk silently, to increased melee damage, to thermal masking, and even partial invisibility. It's very possible and very easy to set your character up as a stealth specialist, or melee king, or gun super commando. I went with the stealth route because I like those kind of games. Even though I designed my character to be stealthy, I did find myself in frequent firefights. The weapons in the game are fairly typical of a shooter. You start with your basic pistol and eventually you can carry flamethrowers, machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, and even a magnetic rail gun complete with EMP blast. The guns aren't the most impressive part of the game. Most sound fairly weak I thought, but what IS cool is that ALL of the guns use the same ammunition (they just use it in different amounts). For example, the pistol uses hardly any of your ammunition pool, but the sniper rifle or rocket launcher uses quite a bit more due to the increase in power. The universal ammo is nice, because it leaves the player free to think about other things rather than hunting for specific kinds of ammo all the time. Additionally, each gun can be modified. So just like your character can enhance his/her abilities, your guns can be modified with silencers, increased damage, decreased ammo consumption, EMP bullets, or poison bullets. Invisible War is sufficiently lengthy in terms of the single player campaign. It will probably take at least 12-15 hours to complete. The best part of the single player campaign is something that no other game I have played does this with. You are given the freedom of choice throughout the game. During the story of the game, Alex is trying to find out who he is, why he is what is, and what to do with it to save/not save the world. There will be three factions competing for your skills as you play. Each side will constantly be giving you primary and secondary missions to complete. Some of the time those missions will coincide with one another, but at other times you must choose to do one mission and forfeit the other. Doing so will give you the reward from one side and a consequence from the other. You never have to monitor how happy each faction is with, which is great, because I hate doing that. Additionally as you interact with other NPC's in the game, they too will give you mission that you can do if you would like. I did them all, because it was a good way to make money, get biomods, or weapon mods. All of this choice will come to a head as you finish the game. There are four possible endings to the game based on the decisions you make while playing the game. I won't give them away, but each ending is very different from the other, and it is NOT hard to see each ending. You don't have to replay the entire game even (actually you only need to replay like the last 10 minutes or so). All in all Deus Ex: Invisible War is an entertaining game that will keep you occupied for quite a while. It is a nice blend of first person shooter, stealth, and role playing. Plus the amount of choice, interactivity, and modifications that could be made, the game has a lot of replay value. 
