Lauded as ‘The thinking man’s shooter’ by various rags, it was considered to be ‘Gears of War’ for someone who likes to think about things. Then came the inexplicably well-reviewed ‘Human Revolution’. The world around me was what led me further in. Sure, the storyline was stupid and the protagonist a complete douchemongler, but I still felt like I was in the same universe, and I wanted to find out what was going to happen even if I didn’t care about who was doing it. I felt like I had actually changed an entire world, and that my decisions had made something of a difference – even though Invisible War’s storyline retconned the entirety of the original game, to the point that all of the multiple endings had come true.Īll things being equal though, I enjoyed Invisible War – I felt like I was in the same world, with the same ideas and the same attitudes, just at a different time. I was immersed in this world, and I couldn’t get enough of Denton’s impact on it. So desperate was I for some more God-machine goodness, I even bought 2004’s ‘Invisible War’, the much maligned sequel – and despite its flaws, I enjoyed it. Then I finished it and, over exhaustive playthroughs, found all the easter eggs I could – before discovering GameFAQs, and all the rest. I’d return to Deus Ex time and again, and when I managed to scratch the CD to death on my bedroom floor (I was a teenager), I even rebought the PS2 port.

But Deux Ex isn’t designed to be played that way, and I grew familiar with that ‘EEEEAAAAARGH’ noise, and the sight of the camera zooming out from JC Denton’s own bullet-riddled corpse following yet another failed mission. I have to admit, in those days I was a bloodthirsty little bugger coming fresh from Quake 3 deathmatches, and so I left a trail of mangled bodies behind me in my first playthrough. Getting home and falling into this world of robots, cyborg body parts and a ridiculously engaging plot, with actual voice acting! I remember being a fresh-faced young fourteen year-old, clutching a copy of this new dark sci-fi thriller Deus Ex.

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