I’m not a fan of first person shooters. In fact, I pretty much suck at playing them. I had, however, heard many good things about Deus Ex, especially concerning the story. I am a sucker for a good story so I decided to give it a try. For only five measly dollars, I had the PS2 version of the game in my possession. Since I already knew I sucked at these types of games, I put the difficulty on Easy and went on my merry way.

The first thing that popped out at me were the kinda lousy graphics. The environments were bland and the character models looked blocky and had little animation. I realize I was playing the inferior version on the PS2 but it even looked crappy for a PS2 game. The frame rate was somewhat steady but if the action got too fierce, slowdown would rear it’s ugly head. It is not the worst looking game I have ever seen, but I thought it could have definitely used some extra polish. The music in this game fared much better, each piece was moody and fit each section of the game perfectly. I also enjoyed *most* of the voice acting but in some areas (Hong Kong I am looking at you) the accents were just terrible. Don’t even get me started about Paris.

Now onto the mind blowing part of the game–the story. From reading the first half of my review you must think I hated the game. In fact, this game has such a compelling storyline, the graphics don’t even matter. I don’t want to give any of it away, so I will just give a basic rundown. You play as J. C. Denton, an augmented agent working for a military-type force called UNATCO. Aug agents are basically part cyborg and are enhanced by nanomachines. If I divulge any more information than that I would ruin the story, so play the game if you want to find out more.

The devil is in the details and by God this game leaves none unnoticed. Every action you do in this game is noted and can effect what NPCs say to you and even the outcome of the story. There are several ways to solve each situation you come across and you could play this game ten times in a row and find something new every time. The game has some light RPG elements thrown in; you can upgrade your personal augs using points you accumulate by accomplishing objectives and exploring. You get to pick and choose how you want to upgrade each of your body parts and how high of a level you want to take them. If you have played many FPS you will pick up the controls of this game very quickly, me being a newbie, it took me a little longer to get the hang of it.

This game can be had on the very cheap and it has a great replay value due to the sheer number of ways to solve the problems. It also boasts three different endings all of which are worth watching. I really enjoyed this game and look forward to trying out more first person shooters in the future.