Deus Ex: The Conspiracy - Playstation 2

Eleven years ago Deus Ex was huge. Every PC gaming magazine was talking about it. It swept game of the year awards. At one point in time it was named "Best PC Game of All Time." So here's the question... why did it bore the hell out of me?

When Deus Ex was released on PC I played it, and I remember greatly enjoying it. I only ever made it about halfway through the game and I always regretted that. It was an awesome game and I felt I should have taken the time to beat it. At one point in time I even bought it and its sequel on Steam with the hopes of playing it again, I just never got around to doing it. When I first bought my PS2 I went out searching for games I wanted to play, I doubled my library in probably less then two weeks. One day I was at FYE and saw Deus Ex: The Conspiracy for $4, at that price I decided to double dip and get it for PS2.

The first thing I noticed when I started playing Deus Ex was how badly it had aged. The graphics (and too lesser extent, controls) were horrible. Now I won't say I'm surprised about this, it is a nine year old PS2 game, but even still the graphics seemed incredibly bad. We weren't quite in Goldeneye territory yet, but we were close. I was having a difficult time determining if things were enemies from any sort of distance, everything felt kind of dark and washed out (I know that's what they were trying to achieve, but it just felt too muddled), instead of 2002 this game felt very late '90s in terms of graphics and overall feel. (Note: The PC version even without mods looks like it has much better graphics, this seems to be more of a problem with the PS2 version.)

I could have gotten over that if I just hadn't been so damned bored with the game. The story is very interesting, don't get me wrong, it does have a very good story.... but when you mix in the gameplay it starts to go downhill. I know that this isn't the most popular opinion but the game is too long for the story. If they could have streamlined this game just a little bit, a little less of what felt like walking and busy work, a little less going back to the places I had been, I think this game would have felt a lot better. It felt like the pacing was off. When my killswitch was turned on I didn't feel a sense of urgency, I mostly felt like they wanted me to wander from one place to another, I never felt like I really needed to rush to anything. In a game like this I should feel like there's some sense of urgency to get things done, but instead I felt like everything was moving just a tad too slow for the tone. Don't get me wrong, I love stealth games, but a lot of times I felt like I shouldn't be slowly stalking around plotting my next move... but it very much felt like that's what the game thought I should be doing.

The game just felt like it was dragging on. When I look at a walkthrough I should never get dismayed because I realize I'm only halfway through the game and it feels like it has already taken forever... but that was exactly my thought when I was playing Deus Ex.

Maybe it's me, maybe my tastes in games have changed, but Deus Ex just wasn't the game I remembered it being. Instead of enjoying what I remember being an excellent game I felt like I had to trudge through the entire thing. It felt like a chore for the most part. Like I said, it seems like the game should have been a little bit shorter. Instead of the 20 or so hours it takes, if it had been 15 and some of the (what I deem) excess had been removed I think this would have felt like a much better game.

Squid.