Deus Ex: Invisible War is the sequel to the widely acclaimed Deus Ex, although you don’t need to have played the original to enjoy it. While the original Deus Ex was a first person shooter / role-playing hybrid, this game swings more to the first person shooter genre. There are no skill points to assign, and inventory management has been simplified for easy access. For example, instead of carrying different types of ammo for all your guns, all weapons use the same ammo with different firing rates. While some players may not like the universal ammo feature, I thought it was great. It gives you the choice of when you want to use a weapon rather than waiting for the game to give you an elusive ammo type. While the weapon mods have been carried over from the original, they too have undergone change. Weapons now can have two mods, and the mods are generally more powerful than in the original. Weapon mods include the Silencer, Increased Damage or Ammo Scavenger, just to name a few.

In a similar way, your character has been biomodified. This means you can gain different powers like cloaking, super speed, electronic hacking, x-ray vision, etc. It also gives you incredible freedom in playing the game the way you want. Want to play like a ghost, moving in and out of area undetected? Take the Cloak, Move Silent, and Thermal Masking biomods to make you invisible to electronic and human guards. Want to be a nasty hand-to-hand fighter? Then, use Strength Enhancement, Regeneration and Electrostatic Discharge to take out those guards. The only catch is there are only five slots for different biomods, with each slot only allowing 3 specific biomods. You can’t take both Cloak and Neural Interface for example, although you could change your mind later. The biomod canisters you need to gain your abilities are pretty plentiful, so maxing out your slots will happen relatively quickly, about halfway through the game. This allows plenty of time to use and enjoy them.

The replay value of the game lies in the multiple mission paths. Right away, the game tries to compel you to join particular factions and do their bidding. But there are always multiple solutions to every problem, and you rarely feel forced to do something. There is also a plethora of side missions, and practically every character you meet has something to say. I also liked the dialogue trees, most of which had a response that I was actually thinking of. This is one of the best written games I’ve played in a long time, with quotes from Tocqueville and Plato included in the philosophies laid out by certain characters. In addition, there are four separate endings, although you can get to all four of them from the last level. I wish that some endings would close off earlier in the game depending on your alliances, but I can understand if the developers did not want to limit the player’s choice of endings. Still, it would have been nice if all these branching storylines led to separate unique levels, rather than all ending up at the same point.

There are two major problems with this game that take away from the fun. The biggest technical problem I’ve incurred is frequent crashes to the desktop, or worse, a complete system freeze. The installation of a patch seemed to help, but it was still enough of a problem to cause major frustration, especially if I had not saved the game in awhile. The game does automatically save after any load screen, but these “temporary” saves are lost when the game crashes. The second annoyance is the relatively small areas you can explore before you have to load a new area. It seems that every other entry way leads to another loading screen. Not only does this take time, but it also disrupts the immersive feeling of the game, and it makes otherwise great levels seem small and constrictive.

Despite these issues, I still enjoyed the game enough to play it all the way through three separate times, trying different mission paths and difficulty levels each time. To anyone tired of the same old shooter, I would recommend Deus Ex: Invisible War. Just don’t rush to the ending. Take time to enjoy the journey, and you won’t be too disappointed if the game doesn’t end as you expect.