Being a huge Deus Ex fan, every few months I scour RUclips for new and new-to-me vids on it. This was great, and easily one of my favourites. You sum up the issues with the game perfectly. I did play it on release and was pretty disappointed. Playing it again last year, I still found it to not hold even a melted candle to the original, but still enjoyable in it's own right. Thanks for a great video!
Great review. Absolutely love this game. Played the original on PC first then this on Xbox, years later. Loved loved loved the experience -- both story and gameplay wise.
Loved the video. I thought it'd be some kind of documentary with developer commentary of the behind the scenes at first but I got hooked anyways. Pretty much sums up my feelings for this game.
I would love to be able to speak to the team at Ion Storm about these games, especially Harvey Smith! Apologies it wasn’t what you expected but glad you enjoyed regardless!
33:32 Might be too late for a comment, but I actually have heard of another game that acts like this, and it's on the Xbox. The Xbox version of Oblivion saved either time or resources by completely reloading the game during each loading screen. Todd Howard openly talked about it when the Bethesda acquisition was first announced.
Played the game a fuckton as a kid. I found that the first baton is the best weapon in the game, just need to upgrade melee and electrical melee. All Robots will temporarily attack on your side when hit one with electricity.
About twenty years I had Deus Ex strongly recommended to me and went out and bought this game (it was the one prominently displayed on the shop shelves at the time). With no knowledge of the original I had great fun playing it. I did wonder why i had heard so much praise when it was decent but hardly groundbreaking. I experienced no bugs at all, the (admittedly daft) universal ammo didn't hinder my personal playstyle and my main issues with it were the intrusive HUD and the illogical ability to flip flop between factions. Another story/world flaw that I don't think you mentioned: people who I have never had any prior contact with not only being able to cold call my infolink, but also moniter every move of my character through it. Such a massive security flaw that any rival faction would have no trouble eliminating me without breaking sweat. Afterwards I realised the original game existed. I played it, absolutely loved it, and it became obvious that anyone who had experienced the original would be so underwhelmed by Invisible War that they would have nothing but criticism for it.
17:37 I love the "inventory tetris" thing in games. It's relaxing to take a break and just clean up your inventory. I think it also makes the "long term survival vs. immediate survival" thing more interesting as you have to make difficult choices on what to keep. Not that other inventory systems can't force you to drop stuff but the tetris style ones just hit the spot for me. Peak inventory (and menu/lHUD) in gaming imo is System Shock 2 followed closely by Deus ex. I'm gonna make a video request which I fully expect you to ignore (hopyfully you're not terribly annoyed by how presumptuous "video request" is). I'd love to hear you analyze Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodines. Whether or not you actually want to make a video on it, you should definitely play it if you haven't already. I think vampires are usually pretty lame but VTM(B) is one of the few pieces of media that nail the concept and actually make it interesting. Anyway, awesome video as always!
Absolutely agree, there is something strangely cathartic about spending a minute sorting out your inventory! I've had a couple of people ask if I'd consider covering VtMB. I love the game to death - easily the best vampire game around, although to be fair, there's not really much competition. The only reason I'm hesitant to do so is because a lot of people have already covered it, and I'm not sure I can really add much to the conversation around the game. I might talk about it one day, but I would want to be sure I had something different to talk about, so I don't just sound like I'm aping Salt Factory, for example :) Glad you enjoyed, very much appreciate the support!
The game opening and closing itself is because the game was primary made for OG xbox, and the most demanding xbox games memory wise use that trick to clean memory, elder scrolls morrowind does the same on xbox but the user never finds it because is done on a loading scren.
Ï played this game before I played the original Deus Ex, back when steam was just a client for downloading valve games. At the time I didn't know anything about the series, apart from the original game being a big deal. So, when I saw it on sale at a retail store for $5.00 I thought I'd check it out. It completely brought my cheap Dell PC to its knees, but I remember being blown away by how immersive and atmospheric the game was, even at 20fps. I hear people talk about how "dumbed down" the game was, but I struggled with it initially for the opposite reason. I was used to shooters like doom, halo, and half-life, and didn't know how to go about implementing a good biomod stack for the non-lethal stealth playstyle that the story exposition had gently guided me toward in the beginning of the game. Yeah, Deus Ex had a much better story and less technical issues on period hardware, but I think people take things way too far when disparaging Invisible War. To this day, I get a crazy hit of nostalgia when I boot up the game, see that purple glow and rotating logo, then hear the main theme kick in.
It just sounds like you’re not interested in RPGs, so no wonder you’re not as bothered by the chances. You’re not the demographic the series originally targeted. You also seem heavily biased by nostalgia. There’s a ton wrong with this game, regardless of comparisons.
@@TheJayson8899 It sounds like you're not interested in immersive sims if you didn't enjoy this game. You're not the demographic the series originally targeted. You also seem heavily biased by groupthink regarding the merits of this game, there's a ton of enjoyment to be found in this game, regardless of comparisons.
Thank you! Human Revolution is indeed a prequel, set around 25 years before the events of the first game. I don't know if it's so much that Invisible War has no potential for a direct sequel, but it would certainly be tricky given the game's various endings. They don't have the potential for blending together that DE1's endings had, so it would mean making one specific ending canon. I believe, from what I read online, the original plan was to make a sequel where the Helios ending that I showed in the video was the canon ending, which had a lot of potential given the questions raised by humanity being forcibly united under an AI, but unfortunately we never got to see it. I doubt that we'll ever see a real sequel to Invisible War at this point, but I'm still a little hopeful that we can at least finish the Adam Jensen series. I love this IP and really want to see it continue in some form or another!
A Deus Ex video 😱😱😱 I’m a bit of a staunch fan of the newer ones as I was a bit young for the older ones. These sorts of vids are enlightening given my love for the more recent games but lack of knowledge of Invisible War in particular. I owned a fairly large Deus Ex community so I talked about the series a lot, it has a great but sometimes divided fan base on the older vs newer. Also a bit of a lack of optimism when it comes to there being a third and final Jensen game. I try my best to get people to be more positive, Eidos Montreal is doing well as a studio (growing in staff exponentially) at the moment but their projects continue to do less profit than Square seems to want. It frustrates the hell out of me and given I’m a huge fan of the recent ones, I like to support Eidos Montreal as much as I can, as I really like them as a studio. I don’t think I commented on your Deus Ex vid at the time as I shared it on my community and, well I didn’t want to reveal my real name to all my members by commenting here on it. It was a PlayStation community so it’s closed down now with that service (I’ve jumped to Discord now). So here’s a late thank you for that vid, a lot of my members liked the vid including me. I’m sure they would’ve liked this vid also, there certainly was a lot of discussion on IW. 👍
I know I say this a lot, but I cannot stress just how much I love the original game. It is mindblowing how much they were able to accomplish, even despite its problems. It's cool to hear about your community, and thank you for sharing my video! Very much appreciated, as the support always is! The passion that comes with the fandom surrounding games like Deus Ex and Half Life especially (older, classic games that are difficult to capture the feeling of these days) is no joke, and even despite IW's issues, you know you've done something right as a developer when people are still talking about your games over 20 years later. Fingers crossed that the IP doesn't just get left behind like so many others have been, but with the way Squenix has been recently I'm not holding my breath.
No, I did not use the mod. The version of the game I used is the GOG version, which I believe has a patch included. However, I did mention the mod in the video, and it is also linked in the description. I prefer to play games without mods, and especially when discussing the pros and cons of games, it would be remiss of me to praise or criticise something that has been modded. I talk about technical issues just as much as I talk about story problems, music, minimal level design, and so on. I am very glad that you had no problems, but I did, as did many others who played the game without the mod - the way it was originally designed. None of this changes the fact that I flat out said towards the end of the video that I do not think this is a bad game. Just hampered by being built for consoles first. Hope that clarifies the matter.
@@JackTrustReviews That's a pretty dumb mindset imo, if something was released unfinished and broken that is how it should be experienced? It's like playing modern games on day 1. But I also liked the game and agree that the console induced tiny areas were its (and Deadly Shadows's) main issue.
So day one reviewers should not criticise the bad parts of a game in case it gets patched out or modded out later? That's a very strange mindset, but if that's what floats your boat then more power to you. But you said yourself "playing modern games on day 1" - this is why companies keep getting away with releasing unfinished, unpolished games, because audiences have been conditioned to just accept the fact that so many games are released broken but will probably be patched later. See Battlefield 2042, Cyberpunk, No Man's Sky, etc. At least NMS's developers have spent the past few years building the game back up, but it doesn't change the fact that the original release was a giant pile of arse. I'm not saying you shouldn't play games without mods or whatever, I'm saying that I don't, because I just don't care most of the time. Most games aren't worth playing more than once, so they aren't worth modding. And besides that, it shouldn't be the job of unpaid fans to mod a game and make it playable, or in some cases, make it enjoyable. That's not something that should ever be normalised. At the end of the day, this video is about the game we got, not the game that modders have fixed over the years, but I spent a good chunk of time talking about the best parts of the game too (such as the quest design) and ended by saying that it really isn't that bad of a game. Just a shame about the issues it does have, more than anything.
@@JackTrustReviews No, I don't see much point in making a review about a game in its day 1 form years later when it's been patched and modded into a much better game. There are masochistic and historical reasons I guess, but as you said, you're gonna play most of them just once, might as well get the best experience. Did you really get anything worthwhile out of Invisible War's dumb loading areas and litany of bugs? I sure wouldn't have.
I think we’re at a bit of an impasse. I’m glad you can enjoy the stuff you play without being frustrated by the fact that other people had to fix it rather than the company, but for me it’s important to discuss the best and worst parts of the industry both as they happen and looking back years later to see where they could have improved. It’s great that people dedicate their time and effort to fixing bullshit in games without much recompense, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. Developers should be putting out the best possible version of their game, although we know that will never be 100% possible because publishers will tend to rush them to get the game out in time for holidays or other big sales periods. Still, I like talking about games. It’s fun to discuss the good and the bad, especially when it’s a series that I love, like this one. Anyway, appreciate the relatively civil conversation. Have a pleasant weekend!
Being a huge Deus Ex fan, every few months I scour RUclips for new and new-to-me vids on it. This was great, and easily one of my favourites. You sum up the issues with the game perfectly. I did play it on release and was pretty disappointed. Playing it again last year, I still found it to not hold even a melted candle to the original, but still enjoyable in it's own right. Thanks for a great video!
I love how Alex, boy or girl has “painted” on eyes. Everyone else has real looking eyes. You’d think the main character would have the most detail.
21:04 Given the background music I was half expecting you to say, "a time of great innovation and technological advancement".
37:08 (schoolkids cheering)
Great review.
Absolutely love this game.
Played the original on PC first then this on Xbox, years later.
Loved loved loved the experience -- both story and gameplay wise.
Loved the video. I thought it'd be some kind of documentary with developer commentary of the behind the scenes at first but I got hooked anyways. Pretty much sums up my feelings for this game.
I would love to be able to speak to the team at Ion Storm about these games, especially Harvey Smith! Apologies it wasn’t what you expected but glad you enjoyed regardless!
33:32 Might be too late for a comment, but I actually have heard of another game that acts like this, and it's on the Xbox.
The Xbox version of Oblivion saved either time or resources by completely reloading the game during each loading screen. Todd Howard openly talked about it when the Bethesda acquisition was first announced.
I used to push the shelves around for cover.
Played the game a fuckton as a kid. I found that the first baton is the best weapon in the game, just need to upgrade melee and electrical melee. All Robots will temporarily attack on your side when hit one with electricity.
About twenty years I had Deus Ex strongly recommended to me and went out and bought this game (it was the one prominently displayed on the shop shelves at the time). With no knowledge of the original I had great fun playing it. I did wonder why i had heard so much praise when it was decent but hardly groundbreaking. I experienced no bugs at all, the (admittedly daft) universal ammo didn't hinder my personal playstyle and my main issues with it were the intrusive HUD and the illogical ability to flip flop between factions.
Another story/world flaw that I don't think you mentioned: people who I have never had any prior contact with not only being able to cold call my infolink, but also moniter every move of my character through it. Such a massive security flaw that any rival faction would have no trouble eliminating me without breaking sweat.
Afterwards I realised the original game existed. I played it, absolutely loved it, and it became obvious that anyone who had experienced the original would be so underwhelmed by Invisible War that they would have nothing but criticism for it.
You have to leave all options open till the end, then jus go full omar. Lol
Omar are the best bros if they wouldnt be so collectivistic overall . But nontheless good business-partners overall .
Cool vid. I liked your thief 4 video
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed both!
17:37 I love the "inventory tetris" thing in games. It's relaxing to take a break and just clean up your inventory. I think it also makes the "long term survival vs. immediate survival" thing more interesting as you have to make difficult choices on what to keep. Not that other inventory systems can't force you to drop stuff but the tetris style ones just hit the spot for me. Peak inventory (and menu/lHUD) in gaming imo is System Shock 2 followed closely by Deus ex.
I'm gonna make a video request which I fully expect you to ignore (hopyfully you're not terribly annoyed by how presumptuous "video request" is). I'd love to hear you analyze Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodines. Whether or not you actually want to make a video on it, you should definitely play it if you haven't already. I think vampires are usually pretty lame but VTM(B) is one of the few pieces of media that nail the concept and actually make it interesting.
Anyway, awesome video as always!
Absolutely agree, there is something strangely cathartic about spending a minute sorting out your inventory!
I've had a couple of people ask if I'd consider covering VtMB. I love the game to death - easily the best vampire game around, although to be fair, there's not really much competition. The only reason I'm hesitant to do so is because a lot of people have already covered it, and I'm not sure I can really add much to the conversation around the game. I might talk about it one day, but I would want to be sure I had something different to talk about, so I don't just sound like I'm aping Salt Factory, for example :)
Glad you enjoyed, very much appreciate the support!
Good video
New vid lets gooo
Hope you enjoyed! Cheers for the support, it's very much appreciated!
The game opening and closing itself is because the game was primary made for OG xbox, and the most demanding xbox games memory wise use that trick to clean memory, elder scrolls morrowind does the same on xbox but the user never finds it because is done on a loading scren.
Interesting, thank you for the explanation. I never owned an OG Xbox so had no idea about this. Makes sense, to be fair!
great work !
Thank you very much!
Ï played this game before I played the original Deus Ex, back when steam was just a client for downloading valve games. At the time I didn't know anything about the series, apart from the original game being a big deal. So, when I saw it on sale at a retail store for $5.00 I thought I'd check it out.
It completely brought my cheap Dell PC to its knees, but I remember being blown away by how immersive and atmospheric the game was, even at 20fps.
I hear people talk about how "dumbed down" the game was, but I struggled with it initially for the opposite reason. I was used to shooters like doom, halo, and half-life, and didn't know how to go about implementing a good biomod stack for the non-lethal stealth playstyle that the story exposition had gently guided me toward in the beginning of the game.
Yeah, Deus Ex had a much better story and less technical issues on period hardware, but I think people take things way too far when disparaging Invisible War. To this day, I get a crazy hit of nostalgia when I boot up the game, see that purple glow and rotating logo, then hear the main theme kick in.
It just sounds like you’re not interested in RPGs, so no wonder you’re not as bothered by the chances. You’re not the demographic the series originally targeted. You also seem heavily biased by nostalgia. There’s a ton wrong with this game, regardless of comparisons.
@@TheJayson8899 It sounds like you're not interested in immersive sims if you didn't enjoy this game. You're not the demographic the series originally targeted. You also seem heavily biased by groupthink regarding the merits of this game, there's a ton of enjoyment to be found in this game, regardless of comparisons.
Damn, you're really making me feel bad for enjoying this game lol.
why 😂
Nice to see you back. I only played Human Revolution, which is a prequel right? Is this game non-follow-up-able?
Thank you! Human Revolution is indeed a prequel, set around 25 years before the events of the first game. I don't know if it's so much that Invisible War has no potential for a direct sequel, but it would certainly be tricky given the game's various endings. They don't have the potential for blending together that DE1's endings had, so it would mean making one specific ending canon. I believe, from what I read online, the original plan was to make a sequel where the Helios ending that I showed in the video was the canon ending, which had a lot of potential given the questions raised by humanity being forcibly united under an AI, but unfortunately we never got to see it.
I doubt that we'll ever see a real sequel to Invisible War at this point, but I'm still a little hopeful that we can at least finish the Adam Jensen series. I love this IP and really want to see it continue in some form or another!
A Deus Ex video 😱😱😱
I’m a bit of a staunch fan of the newer ones as I was a bit young for the older ones. These sorts of vids are enlightening given my love for the more recent games but lack of knowledge of Invisible War in particular.
I owned a fairly large Deus Ex community so I talked about the series a lot, it has a great but sometimes divided fan base on the older vs newer. Also a bit of a lack of optimism when it comes to there being a third and final Jensen game. I try my best to get people to be more positive, Eidos Montreal is doing well as a studio (growing in staff exponentially) at the moment but their projects continue to do less profit than Square seems to want. It frustrates the hell out of me and given I’m a huge fan of the recent ones, I like to support Eidos Montreal as much as I can, as I really like them as a studio.
I don’t think I commented on your Deus Ex vid at the time as I shared it on my community and, well I didn’t want to reveal my real name to all my members by commenting here on it. It was a PlayStation community so it’s closed down now with that service (I’ve jumped to Discord now).
So here’s a late thank you for that vid, a lot of my members liked the vid including me. I’m sure they would’ve liked this vid also, there certainly was a lot of discussion on IW. 👍
I know I say this a lot, but I cannot stress just how much I love the original game. It is mindblowing how much they were able to accomplish, even despite its problems.
It's cool to hear about your community, and thank you for sharing my video! Very much appreciated, as the support always is! The passion that comes with the fandom surrounding games like Deus Ex and Half Life especially (older, classic games that are difficult to capture the feeling of these days) is no joke, and even despite IW's issues, you know you've done something right as a developer when people are still talking about your games over 20 years later.
Fingers crossed that the IP doesn't just get left behind like so many others have been, but with the way Squenix has been recently I'm not holding my breath.
You spend way too much time on the technical issues. I experienced none of them. Did you even use the patch or mod or whatever there is for it?
No, I did not use the mod. The version of the game I used is the GOG version, which I believe has a patch included. However, I did mention the mod in the video, and it is also linked in the description.
I prefer to play games without mods, and especially when discussing the pros and cons of games, it would be remiss of me to praise or criticise something that has been modded.
I talk about technical issues just as much as I talk about story problems, music, minimal level design, and so on. I am very glad that you had no problems, but I did, as did many others who played the game without the mod - the way it was originally designed.
None of this changes the fact that I flat out said towards the end of the video that I do not think this is a bad game. Just hampered by being built for consoles first.
Hope that clarifies the matter.
@@JackTrustReviews That's a pretty dumb mindset imo, if something was released unfinished and broken that is how it should be experienced? It's like playing modern games on day 1.
But I also liked the game and agree that the console induced tiny areas were its (and Deadly Shadows's) main issue.
So day one reviewers should not criticise the bad parts of a game in case it gets patched out or modded out later? That's a very strange mindset, but if that's what floats your boat then more power to you. But you said yourself "playing modern games on day 1" - this is why companies keep getting away with releasing unfinished, unpolished games, because audiences have been conditioned to just accept the fact that so many games are released broken but will probably be patched later. See Battlefield 2042, Cyberpunk, No Man's Sky, etc. At least NMS's developers have spent the past few years building the game back up, but it doesn't change the fact that the original release was a giant pile of arse.
I'm not saying you shouldn't play games without mods or whatever, I'm saying that I don't, because I just don't care most of the time. Most games aren't worth playing more than once, so they aren't worth modding. And besides that, it shouldn't be the job of unpaid fans to mod a game and make it playable, or in some cases, make it enjoyable. That's not something that should ever be normalised.
At the end of the day, this video is about the game we got, not the game that modders have fixed over the years, but I spent a good chunk of time talking about the best parts of the game too (such as the quest design) and ended by saying that it really isn't that bad of a game. Just a shame about the issues it does have, more than anything.
@@JackTrustReviews No, I don't see much point in making a review about a game in its day 1 form years later when it's been patched and modded into a much better game. There are masochistic and historical reasons I guess, but as you said, you're gonna play most of them just once, might as well get the best experience.
Did you really get anything worthwhile out of Invisible War's dumb loading areas and litany of bugs? I sure wouldn't have.
I think we’re at a bit of an impasse. I’m glad you can enjoy the stuff you play without being frustrated by the fact that other people had to fix it rather than the company, but for me it’s important to discuss the best and worst parts of the industry both as they happen and looking back years later to see where they could have improved. It’s great that people dedicate their time and effort to fixing bullshit in games without much recompense, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. Developers should be putting out the best possible version of their game, although we know that will never be 100% possible because publishers will tend to rush them to get the game out in time for holidays or other big sales periods. Still, I like talking about games. It’s fun to discuss the good and the bad, especially when it’s a series that I love, like this one.
Anyway, appreciate the relatively civil conversation. Have a pleasant weekend!