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Dom Robinson reviews
Eidos Interactive Limited 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: No
- 60Hz: No
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
- Xbox Live-enabled: No
I was far from a fan of the original Deus Exso thought I’d give this sequel a try given that it’s been four years since I stepped in the shoes ofJ.C. Denton, a “nanotechnology-augmented” agent for the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition. Thereasons why I didn’t go a bundle for it you can read here,and I have to report that things haven’t exactly advanced a great deal for this follow-up.
We’re seventy years on from the first game, wars are going on and terrorism is rife – so just like thepresent day then. To cut the complexities of the plot down to size, the city of Chicago is under attackincluding the facility you work in which gets bombarded as you make your way about. This time, you playAlex D., although there’s an option to be either male or female, with dialogue recorded by both sexesso I presume this is a way to appeal to the girlies.
There was no lengthy training section to this title, but you get to learn the basic of moving aroundand talking to people as you get to meet the people in your team who are scattered around the complexand you’ll complete minor parts of the beginning just to meet them.
What you’ll also realise initially is that while the environment may be nice-looking, the graphics arevery jerky indeed. There’s nothing like the kind of smoothness you’d expect from a first-person-actiongame so what were the designers thinking? This is complemented with obvious jaggies.
On the plus side, though, the sound fares a little better since as the place crashes down around you,it gives an effective representation of this with sirens and warning tannoy announcements echoingconstantly. That said, this isn’t exactly original and neither are the SFX of weaponry when a fightkicks off.
You can interact with pretty much everything tangible in the environment, which is fun for a whilebut since everything seems to weigh the same and how it doesn’t matter whether you hit a randomguard with a basketball, jug, metal bucket or huge bin from the toilets – or even ramming themwith a trolley, this becomes rather tiresome rather quickly and doesn’t help you get further onin the game.
Go up against someone and you’ll find the enemy AI completely lame. You can even shoot those onyour side with no apparent consequences to follow. Whoever you kill though, there’s no skill tojust blasting away, the good/bad guy collapses and then you can just fling their body around to yourheart’s content like they’re a rag doll.
Interactivity beyond that seems to extend to no more than selecting the options to take by pickinglines of dialogue when the need arises. You can also pick up biomods to boost strength in yourarms, head, eye, leg and skeleton, but this is no different to being a human and collecting power-ups- so just like the last game then.
But I persevered as long as I could and all I could conclude was that running around in the darkgot me so bored to the point where it was making me want to fall asleep. I’m not a big fan of RPGgames, which is the genre that’s blended in here with the aforementioned FPS and this does nothingto change that fact.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.