WHOA. Who are you and what'd you do with my Deus Ex? Seriously, what game is this? I mean, it says Deus Ex on the cd, it says Deus Ex on the splash screen, and I could have sworn that I clicked the same icon as when I first played through the game... but everything is new! People say different stuff, appear in different places, and man oh man I waxed that person somewhere else last time.
Yes, what you're reading is the reaction of someone who's playing Deus Ex for the second time. Now, according to this poll, a bunch of you know exactly what I'm talking about. But many of you don't. Maybe you're just cruising by this site for the first time because you just got Deus Ex and need a walkthrough, or a patch, or whatever. If this is you, then listen up, because once you're done with Deus Ex there's something you need to do immediately... and that's to play it again.
You may have heard that the game was very dynamic depending on all the multitude of decisions you make. You may have even heard that it was cool to do multiple times. But there's really no way to understand just how true this is until you sit down, take a different gun from Paul on the docks, and start in again. It'll only take five or ten minutes, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Here's what I did. The first time I started off as nonlethal-sneaky (much like most of you probably did, here's another poll to check out). I found that in addition to struggling to get used to the new type of gameplay that Deus Ex offered, I was also almost always severely hurting. You name it, and it was a problem for me... health, ammo, and trying to sneak into the warehouse and blow up the generator using only the crossbow, tranq darts, and the prod. So when it came time to play again, you can bet your ass that I boosted my Heavy Weapons skill as far as I could and then went straight for the GEP gun.
Life (well, at least the version found in this monitor when I fire up the game) takes on a different tone when you're at the business end of a rocket launcher and know what you're doing. No longer were enemies really enemies... now everything was reduced to a red flash of the crosshairs, a beep, a whoosh, and then a shower of whatever specific parts were intended to make that item operate. The aforementioned warehouse mission became a thing of beauty... sniper rifle everyone on the rooftops, then get to the top of the warehouse itself and simply demolish every human in the rest of the level as they come up the staircase one by one. And they ALL come. By then I had something like twenty GEP rockets, and ended up feeling pretty damn smug.
That brings up another point... your second time around you know how the game works, you know what you're doing, and you'll feel comfortable exploring and taking chances. This translates into A LOT more goods, whether it's ammo or armor or whatever. You'll also end up seeing a lot of things that you missed the first time around, both because you're willing to explore more and because you'll be looking around and paying less attention to the main game events (which you've already seen once).
So wipe that slate clean, put away your old Thief habits, and try your hand at what may be the best second playthrough you've ever had.
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