Deus Ex: The Fall Review

Xander Hayes in Games, Magazine 0 comments 18 MAR 2014

The Deus Ex franchise is a titan in the video game industry, with it’s own little meme of ‘every time you mention the game, someone will reinstall it’. Deus Ex, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution are personally two of my favorite games of all time, a top a list so long I can’t even recall all the names at a given moment. Even Invisible War for its faults was a fun, entertaining game, with great story that I played multiple times. That said, be warned, here there be spoilers.

So what of Deus Ex: The Fall, an Mobile game that today was finally released on the system of it’s franchises birth, the PC? Before I can answer that question, I need to expand and explain upon what I view as a Deus Ex game. The Deus Ex franchise has a few key features that make it unique among the plethora of ‘Call of Honor: Modern Combat’ generic rehash shooters. The openness of the games, the ability to handle situations differently each time, taking stealth, non-lethal, lethal, or assault approaches makes it unique, and something I’ve never really seed done properly in other games.

You can play the games several times, and it’ll never quite be the same each time. You can take varying paths to your targets, set traps, set ambushes, or avoid them all together. You can talk your way out of some fights, or just say ‘eff it’ and shoot a man in the face. The choice is yours.

The Fall doesn’t have that. Oh all the foundation for it is there, the vents, the cover, all the mechanics are there as well, but the game just doesn’t provide. You start the game with two weapons, the Combat Rifle and Xbow that players of Human Revolution are familiar with. The Xbow might even be non-lethal, but the game doesn’t make it easy to tell. And it’s moot anyway. You’re not given enough ammunition to do much anything with it, and of course none is available to find once you run out.

Add in that there are enemies you just can’t avoid in the first mission, you have to take them on. Why? Because their pathing and AI seems to be just badly done. In time I played the game I watched an enemy pass through a box, teleport, and see me through a wall. Regular, unaugmented guards did this, not any sort of super enemy or boss like you’d expect in later games.

Additionally as a ported game the controls are, bad. They’re unresponsive, they’re clunky, and sometimes they just don’t work. To holster a weapon you tap H, to open your quick bar for weapons you hold it. Or in the case of me, you’ll rapidly holster and unholster your weapon.

The cover system is wonky, with you pulling yourself out of cover half the time rather than leaning around the corner or peeking up to take aim or a shot. When it does work you’re taking a gamble on your shot connecting. In Deus Ex: HR, a headshot on an unarmored organic target was a death sentence. Twice in the first mission of The Fall I shot a guard in the head only to have the round pass through him, hit the wall, and him go alert. This is with precise mouse aiming, so I’d hate to see what it’d been like on a mobile device.

Then there’s the last part of what makes a Deus Ex game, a Deus Ex game. The socio-political conspiracy. Like the other foundations of a Deus Ex game, The Fall has it in its core, but it is executed poorly. In Human Revolution the games protagonist narrates small parts, but most of the story is extolled for the player to experience. They find more about the player’s history and the world around them through exploration and interaction, not internal monologing.

The Fall kicks off immediately with the games main character, Ben Saxon, waxing nostalgic about his past and going into flashbacks, which explain what’s going to happen before you even get a chance to do it. “Namir gave me a chance for revenge,” he explains, as he details how he and the Tyrants infiltrated a local in Moscow and killed a man he was told is responsible for the deaths of his previous comrades. After this is explained, and only after, do you get to do it. Afterwards, back in the ‘present’ he goes on to explain how he started to ask questions, and got information of Namir’s computer on the Tyrant’s jetliner, which you then proceed to do. You literally have the game spoil you to what’s going to happen in the first few missions. The game might as well have been a semi-interactive motion comic at this point.

More on that point actually. In a way it is. The cutscenes are, bad. The main character has all the wooden acting a voice actor can provide, who doesn’t sound English, let alone a British SAS operative. His partner, Anna Kelso extols about as much Emotion in her conversations with him as plant. Add on that throughout all of it their eyes are dead, unmoving, Anna at least thankfully blinking. Any of the important conspiracy laden story is overshadowed by the stiff animations, unblinking dead eyes, and unmotivated deadpan voice of the main character.

This port received no polish for its new home. No refining of the controls, no reworking of cutscenes, no new animations. None that I can see. The game has everything it needs to “Give Me Deus Ex” as one of the difficulty levels Human Revolution is called. Unfortunately it does not make use of those things in any fulfilling way. The Fall may very well replace Invisible War as the franchises black sheep and ‘misstep’ in the franchise. However unlike Invisible War I can’t see myself finishing this game more than once. As a fan of the series, I find that a shame.

Xander Hayes
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