Knights of the Cardboard Castle

The original Deux Ex is highly regarded as one of the best examples of games that offer players genuine choice. Unfortunately I never did get around to playing it or its less celebrated sequel. So knowing of the series’ reputation, I bought this prequel game a while back when it went on sale.

• This is definitely a first-person RPG, rather than a stealth game or an action game. Of all the games I’ve played, the closest one I can think of is Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. It’s a very talky game with lots of things to read and a rich storyline.

• I really like how they did the outdoor city in this game. Yes, it’s faked and really very small but I liked how they used clever level design to conjure up a sense of space and the complex topology one expects of a metropolis. Graphics are only okay with the textures in particular looking very plain and sometimes boring. Animations are okay too.
• I had some minor technical problems with the game. On one occasion I had corrupted graphics but a restart fixed that. Very often menus wouldn’t respond to mouse clicks but would respond to the keyboard. Nothing major but still kind of annoying.

• The game supposedly offers four pillars of gameplay: combat, stealth, hacking and social. In practice, you need to do a bit of everything. For example, there appears to be no way to deal with the boss battles except through straight out combat, which are usually in a small, confined area so you don’t even have much leeway to be stealthy. You could ignore hacking but you would miss out on a lot of the backstory. If you’re a completionist like me, the game gives you more than enough Praxis Points to upgrade everything so you can be equally adept at everything!
• I do like how the story develops in this game. It has genuine surprises, there are no stupid twists, and I like how romance is hinted at but downplayed. After all, the stakes are too high for frivolities like that! What I like most of all is that your colleagues are all competent, reliable team players and no one betrays you. I’d have liked the game’s ending to resolve more but since this is a prequel, I suppose the story ties back to the first game of the series.
• I also like how this game takes the conversation system seriously. Basically it is just another form of combat, but with words. I never quite figured out how best to use the social enhancement augmentations properly but it wasn’t hard to figure out that the best way to proceed in the conversation is to pick up on what the other person just said and respond directly to that. The system is randomized too so you can’t fail, reload and hope to win through pure trial and error.

• By contrast, combat is uninteresting even with all of the different augmentations available. It is kind of cool to be able to see through the wall with an eye implant and punch right through it with your cybernetic arms to take out an enemy. But shooting is just like any other half-baked cover FPS shooter. Even the bosses can be summarily dealt with simply by throwing tons of fragmentation mines at them.
• Likewise the stealth system is bog-standard, especially since the stealth augmentations can cover up any mistakes you make. It would have been more interesting to have enemies with cybernetic eyes that can detect you through objects for example or enemies who can detect you infallibly within a certain radius so you would need to take them out at range. A greater variety of enemy capabilities and behaviors would have made both combat and stealth a lot more interesting.

Overall there’s no doubt that this is a good game. I’d love to see more cyberpunk-themed games, especially ones that offer a substantial near-future city to explore. I’m looking forward to the kickstarter-funded Shadowrun Returns to be released later this year.