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Growing as a gamer and letting go of the hate

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By Ben Marquez Keenan
10 min read

When I was about sixteen I played the first Deus Ex game and my mind was blown. It was a formative experience, exploring this huge, clever world. Not only had I never seen anything like this, I hadn't even thought it possible. It's a little dated now (it was even dated when it came out thanks to some regrettable technical decisions made in development) but I loved it then and I still do.

I was incredibly excited when I heard they were working on a sequel in 2003. It was going to be produced by Harvey Smith, who had worked on the original. The often excellent Warren Spector was stepping back from the project, which made me a little nervous, but he trusted the new team, and I trusted him, so I stayed excited.

The initial screens were very impressive; they were introducing dynamic lighting, shadows, physics, emotive faces and promised to extend the work on branching narratives they'd started in the first game. The trailer dropped, as did my jaw when I saw it:

Then came the news that they were developing for the Xbox as well as PC... which was weird, since at that time there were few examples of games that were ported to PC from console and remained fun experiences. I was dubious.

Back then, you didn't download games because a) Steam didn't exist yet and b) neither did anything else, so I went to my favourite game shop in town on Dawson St. (now gone) and picked up a copy of Deus Ex: Invisible War as soon as it came out. I had recently invested in a fancy graphics card and was looking forward to testing out the game.

What. A. Crock. The game ran like shit, it was uuuuugly, and slow, and felt buggy and unresponsive. In an early sequence, someone hands you a gun and you need to defend yourself. It just didn't work. I kept missing, even though it was an easy shot and I knew what I was doing. I was so disgusted after a couple of hours of struggling to get it to work I brought it back to the shop and exchanged it for two cheaper older games, which I played half-heartedly, but it didn't change the fact that I'd been gutted. I was so, so disappointed. Fuck them, I thought, I can't believe they did this.

Fast forward to 2011 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution is getting good press. It looks awesome and the developers have been vocal about their love of the first game and disdain for the second. Sounded good to me. I had bought Deus Ex a couple of years previously on Steam and had gotten DX:IW thrown in for next to nothing, so in advance of the new game coming out, in an effort to rewrite the past, I got all excited again and decided to replay the first game to get all psyched.

I played it through and loved it, loved it again. It's really just a total joy. It's flawed; the controls are awkward and you need to use almost every key on the keyboard to get through in once piece, the story is labyrinthine and dense, maybe a little overlong, and the graphics and gameplay are both quite dated and rough, but it's smart, and assumes you are too. It is filled with legit references to philosophy and literature, characters will cheat and lie to you, and it genuinely feels like your actions matter. At one point (spoiler alert) you have to try to save your brother – fail as I did the first time I played it, and he dies and the rest of the game simply goes on. Succeed, as I did in subsequent playthroughs, he will pop up again and again to help you out and counsel you through to the end of the story.

I finished Deus Ex with weeks to spare and eyed up DX:IW in my Steam library.

Screen Shot 2013-08-18 at 12.05.39

No.

Screen Shot 2013-08-18 at 12.05.39

NO. You suck.

Screen Shot 2013-08-18 at 12.05.39

NO! I hate you.

Screen Shot 2013-08-18 at 12.05.39

Screen Shot 2013-08-18 at 12.05.39

Ok, ok, ok. Fine. I'll play you just to remind myself how much I hate you.

Screen Shot 2013-08-18 at 12.07.26

Don't look so smug.

Here's the thing. OK, this is the thing... the thing is... I loved it. It's a great game. Really, really great. In some ways, even better than the original. For EIGHT YEARS I had told anybody who would listen that this thing was a piece of shit, but it was a gem all along. It's got stupid problems, like an annoying circular HUD designed for the original Xbox, tiny map sizes due to restrictions with the Xbox's GPU memory and unified ammo due to low expectations of original Xbox players (or so I thought). They were all annoying, but the story was brilliant, deep and engaging. It criss-crossed with characters and consequences of the original game in surprising and nimble ways. If you haven't played this game for the same reasons I didn't, do. Do play it, just play it.

I felt so strongly about it that when I found myself looking at the Twitter feed for the project lead Harvey Smith only a few months ago, I just had to apologise.

Being the class act that he was, he replied.

And of course, I couldn't help myself – everybody loves unsolicited feedback, right?

Again, what a pro:

He was right about why it worked, which was the same reason it had put me off; I didn't like the rationing. It did, however, set me right on the impression I had held for years that it was done to mollify the console audience, who at that time were not held with the same respect they are now. I was a PC gamer. PC gamers were too smart to play console games. I liked that his decision was a creative, uncynical one.

He also corrected me on calling it a port, while being honest about the technical limitations I had experienced back in '04.

I could sympathise to a degree, and I was honestly touched by his candour and as a fellow (far lower-profile) creative curious about what failure at that level feels like.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how our definitions of success and failure shape our achievements and our happiness, so I asked the logical question.

In conclusion, Harvey Smith is a class act and Deus Ex: Invisible War is actually a brilliant game. Go play it now.

In the index: Deus Ex | Deus Ex: Invisible War | Deus Ex: Human Revolution | Half-Life | Half-Life 2 | Half-Life 2: Episode 1 | Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Retrograde, Role-Playing Game, Commentary, First Person Shooter, Recommend
Deus Ex: Game of The Year Edition Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Invisible War Half-Life Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2: Episode One Half-Life 2: Episode Two
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