Caltrops - Reviews - Re: Deus Ex 2 (PC)

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by curst 08/02/2004, 12:00am PDT

Mysterio wrote:

FABIO wrote:

Maybe one of the most dissapointing, but worst?
Obviously it's better than some bargain bin shovelware but as far as anticipated AAA titles go, the PC release of Deus Ex 2 was absolutely abysmal. You couldn't change the key settings because the config file was set read-only and you couldn't aim because some "mouselag" variable (why would such a variable even exist?) made all your movements register about a half second later. It was literally as if they changed the "xbox=1" variable to 0 and released the PC version with no playtesting whatsoever.

Out of the box, it was the worst PC game I had ever bought. All PC games need patches of course, but I can't think of any other occasion where the initial retail version of a game was completely unplayable.

I just disagree about "abysmal". I can agree on two points...

The "mouselag" thing was stupid, I'll grant you. Maybe some tester at Ion had a funky mouse that didn't respond properly without it? I have no idea why else it was there. I originally thought it was to accomdate an XBox controller, then I remember that XBox controllers aren't mouses, so that makes no sense either.

I agree about how Ion seemingly wanted to make the PC version *identical* to the XBox version, and to me that's the worst way to approach cross-platform games. (I think Hitman 2 is as good an example as I've seen thus-far on how to do this right.) Yet - maybe this is the part-time console gamer in me - I just didn't get too worked up about the tiny interface issues.

But sheesh, it takes all of two or three mouseclicks to change the "read-only" setting, and anyone who knows about altering config files will know how to do it. That's painless. I endure a more Herculean trial trying to remember to switch off antisotropic filtering before starting Age Of Wonders:Shadow Magic or many other 2D games (they crash almost immediately if I don't). And yes I've got all updated drivers and shit yet I get these crashes. At this point, tiny things like this don't register with me because I'm so used to them.

And if DX2 is the worst game you've ever played out of the box, then holy crap you must have a pretty small library of PC games. Just looking at the discs on the rack near my desk...

Civilization 3's performance is utter shit for a 2D game and it's no real improvement upon Civ2 (in fact this is my biggest complaint about DX2, compared to the original it almost didn't improve upon a single thing)
The Sims is fun for a few hours until you see everything there is to see
Neverwinter Nights has the worst RPG campaign I think I've ever seen in a D&D game
Messiah is basically one huge prolonged bug
Kohan:Arhiman's Gift is so drearily dull that I can't even get interested enough to see if there's a good game hidden underneath all the BLAND
Heroes Of Might & Magic 4 - see Messiah, although it isn't quite that buggy
Dungeon Siege isn't even a game
Disciples 2 isn't even a game
Warlords Battlecry 1 is awesome fun (well, avoiding the shitty campaign mode) until you wind up unable to level any heroes past around the 12th level because it'll corrupt their data file, rendering them unusable
Divine Divinity - for me, see Warlords Battlecry 1, and then factor in the idea that even new saves immediately got corrupted, thus it was almost quite 100% literally unplayable - definitely unplayable in a way DX2 never was (I'd have to win the entire game in one setting, no saves, to see it all)
Silent Hill 2 has one cool boss enemy, a pretty good thinking-outside-the-box story, and... nothing else
(I didn't buy this and I'm damn glad but my friend hasn't asked for the discs back for good reason) Empire Of Magic is a staggeringly lame HOMM ripoff that uses Poser to render the characters (which I believe means it loses immediately)
NHL2002 takes an awesome sports franchise and ruins it by trying to give some lame hack a microphone, into which he spews seemingly endless and unquestionably dreary jokes of the most unfunny kind - score a goal and he'll come up with "I haven't seen a schellacking like this since my pancake incident!" to which I believe I'm supposed to be ROTFLMAO but instead I'm all like WTF
Wizardry 8 is an RPG that Zseni loves, which for me is just about all I need to know to stay away from it - spend hours hitting reroll! kill crabs! explore a pre-Quake-1-level-design dungeon and kill bats! go outside and kill crabs! quit!
Daggerfall is basically Messiah all over again except somehow even buggier
(again, not my copy and again, the owner hasn't asked for it back) Wizards & Warriors is Wizardry 8 except about a trillion times worse, although at least the graphical glitches are good for a chuckle - somehow I doubt even Zseni could enjoy it
System Shock 2 sucks, pre-patch at least (it ain't alladat post-patch either)
Black & White - see The Sims, then toss in some crippling bugs that DX2 can't even hope to compare to in terms of how badly they ruin the game
Might & Magic's 6 through 8 are astoundingly mindless, dull RPGs of the worst "watch a bunch of numbers rise while staring at bad graphics, listening to bad sound (but admittedly great music), and not worrying about the paper-thin plot" kind - someone on OMM called it Quake With Arrows and that's still too kind a phrase because at least Quake is mindless *fun*
Blood 2 is some kind of primordial fragment from the original big bang of suck
Shogo is Blood 2 except somewhat better *despite* being an anime game, which in a normal world would mean that I'd hate it more
Arcanum is dull
ToEE has awesome combat but is so buggy that I don't even care
Blade & Sword is the second-worst action-RPG ever
Throne Of Darkness is the worst action-RPG ever
SiN is basically Messiah all over again, except less original yet more fun (actually half-way good after the patches)
Anachronox motherfucking rules except for the myriad of bugs
Rune is the most boring bug-free game ever, so much so that I can't even work up hatred for it anymore because I care that little about it

Give me Deus Ex 2 over any of these. Disappointing != one of the worst games ever.