Posted October 28, 2011
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That being said, I think fans do sort of overrate the game, and I can completely understand disliking it. I myself hated the game at first. It took awhile for it to grow on me, because it was a little hard to understand what the developers were really striving for. But once I got a handle on how to approach the game, it really clicked.
EDIT: To be more specific, I think Deus Ex IS one of hte greatest games ever made, not because it's a shining example of gaming perfection (like Zelda or Baldur's Gate II), but because it's an incredibly ambitious game that manages to create a pretty cohesive and engaging experience despite (or perhaps because of) the "throw everything at it and hope it sticks" design philosophy.
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There are few - if any - "perfect" games. Even the best games are flawed in some way (I say this because I don't want to be perceived as holding up Deus Ex to some unreasonable standard of perfection).
But Deus Ex - despite its ambition - just makes too many mistakes for me to enjoy it, let alone love it like its fans.
Overall I was just really disappointed with Deus Ex. As I said in a previous post, it's certainly not the worst game in the world, but it just tried too hard to be too many things to too many people.
I don't mind ambition that may fall short of the intended goal, but Deus Ex just falls short in too many areas for my tastes. The gameplay mechanics, the level design, the writing, the characters, dialogue, etc... any other game would have been dismissed yet for some reason this game captured the imagination of gamers and reviewers alike.
I have to wonder if the September 11 attacks a year after its release had something to do with it, or perhaps it was one of few games that allowed one to spare one's enemies in an age of mindless shooters; I just don't understand what is behind so much acclaim for this very flawed game.