Well, I knew the honeymoon period couldn’t last forever. I couldn’t go on reviewing the good, or at least mediocre games forever. Eventually something awful would fall into my lap and I would be forced to play it. It really is incredible that terrible games can still be made, especially ones where we’ve pretty much got the formula down. First Person Shooters aren’t exactly complicated and most games manage to implement the mechanics well, or at least competently. But alas, the same cannot be said for Deus Ex: The Fall. It’s supposed to be the fourth instalment in the Deus Ex series. Personally, I think calling it that is an insult to those that came before.
So yes, I am aware that Deus Ex: The Fall was originally out on the iPhone. Does that excuse it for being awful? No it doesn’t. You can go onto steam right now and purchase this game. That means it is NOT a phone game, it is a PC game. It’s not MY fault they couldn’t be bothered to change a damn thing from the iPhone release. If it didn’t wanted to be graded with the same standards we mark PC games, they shouldn’t have ported it so badly. Although, calling it a ‘port’ is a stretch.
My past with Deus Ex is a little hazy. I remember playing the original when it was on one of the steam sales, but unfortunately never got too far. The controls were clunky and hadn’t aged well. I must admit, I’ve been spoiled on my modern day graphics and couldn’t cope with the PS1 era visuals either. The shocking thing is, the original Deus Ex looks better than The Fall. The textures are absolutely abysmal, and the animation, my lord, the animation. It’s like going back to pre rag doll physics. A few times I had to burst out laughing as an enemy collapsed on some stairs and hovered in mid air rather than falling down them. The facial features look like someone draw faces on paper plates and filmed them on sticks. This is made even more hilarious with the dry, dull, and boring voice acting that sounds like a couple of Primary school students acting out a nativity play. So surely with the awful visual aesthetics the game must run like a dream at a steady 120 fps, right? No. The framerate randomly tanks every now and then so it feels like watching a slideshow rather than a game.
So, poor visuals, bad port, awful optimisation. Maybe it will be saved by the game play. Wrong again hypothetical reader, the game play is as painful as the rest of this atrocity. There’s massive clipping issues when you’re trying to get into cover and your agent, whose name I genuinely had to look up because he’s so bland, Ben, will sometimes try to take cover in thin air. Whenever you shoot your guns the game does this odd zooming in and out effect after each shot that I struggle to get my head around. I can only imagine with the original touch screen controls it’s supposed to play more like a rail shooter with Ben jumping back behind cover after every shot, but instead it just makes you feel sick. The enemies death animation never has anything to do with where you shoot them with people flying in the opposite direction that they should and a lot of them involve the enemy standing still for a second before falling to the floor as if it takes a few minutes for the message to reach their brain that they’ve been killed.
The original Deus Ex was famous for it’s multi pronged approach. You could sink all your skills into stealth or guns and still be able to complete the game. You’ll be happy to hear you have choices in The Fall as well! Occasionally, if you get close enough, you can either kill a guard with a take down, or do a non lethal one. For no good reason. It has no effect on anything. You also get a few choices as to whether you kill someone or spare their lives, but I didn’t play far enough into the game to see if that made a difference to anything. And if you were hoping for a game where you have to scavenge for weapons and ammo, you can wave goodbye to that. Every single weapon can be bought from anywhere in the field as long as you have enough money. Just flip open your menu, browse through the weapons and somehow it randomly materialises in front of you. Superb.
No doubt you are wondering why it has been this long since I mentioned the story. Well, to be honest, it’s because I don’t know what the hell was happening. Your agent is called Ben and he’s hiding with a lady called Anna from the Illuminati. That is literally all I could understand. The game seems to speak it’s own language, which maybe people with more Deus Ex experience would be able to decipher, but there doesn’t seem to be much hope of new players understanding it. And yes, as I alluded to earlier, I did not complete the game. I am lead to believe it is incredibly short, but it was so terrible I just couldn’t keep going. If this makes my opinion invalid, fine, but I highly doubt any other reviewers were able to complete it either.
I may not be the biggest fan of the original Deus Ex games, but I still understand the impact it had on the games industry. It’s a classic for a reason and had a major effect on the evolution of the industry. It’s awful to see it go the same way as Dungeon Keeper and that abhorrent mobile ‘game’. There is, literally, no point in anybody ever buying this game. It’s ugly, there’s no fun to be had, it’s poorly optimised, lazily ported and will almost certainly feature on many people’s worse game of the year lists. If you’re absolutely desperate to play it because you enjoy pain, get it on iPhone. Maybe it will be more bearable there, but whatever you do, don’t buy the PC version. Don’t reward a developer’s laziness. Don’t let them think they can port any old IOS game to PC and make a million sales.
This game has no reason to be on the PC and, to be honest, I’m not sure it even has a right to exist in the first place.