Is Deus Ex Still the Best Game Ever?, Parts Two and Three

After some additional technical difficulties that forced him to repeatedly reinstall the game, John Walker has brought us two more installment (part two and part three) of his Rock, Paper, Shotgun Deus Ex diaries, with which he aims to answer the question: is Deus Ex still the best game ever? So far, Walker doesn’t seem fully convinced:

Anna then wanted me to go sort out the mess my brother Paul had apparently caused getting a bunch of hostages taken on the metro. But I’d no non-lethal ammo left. And I wasn’t about to start killing the people I know I’ll be siding with any moment now. Sneaking in down through what seemed to be sewer pipes, I found my way to the station, packed with NSF. And they shoot on sight.

Dodging around the tunnels, I eventually stumbled on a grate I could exit without being immediately spotted. Except, I couldn’t exit, because there was a hostage standing in the way. He wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t acknowledge me at all. If I hit him with a crowbar he just cowered. If I sprayed him with pepper spray he rubbed his eyes, but defiantly stayed on that exact spot. And any of these attempts attracted the attentions of the guards, who shot me to bits.

And it’s here that I had to first be very honest with myself. This isn’t good enough. If a game came out today, and I encountered immovable NPCs bugging out missions made near impossible due to such a massive bias toward lethal ammo, I’d be mocking it as I critiqued it. An already very tough mission being made near impossible due to completely crummy AI.