Deus Ex 3 hype got me interested in breaking out my old copy of the original Deus Ex and finally putting some real time into it:
The deeper I dig into Deus Ex, finally sitting down to give it the proper amount of time necessary to figure everything out, the more I like it. The first couple of missions are okay, infiltrating the Statue of Liberty and then a terrorist base in Battery Park, but the game really starts to shine once you're dropped into Hell's Kitchen. That's where the game finally opens up.
That's probably what I like most about this game: the ability to head into an area full of allied troops, enemy terrorists, and lots of NPCs with your next move all up to you. You go straight to the enemy base with guns blazing, you can explore the whole area gathering intel and supplies, or you can sneak around and try to avoid detection entirely. Each side has reward and risk involved. It never feels like the game is pushing you to pick one way or the other.
The downsides, of which there are two main ones, are that the game is a number of years old [and shows it] and in the enemy AI. The graphics are okay as far environments go, certainly nothing that's going to blow you away by today's standards, but they're much more pleasing than the character models, which look quite horrible the closer you get. There's also the issues of animations, which look incredibly stiff and aren't particularly varied. Enemy AI...well, it's there, but it ain't very good. You can blast a guy in the face and his partner, who's about ten feet away, won't even react. You can also stand in full sight of enemy who's about twenty feet away and he won't even see you. Make's the stealthy less troublesome, but also a bit less fun, since the risk of being caught is way lower than it seems it should.
Those two things aside, it's still a really fun, deep game.
