PC Gamer (UK)

**PC Gamer** is the only magazine in The Nameless Mod which actually exists. The cover which appears in the game (featuring The Nameless Mod) is made up, but the real magazine's logo was used with permission from the editor in chief at the time of development.

The magazine's articles are of course all about PC games, including the full version of PC Gamer's original Deus Ex review by Kieron Gillen (which could also be read on Gillen's blog) and Richard Cobbett's article "Atavism vs. Altruism" (which could also be read on Cobbett's blog).

## First Edition

Deus Ex 2 disappointed a lot of people (included, to some extent, myself) even though it was quite a decent game in and of itself.

The main problem was that Deus Ex is, in its very core, a PC game. And in my use of the term "PC", I do not distinguish between a Windows PC or a Macintosh PC as the game was released for both operating systems with the exact same interface. The PC origins of the game can be seen in almost every level of its design. It is no secret that the PC platform allows for a far more complicated control scheme than any console does (be it a Playstation, an X-box, or a Nintendo system), and that this in turn encourages a more complicated game design. The graphical user interface (GUI) of Deus Ex reflects this in every possible way, from its several layers of clearly Windows-inspired in-game menus to the fact that it has so many different functions crammed into it - change ammo / toggle laser sight / toggle scope view / lean left or right / crouch / jump / toggle walk or run / activate object in world / toggle up to 9 nanoaugmentations / open inventory or any of the other 7 menus / holster weapon / drop item / etc. - that it would be impossible to control without all the buttons of a keyboard and/or several mouse-operated menus.

With the paragraph above, I hope to have conveyed that the very nature of the game depends on a complicated control-scheme. The sequel to Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War or IW for short, made this painfully apparent when the developers chose to create the game for PC and the X-box console simultaneously. From a business point of view, this was a great idea: The X-box uses DirectX to run its games, just like a Windows PC (given that Microsoft is the creator of both platforms) which makes it easy to develop for both at once, and the console gamers outnumber the PC gamers by far in the United States.

*But in order to fit the controls for the game on the rather limited amount of buttons present on an X-box controller, ION Storm Austin had to considerably trim down the number of functions in the game. This suited them fine, because they believed it would serve to "streamline" the game, making it more accessible to the mainstream gamers. Unfortunately, among the fans of the original game, this streamlining was mostly perceived as a severe "dumbing-down" of the game. Features from the first game which were not present in the sequel includes different types of ammunition for each weapon, a diablo-style inventory where larger items take up more space than small items, the entire skill system including the way your aim would become more accurate when you were stationary and took your time to aim as opposed to when you were running around or jumping up and down, a conversation log which let you read over dialogue you had already been through in case you missed something important, an in-built text editor to let you write down your own notes, and a few more things I don't recall off the top of my head.*"

All these simplifications didn't make IW a bad game of course. But it truly fundamentally removed the game from its predecessor. Even though the game was set in the same world that used the same timeline and featured the same characters, nobody could shake the feeling that this was an entirely different game. A far simpler game. This is of course not necessarily a bad thing, and indeed it would've suited me perfectly fine if they had just aimed to create a new game in the spirit of the old one. Unfortunately, when you choose to use the same world, timeline, and characters (not to mention name) as another game, your fans will expect a game which feels like a sequel rather than a new game capitalizing on old intellectual property. Either you make a proper sequel or a new game entirely. The Invisible War approach will only create disappointment.

Paradoxically, Deus Ex: Invisible War was a great game, and I enjoyed it a lot. But I would doubtlessly have enjoyed it far more if it hadn't attempted to be a direct sequel to Deus Ex. As it is, I have to actively distract myself from thinking of Deus Ex when I play Invisible War. When I succeed in doing this, IW becomes a very solid and fun game with great (if not optimal) graphics, hilarious physics, and a rather solid artificial intelligence, but it would have been far easier for me to enjoy if I didn't have to spend mental energy deceiving myself while I play it.

*It was really nice to get that off my chest. And now I have somewhere to link people to every time somebody starts ranting in the PDX forums about what an awful game IW is.*"

## Second Edition

My last playthrough of Hitman 4: Blood Money got me thinking about the idea of problem-oriented game design. I'd like to think the idea is mine, but first of all it's doubtlessly been formulated differently by many other people before, and secondly even if I were the first person to put these ideas into words, entire games seem to have already been based on them. Hitman 4 being the best example I can think of right now. Better, even, than Deus Ex.

The idea is that you can approach the creation of a challenge for a game in two ways: You can treat it as a puzzle, where there is only one way for your player to overcome the obstacle you place for him, or you can treat it as a problem where no specific solution is given, just a premise and a set of “tools”. Let me exemplify.

Half-Life 2 is a fantastic game which is heavily puzzle-oriented on several levels. Most obviously, the ordinary run 'n' gun shooter gameplay is frequently interrupted by an honest-to-God puzzle - generally based on some aspect of Havok's impressive physics engine - which you have to solve in order to proceed through the game. On a somewhat higher level, the whole game is extremely linear and gives you only one choice in how to handle enemies: Kill them. The only choices you have in Half-Life 2 is whether to search for hidden items in certain nooks and crannies or just run past them, and which weapon to kill your enemies with. It's a great shooter, but it's definitely not going to ask you what you want to do.

*By contrast, Hitman 4 puts you in a situation and presents you with a huge array of tools and tells you simply "Kill this guy and find the microfilm he's hiding." The tools at your disposal include going in guns blazing, sneaking past guards and security cameras, distracting guards into leaving their posts, climbing over walls and through windows a'la Splinter Cell, conning your way past obstacles with good old social engineering, neutralizing enemies or civilians more or less discretely and donning their clothes to pass effortlessly through restricted areas, or poisoning food and letting servants do the rest of the job. To take the optimal route through each level, you'll usually have to use many of these techniques at different times in a mission, but often it's possible to choose a single technique and stick with it, it'll just be a lot harder. Additionally, Blood Money has a scoring system to steer you in the direction of playing the game like the developers want you to (so if you go in guns blazing, you'll barely get paid), but once you've completed a mission by the book, you can always go back and play it again as a regular terrorist, blasting through to your target with full kevlar and a pimped-out assault rifle.*"

*I want more games like this. I want more games that don't tell you exactly how to complete your objectives, but just give you a bunch of options and drop you into a complicated situation. In fact I would like to try and take it further. I would like an entire game constructed as one big problem with an overall objective and no predefined path through the game. This game would simply consist of a large world, a micro-cosmos a'la Black Mesa or Citadel Station but structured more like Cyrodiil, filled with interesting situations and complicated, wide-open problems for the player to solve as part of his or her efforts to achieve the final objectives of the game.*"

## Third Edition

Well, "strategy guide" may be an exaggeration. Breakout is hardly the sort of game you write an 8 page feature on, after all. Nevertheless, OTP's new ripoff of the tired old Breakout game seems to have gained a more than slightly baffling popularity within its first 2 weeks in retail, so here's a list of powerups in the game and what they do. The important thing to remember is that the colour coding of these powerups is devious indeed, so don't just pick up anything green and stay away from the red.

Blue S on purple: Shrink paddle
Green G on yellow: Grow paddle
Red I on white: Invert controls
Orange F on green: Fast ball
White S on green: Slow ball
White K on red: Killer (carve through blocks like a warm knife through butter)
Red K on gray: Superkiller (bye bye iron blocks!)
Purple + on gray: Plus 2 balls
White M on blue: Magnet (the ball will stick to your paddle)
Yellow L on white: Skip level! (but miss out on the remaining points)
Green E on dark green: Extra life!

If your goal is a place at the top of the high score, remember that your score multiplier is lowered when you pick up a positive powerup and increased if you pick up a negative. Fancy a huge score boost? Grab that control inverter. Just be sure you can handle it.

**Hint:**
*Due to what we believe must be substance abuse problems with the programmer of this game, it is possible to hit a block diagonally through two unbreakable blocks.*"

## Fourth Edition

Dear Fantasyland,

Thank you for your recent plea for assistance, however unfortunately, I must decline. You see, I have recently gazed upon the map of your fair realm, and my eye could not fail to be drawn to your chosen starting location - the giant spider's cave - or the giant spider temple in the middle of a web-strewn forest shaped, or so it would appear, like a giant spider.

Do you not realise how upsetting this is for many of us heroes? Have you ever looked at a giant spider? Heck, have you even looked at a regular spider, up close? Well, imagine that, only the size of a cow, and trying to chew off your face. You see my problem here. It's got eight legs, hair, and fangs. Its idea of lunch is to melt its prey and drink it up as if through a straw. They move at incredible speed, their legs flying across any surface, ready to drop down from on high, or scuttle out of a gap when you least suspect it. They gather in groups; in flocks; in crawling, squawking, hero-slaying battalions of eight legged little bastards that scream at our innermost atavistic fears and call back to such deep-seated terror that the strongest of man might fall back blubbering.

You want me to fight an army of these things?

Sod off.

*I don't care that you consider the giant spider to be an opening level enemy. Sure, they fall fast enough if you stick your sword through them, but if you want to do that, you're in for a face full of fangs, of hair, and the barely digested scent of either adventurers or giant flies on their breath. You've got to wander around hearing that 'scuttle-scuttle-scuttle' against the bare rock, and the constant fear that one may be missing - one big one, or even a small one. A little black widow; the giant spider's pet, crawling up your back with its fatal sting that no amount of health potion quaffing will be able to amend. Or a tarantula; its big, hairy-*"

No, you have not. And therein is my point. There is nothing to be ashamed of in arachnophobia; indeed, such fears were all that kept humanity going through the Dark Ages, the Neo-Rennaissance and the Demon War, or so the game manual would have us believe. Why is it that you persist in saying "they're more afraid of you than you are of them", even when they con purple and automatically aggro my ass instead of scuttling off and letting me retrieve the Golden Sceptre of N'thra-Thak in peace? Fool me once...

As a compromise, I may be willing to take up the sword on your behalf. However, I must insist that in the event of an area known to contain spiders, giant or otherwise, a team of peasants must be dispatched to retrieve anything I either require or covet. Some form of magical spell, call it a "cheat code", if you will, to replace the fanged ones with something less mentally disturbing, such as giant chickens, would also be acceptable. Or a really big can of Raid.

Sincerely,

Your Hero

*P.S. Don’t even get me started on bloody facehuggers.*"

## Fifth Edition

John Romero was right. Full stop. Ion Storm, formed as a reaction to the - c'mon everyone, let's be honest here for a few seconds - programmer lead Id, crystallised around a single molecule of thought: Design is law. Games are more about the artist than the artisan, the painting than the paintbrush, the taste of a meal rather than its look. Game design people. That's where it's at. The rest is just ephemera to distract us. At the only level that counts, the ancient ASCII based nethack is superior to the slickly vacuous Vampire. Repeat after me: Design. Is. Law.

Yes, Daikatana stank, stinks and will smell of decomposed half-ideas forever. But, as you all better realise by now, the best first person game ever was based on this principle. Except that's no longer true. Now the top two first person games ever were created using an engine licensed from an external source. With Half-life, it was Id's Quake. With Deus Ex, the basis is Epic's Unreal technology.

The advantages of this method is pretty evident. Even with a lesser team - Early Raven creating Hexen 2, for example - games move from conception to completion with greater speed. When the whole of a full development cycle can be devoted to the central game mechanics, the extra time to savour, consider and let a game breathe, a team can hone the edge of their blade infinitesimally. You want a random prediction? In ten years time the amount of 3D graphics engine creation in a team will be next to nothing. With Deus Ex as an example of the strengths of this progress, it'd be a hard man who'll grumble.

So. Why is Deus Ex so important?

*Let's examine its intellectual family tree. It goes a little something like this. Ultima Underworld begat System Shock which begat Thief and Shock 2. Then Shock 2 met Half-life in a bar, shared a few drinks and begat Deus Ex. Then let Thief and Floor 13 (ancient black-and-white you-are-a-Government-Black-Agency game) be God-parents. Then the child grew up and put pictures of Syndicate on its wall, fancied Diablo at School and hung-out with Exile. And read Voltaire, Guy Debord, The Illuminatus, Grant Morrison, Machievelli and pretty much the whole content of a decently covered bookshelf. And wore a trenchcoat and shades.*"

Deus Ex is a first-person action RPG. You play J.C. Denton, an special agent for UNATCO, an extended branch of the police force. The world is a day-after-tomorrow affair with the current trends (Globalisation, Corporate power increasing, Democratic power falling, Terrorist direct action on the rise, Fade to Socialist Worker opinion columns) extrapolated to extremes. A modern plague, named the Grey Death, haunts the streets, with the vaccine - Ambrosia - in fatally sort supply, with its access limited to those with power, wealth or both. The locations in the game are either based on real-world areas, or thematically authentic enough to make everything hit close on the emotional level.

And in these levels you go on missions. In these missions you... No. I'm lost again.

Right. Perhaps, before I descend into the inevitable verbiage-onslaught (Expect quotes from Voltaire and references to existentialism. Ladies, take a seat. Gentlemen, pour yourself a stiffening brandy), if I better take your hand and lead you through what's a pretty standard hypothetical mission we can side-step the vagaries of language.

You find yourself standing on a rooftop, overlooking a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. Guards patrol outside, dogs yapping with their probably rabid mouths. You shrug, reloading the assault rifle. Noticing a ladder on the side of the building, you climb up to the roof. You hear the barking of the mutts, realising your cover has been blown. At this point you give up all pretence at subtlety, charging down a ramp into the building proper. Alarms go off as troopers start to locate you. Ducking between crates, you return fire. Realising you're outnumbered, you pull out a LAM grenade, attaching it to a wall, before retreating. As the pursuing pack approach the motion sensors activate the grenade. Taking advantage of the confusion you charge, bullets firing. Downstairs you locate the generator, lobbing another couple of LAMs through the door to turn reduce hi-tech to a wreck. A sprint to the roof, leaping into your escape helicopter, and out. Chaos. Death. You're an ultra-bad-ass motherfucker raining annihilation on the second summer of love.

*Rewind.*"

Rewind.

You find yourself standing on a rooftop, overlooking a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. Guards patrol outside, dogs yapping with their probably rabid mouths. You shrug, shoulder your sniper's rifle and put a 30:06 round through each of their heads. You hate patrolmen and - hey - you aren't too fond of dogs either.

Rewind.

You find yourself standing on a rooftop, overlooking a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. But by doing a few favours to your street-friends and throwing around a little cash, you've managed to gain every single security code, key and password for the facility. The second you find a security console, those gun-turrets on the first floor are going to be turned against their makers.

*Rewind.*"

Rewind.

You find yourself standing on a rooftop overlooking a tower. You have to... oh bugger this. You head back to the alleyways and entertain yourself by throwing that basketball you found at the cats. Perhaps you'll go play pool in a bar later and have a few drinks. The mission can wait. Governmental Agents just wanna have fun.

Definitely rewind.

By now, people will be describing Deus Ex as a hybrid of several genres. A mistake in logic. Deus Ex doesn't merge the play-mechanics of singular genres. It just includes them as options. The primary character of a hybrid game is the demands you to perform tasks that were previously separate, while Deus Ex is about personal inclination and - this is the important one - freedom. The traditional relationship between gamer and game is one where the latter dictates to the former what it will do to have fun, a dictatorial axis that, more than anything in the history of our artform, Deus Ex destroys. Look everyone! Genuine Interactive Entertainment.

*This also implies that lots of games which we though impossible to complete actually are feasible. For example, since Deus Ex has shown that one level can be played in diametrically opposed ways with equivalent enjoyment, things like - say - Superhero games where you can play radically different characters become possible. Previously, received wisdom would have stated that no level would be equally satisfying to a steroid-powered Hulk-clone or a shadow-clad Batman analogue, hence meaning such a game could never exist. Deus Ex annihilates that defeatist thought in a burst of near-future cool. Put simply, it has raised the stakes and all that remains to be seen is if the industry is willing to follow.*"

Despite all the ultraviolence (or lack of it, depending on your inclination) at its centre, Deus Ex is a role-playing game, featuring a strong level of character development in various areas. Firstly, you have the skill system. There are eleven of them, varying from the expected weapons (Pistol, Rifle, Heavy Weapons, Melee and so on), survival (Swimming) and intrusion (Lockpicking, Computer Hacking), with you only having a bare minimum points to spend on advancing them. While each only has four levels, the price rises almost exponentially, with the highest master abilities being incredibly illusive- but oh-so-desirable.

This extreme price means that, unlike the superficially similar System Shock 2, by the end of the game your character won't be extremely competent in all of the abilities. You're forced into hard decisions in which you'll spend your hard-earned experience points into enhancing. To reach master in one - let alone multiple - categories will mean sorely neglecting others, leading to a truly unique character. And thus a truly unique experience.

However, dissimilarly to Shock2, being unskilled in an area doesn't usually bar you from having a layperson's crack - you'll just be less impressive. Untrained swimmers doggy-paddle slower than the Duncan Goodhew's in our midst, as well as having a lower lung-capacity. This differential is most clearly seen in the use of weapons, using a targeting reticule method similar to Rogue Spear. The longer you stay still, preparing your shot, the tighter the cross-hairs get, thus the more specific a shot results. Unskilled? They start with a massive expanse between, then narrow slowly. You're a master? Almost instant unnerving accuracy.

*The implications of this is devastatingly important. While there are some narrowing of your options depending on choices - without any hacking training you'll be unable to break into security systems without their codes - generally you can still try. This contrasts neatly with Planescape Torment, a game which featured a similar amount of freedom of approach. In the more traditional RPG, the thrill was seeing your choices being limited by how you've wandered its moral maze. Deus Ex takes a radically existentialist approach, claiming that nothing is written in stone. You can always try something else, re-making your own game-image as many times you choose. In the intricate sprawl of the level, there's always some other approach to try. Never has being condemned to being free been so heavenly.*"

But leaving aside the specialisation inherent in choosing what to carry in your limited inventory space and the much-appreciated option to choose the racial group of your character (originally a sex choice was planned, but re-recording the immense amount of vocal information proved impractical. Forgive them), the most interesting way: your moral choices.

With the exception of Planescape Torment, I've never seen a game which judges and rates your moral performance then integrates it into the story - yet not preaching. This isn't the superior Daily-Mail-readership judgements that the Ultima series occasionally enforced. This is simply giving your choices an effect. From major actions - such as whether you choose to follow your orders or your conscience - to minor ones - such as whether to investigate the ladies toilets in your base, the results are clearly laid out.

*Oh yes: the story. Its narrative is as deep as you choose. For adventure fans, this is probably the only game since undersung semi-classic The Longest Journey to sate your conversational desires. Equally, the world drips in details. Books to read, e-mail logs to study, newspapers and data terminals to peek at. Of course, the important ones are noted in your log book - as are all the conversatios, leaving only those who enjoy to sink up information to read them. You can savour Deus Ex. Like a fine wine, it can be drank by anyone - but those who take their time and let it breathe will notice the depth of flavour.*"

But just how good is it? To take the two polar extremes of influence, while it's not quite as good as Half-life as a shooter or Thief as a sneaker, the - and here comes that word again - freedom to try both makes it the former's only peer. After two years we've finally got a genuine battle for the number one PC game of all time spot.

And hopefully it should sell millions. To the bloke in the street, they'll recall the X-files and the Matrix and be satisfied. The pretentious posers will be rewarded with nods towards everything from the Illumianti and French Situationalists. Clearly, Deus Ex has influences outside the normal world of games; it reaches higher and drags you with it.

Because games - like most other entertainment - have a terrible habit of making you less than you are normally, simplifying you into a stripped down cartoon. There's a direct line in the almost-autistic reduction-of-self required to succeed in the first arcade games (Robotron 2084, Defender) to the similarly emotionally grounded Diablo (Get sword, kill baddy, get stronger sword, Repeat, Repeat). Deus Ex is one of the few games that make you more than you're normally. Because in Deus Ex's reduced universe you feel as if you have more real freedom than you do in normal existence. Which like, say, Fight Club, reminds you of your own freedom in reality. After a session with Deus Ex you feel more alive. It's a slap in the face, a reminder how good art can be.

*And this is art. It's beautiful. And I'm going to stop now before I start to cry.*"

## Links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20110722192232/http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress\_html/?page\_id=16
* https://web.archive.org/web/20110704232337/http://www.richardcobbett.com/codex/journal/filingcabinet/atavism\_vs\_altruism/