Opinions are subjective, especially regarding video games, but there are some constants. One immutable fact is that Ion Storm's Deus Ex (2000) is the best immersive sim ever made, and some (including myself) would argue, the best PC game of all time, or at least the most influential.
It'll pop up in conversations surrounding iconic PC hits of the past, and it never fails to make me feel like I'm entering my "boomer shooter" era when I remember that it released a few months after the turn of the millennium.
Well, so what? Great games are immortal, right? That must be why we keep seeing remasters and upscaled re-releases. Well, some retro games stand alone with their own charm, at least if you wrangle them with some community-made Deus Ex patches to run on modern PCs.
If you're among the few millennials who never played it, or you're one of today's impressionable gaming youth looking for an inspiring blast from the past, there's nothing better than the legendary futuristic conspiracy-laden FPS that just celebrated its 25th anniversary with a video message (via YouTube) from the original game's director, Warren Spector.
You might recognize the Deus Ex IP from the later-released entries developed by Eidos-Montréal: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, and both are fine games in their own right. In fact, the former still stands as one of my most memorable experiences, both for good and bad reasons (boss fights aren't always perfect).
However, going back in time to the Unreal Engine 1 charms of the original Deus Ex will be a bit of a culture shock for those used to modern luxuries like ray-traced lighting and motion-captured performances in cutscenes. It's the atmosphere and interactivity that make this engrossing game special, more so than anything else, so try to overlook its flaws.
We made a game that seems to have influenced games that followed, and we created a world people wanted to revisit over and over again.
Warren Spector
This game is old but ambitious for its time. It's essentially a first-person action RPG that offers a few different playstyles, letting players pick between anything from a sneaky pacifist opening doors with lockpicks and talking their way out of problems, to an all-out war machine loaded with sticky grenades and missile launchers, hacking enemy robots, and wiping out every enemy in sight.
Don't spend your opening skill points on swimming, though. It isn't worth it.
For modern Windows systems, a keyboard and mouse will do just fine, but it isn't impossible to play Deus Ex with a controller. Gaming handhelds like the ASUS ROG Ally can take advantage of Steam Input, which offers community-made profiles that bind traditional keys like F1-F12 to any button, trigger, or analog stick of your choice.
Even the Steam Deck can run Deus Ex via Proton emulation, with ProtonDB awarding it a "Platinum" rating, which means there's nothing about the game that is totally inaccessible if you're willing to apply a few tweaks in the Linux-based SteamOS.
I'd love to say that I take my own advice, but I'm one of those annoying geeks who prefer to make their own controller profile, and I'm still tweaking mine every time I play Deus Ex on my ROG Ally.
Personally, I'd say the Steam Deck offers a slightly better experience, as the trackpads make it easier to navigate elements of the UI that are designed for a mouse, but both handhelds offer a touchscreen as an alternative.
Come on, stop making excuses and try it.
If you can accept some of its clunky enemy pathing and aged visuals for products of their time, you'll discover the incredibly layered adventure lurking inside this cyberpunk-soaked dystopian gem, augmented to the gills with player freedom.
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