Second Impressions: Deus Ex

I'm now six hours into the game.  I was getting a little bit frustrated last night, and have only myself to blame.  It all worked out, though.  See, I was doing this one mission that had several main objectives and one secondary objective.  It was that secondary objective that was killing me -- Infiltrate the area and complete the mission without being detected.

Now, stealth in games has never been my strong suit.  I was barely able to pull it off in the Splinter Cell games -- games designed to be all about stealth!  I pretty much failed at it in the Crysis games.  So stealth and I really don't have a good record, y'know?  But I was bound and determined to finish that mission and complete that secondary objective.  It became more about principal than about enjoying myself, which I realize is counter-productive in a game.

But, I will admit I got a tremendous sense of satisfaction out of actually doing it this way, so it wasn't a total loss.

Aside from this self-inflicted torture, I have only one other thing to complain about.  As anyone who's read my previous posts, or is at all familiar with Deus Ex knows, there are multiple ways to do any mission.  There are many different paths to take.  What I ran into last night, though, showed me that these multiple paths aren't always open to you.

I found this really cool path to take, and I really wanted to go that way because it was clever, and it was sneaky, and it arguably looked like a pretty easy way to go if you were doing things stealthy.  But then I hit a roadblock:  There was a wall in my way.  Ok.  I can deal with that.  I went into my augmentations -- I had one point available to spend, so I threw it into the "Punch Through Walls" ability.  (That ability is BADASS, just for the record, especially when there's someone standing on the other side of the wall.)  So with that handled, I punched my way through the wall and continued on my path.  Then I hit another roadblock:  An elevator shaft.  And now I was stuck.  I didn't have the Icarus ability yet, which allows you to fall from any height without taking damage, and I had no points left to purchase it.  I had to turn around and go a different way.  It was very disappointing to me.

The thing that bothers me is that if that path had only ONE augmentation requirement, I wouldn't have cared.  But needing two that early in the game?  Bleh.  Bad design, in my opinion.

I didn't let it change my overall opinion of the game, though.  I went a different way and still got through the mission without being detected.

And so far, everything else has been gravy.