I’ve got our last little tube TV set up in our mud room, situated between our kitchen and garage, where my desk there doubles as a workshop as well as a cool place to sit and chill. I’ve hooked a few different game consoles up to that TV but lately it has become the home of our poor old Playstation 2.
It’s a good fit and a few years back I completed my second playthrough of King’s Field The Ancient City on the PS2 there. I had intended to just play a little bit of it for novelty but of course it was so good I completed it. The same thing just happened with Deus Ex: The Conspiracy, a blocky old first person campaign set in a dystopian future.
I absolutely loved Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the PS3 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on the PS4 and had expectations of a much more primitive version of those games with Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Those expectations were correct in terms of graphics but the story, character development, action, gadgets, and everything else I had enjoyed in the more modern chapters of the series was present here. That is a rare treat for retrogamers like me who sometimes play a series out of order.
Deus Ex: The Conspiracy could have easily been called Deus Ex: All The Conspiracies as there is so much going on in this compelling story. The Illuminati, Majestic 12, Men In Black, Area 51, and malevolent AI are all present and a part of the unfolding tangle of story elements. The game and story are also very long, crisscrossing multiple areas, but not in any way that feels forced. The areas can be multiple zones linked with loading screens separating them and thorough exploration is required to get the most out of each zone.
Getting around these sometimes large areas can require completing story elements or using hacking or lockpicking to get through doors. The game is stingy with the tools required to do these things, though, so saving before using these tools was a wise choice, as what is in the chest or on the other side of the door may not be worth the use of the tool or lockpick. Likewise, raising the player's skill in lockpicking and hacking and all of the other skills one can raise is a slow process, but with the game being so long the player can see most of these skills raised toward the end of the game.
Files, Emails, Books and documents help tell the backgroud story, give away security codes, and tell of current events as one explores. The story is deep and these things along with of course character interactions really help move it along. When I say deep, I mean it - some serious discussions open up between the player and NPCs, even just some on the street guys, regarding the nature of government, democracy, and society that eeerily apply to modern times, a quarter-century after the game designers put it in.
My used copy did not come with a manual but I was able to discern the controls pretty well. I could not find a controller configuration that I liked so aiming was cumbersome and fights fell apart as the camera controls were old school. It turns out the game encourages stealthy tactics and exploration, which was an enjoyable way to play. I saved the bigger weapons like rocket launchers for the later levels where bigass security robots patrol some areas. A really cool laser sword later in the game became my favorite flail-about-spastically melee weapon.
Health and energy (used to power enhancements) can be repleneshed here and there but do need monitoring. I honestly held off using my cybernetic enhancements most of the time as the energy consumption was fast when in use.
Enemy AI is about what one would think for an early 2000s game, meaning that they can be evaded and flummoxed rather easily most of the time. There are not any rewards that I saw for playing non-lethally, but I did play that way most of the time. Conversations with NPCs are essential to the story but also to aid in exploration and can lead to side objectives. Don't worry - the game keeps the list of main and side objectives short and clear, and easily accessable in the pause menu. Maps aren't great but do help a little.
Player actions and conversation choices do have long-term impact in the later game. Stopping by the medical bay to warn the doctor before the player betrays the agency pays off much later when the doctor shows up in a cafe halfway around the world with a code word that the player then uses much later during a boss fight. Another example in the early game was when I decided to explore the women's restroom, looking for loot at the agency headquarters and actually got called out for it later by my boss. That is some pretty sophisicated consequences for a game of that era.
City after ciy, level after level, from New York to Hong Kong to Paris to Vandenburg Air Force Base to Sealab 2021, the game gives off James Bond vibes in terms of travel until finally landing at Area 51 to wrap up with an epic conclusion. In the end, the player basically has to choose which faction or AI they want to win, or none at all creating a new Dark Age but one free of oligarch control. I choose the same one I would if asked that question in the real world, and the game ends with a view of the nighttime side of Earth and all of the lights going out.
Deus Ex: The Conspiracy turned out to be a full-on Deus Ex game in the same caliber as Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, and that was a pleasant surprise. I have a lot of Playstation 2 games to catch up on, as I was off playing MMORPGs when the Playstation 2 was reigning, but with as much fun as I had with Deus Ex: The Conspiracy, I am encouraged to find more hidden treasures and play them on my tiny tube TV in my cool ass mudroom.
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