Deus Ex
For many, Deus Ex is the definitive cyberpunk video gaming experience. A true masterpiece, it’s a pioneering hybrid of first person stealth action and role playing mechanics. Deus Ex’s biggest gameplay draw was the immense player agency offered through its design – it is a game that you truly can play in any style, offering multiple playstyles, routes to navigate its map, ways to manipulate its level design and different narrative options. Even today, Deus Ex perhaps remains unrivalled in its ability to deliver on the promise of player choice, a feat made particularly impressive given that it’s near 20 years old!
Aside from its marvellously innovative gameplay, the world of Deus Ex is sublime. A chillingly bleak and hopeless vision of the future, the game is macabre and depressing in all the ways that make a cyberpunk world so immersive and inviting. Gritty might well be the best way to describe Deus Ex, its dirty levels filled with dead beat NPCs that cling onto life in a world thwarted by inequality and a deadly plague.
The game’s protagonist, JC Denton, is an anti-terrorist agent with special abilities thanks to nanotechnology implanted in his body. No cyberpunk game would be complete without a dose of conspiracy, and Deus Ex has that in droves with Denton finding himself in caught in a battle against the Illuminati as the plot unravels.
Gamers owe it to themselves to play Deus Ex, even if its blocky character models and bland textures are extremely dated by today’s standard. In fact, the game is a perfect reminder that the creation of a convincing game environment is far more to do with ambiance and lore than it is flashy visuals. Deus Ex is still the king of cyberpunk and arguably the king of RPGs.
