Deus Ex

I got this and the sequel on Steam last summer, although it took me a while to really get into the game. It was difficult at first, because the game was released back in 2000 and now looks and plays pretty archaically. But if you can get past that, the design shows through as one of the most innovative and important first person shooters there are. Deus Ex was fusing action and role-play elements before it was cool. Choice is the essence of the game. There are so many ways you can go about each mission. You can run through the front door, guns blazing, or hack the security systems to fight on your side, or find a hidden entrance and sneak your way in. There are often situations that aren't that dangerous, where you can just explore and soak up the details of the interesting world, with NPC's who have things to say and useful information around every corner. You can shape the game to help out your style, as completing objectives and finding new things gives you skill points to improve your use of weapons and ability to interact, and you can find augmentation canisters that give you a choice of different abilities, like quick healing, super strength, or night vision. There's not enough in the world to have it all, so you have to decide. You can also find upgrades for augmentations or your weapons to beef them up.

It's not all perfect though. A downside of the skill system is that your accuracy is terrible in the beginning, forcing you to stand still for a few seconds if you want to have any chance to hit a distant enemy, which usually isn't that convenient. Putting too much into your weapon skills hamstrings your ability to do other things like pick locks, limiting where you can go. Luckily, you can get a weapon maybe halfway through that renders other weapons unnecessary, at least from a certain distance. It's a pretty long game, maybe a little too long. You can only infiltrate so many installations, killing the same enemies, before it gets a little tiring. This is exacerbated by the game, at least through Steam, not letting you continue at any point, so if you mess up, which is pretty easy to do, you have to load from your last manual save. It's still quite a good game though, with an interesting story about a government conspiracy, and continuing with the theme of choice, there are three different endings you can choose from. What it did paved the way for a lot of other games, and is appreciable for that if nothing else.