Low textures has caused your brother to look fugly
Does this make you nostalgic…?
What’s better than System Shock 2? System Shock 3… but that never came out. Instead, a game of similar concept and depth was made by Ion Storm in 2000, and it is still one of the most replayable games although it’s already 11-years old, and that’s because the game is immersingly deep, while combining the best of RPGs and FPS.
I’d say the game is more first-person shooter than RPG, although the RPG portion does play a part too. You have to level up your character in various skills that can help you in various area such as shooting rifles, hacking computers and healing more efficiently. With this, you’ll go into various areas of the world such as New York City, Hong Kong and Area 51, and you’ll be fighting terrorists, aliens, and then your former organisation (the UN’s Anti Terrorist Coalition). That last group of people should suggest that this story has a very deep plot – a conspiracy, in fact.
You play as JC Denton, a guy who has nano-augmentation (i.e. superpowers) that can help you carry extremely heavy loads, become invisible, regenerate health, etc. Throughout the game, you’ll be meeting new people who add to the storyline, and alongside you will be your brother, Paul Denton. The story is set in 2052 where a new disease called the Gray Death is raising hell on the population, and as you unravel the story, you’ll find out a deep, engrossing conspiracy.
The game has no problems at all running on a netbook, except for the fact that it can see some slowdowns at various times. I played the game at 1024×600, lowest settings, and found that it ran well except for some slowdowns during busy moments, and during the intro cutscene, the subtitles would be truncated. Small issue if you really want to play Deus Ex on-the-go. It is also… unfortunately, quite ugly if you turn the textures all the way down in a bid to play at high-res and get a good framerate.
Writing this description makes me want to play the game all over again, it’s a testament how much I like it.
Like
Extremely engrossing game that has unbelievable replay value
Lengthy game (i.e. good value for money)
Dislike
Textures terrible on a netbook with everything set at low
Occassional lag
Verdict
It’s a good game, but you’ll reap great benefits if you have a powerful netbook, especially one with ION. The game is still playable on a regular netbook if you forgive the ugly textures.
EDIT: Readers have commented that running Deus Ex on an Atom N455 with integrated graphics on medium to high settings still produces good FPS.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
I too was disappointed in the performance of the original game on my Compaq Mini 10 (Standard fare single-core Atom N450 @ 1.6Ghz, 1GB RAM, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, Win 7 Starter). I was pretty pumped up when the game would run smoothly for most of the time, only to suffer flow breaking moments when dialogue came through the infolink. Just in the training mission, I’d experience lag at the swimming sequence, and at the final test with the bot. All this running at 1024×600 on high settings. I suppose low settings would mitigate the performance drop somewhat, but having tried it, it doesn’t help much.
Running in Win 95 compatibility as administrator.
I am having HP Mini 110-3535tu, with graphic card -Intel media accelerator 3150(updated),windows 7 starter — having the same problem on clicking to play the game that is –> “failed to initialize with current direct3D setting” , what to do??? plz help
Perhaps you can run it using software renderer – that might get past your D3D problems.
ran smooth on my dell inspiron mini atom n455 1.66ghz gma3150 2gb ram. no problem at all in low settings. even in medium to high very few lags, mostly during the time when too many enemies come at once or the environment gets too complex.
Thats weird, i have an acer aspire one with 1.66ghz and intel atom n455 and the game works perfectly for me. High fps, high settings and no lag.