The story itself casts you as a distinctly John Travolta-like (see Beatdown #15 ) character who has been augmented by (cliché alert!) nanites. He is out to stop the bad guys(?) as an operative for UNATCO, a shadowy government sponsored organization. Terrorists have wreaked havoc on Lady Liberty in retaliation for the way the government is handling a massive plague called 'The Grey Death'.

Are UNATCO really the guys in the white hats? Are the terrorists all bad? Is your brother ever going to stop lecturing you in the game? Will Mulder and Scully ever really kiss? All this and more might actually be answered in Deus Ex's sprawling tale, I'm not telling.

Deus Ex is a 3D first person shooter (FPS) that uses the Unreal engine. Deus Ex also contains role-playing game (RPG) elements, but they seem to have little effect on anything but the amount of times you'll have to perform certain tasks. Attempting to access the bad guy's computer? Well, if you had invested more points in 'computer' you wouldn't have to hit the button so much would you?

It seems like you can play the game as a sneaker or a shooter. And the development team is to be commended for at least trying to provide multiple solutions to each puzzle and numerous entry and exit points into and out of most situations. Performing certain tasks nets you experience points with which to upgrade your skills, but the impact of focussing on one style or another on gameplay is negligible.

Deus Ex uses the Unreal engine, which is bad news for anyone who uses anything other than a 3Dfx based card. Unreal was developed when Voodoo was king of the hill and they never did get D3D performance up to snuff with that engine. They got it right with Unreal Tournament, but Deus Ex uses the earlier engine. Even with a GeForce 2 and all the trimmings you're going to experience choppy framerates and generally poor gameplay. A new Beta patch has been released but this should have been addressed before the game came out. The sound is good but the music is bland and uninspired to a fault. Mark Snow keeps the X-Files TV show moving with his creepy score, Deus needs something at least inspired by Snow's work.