Dex

It’s May 2015 and 15 years ago next month, Deus Ex was released.

Dex is a game that been in beta for quite a some time, finally released earlier this month and is, in both name and in scope, a compressed version of Deus Ex.

Specifically, much like Deus Ex, Dex is a cyberpunk themed RPG set in a dystopic near-future city where the player character finds themselves caught up in a fight between oppressive authoritarian forces and an underground resistance movement. There are installable body mods, multiple-path multi-solution encounter design structures, questions about ‘what it means to be human?’, trenchcoats, and shiny neon Chinatown locales. The list of similarities is long then but Dex does differ in so far as it is a 2-D sidescroller as opposed to Deus Ex's 3-D closed world levels, and it’d be fair to say that there is much a greater emphasis on melee/brawling combat in this new title.

Dex also leans pretty heavily on the sentient AI themes of Deus Ex; a trope that has been seen multiple times before in books and film, (Ghost in the Shell, Neuromancer etc.). This isn’t a bad thing if you like these sorts of stories (as I do) but unfortunately there’s little that’s novel about the narrative arc of Dex.

But I don’t want to sound too down on Dex though, because in spite of the lack of novelty, the occasional jank that I encountered with the game, and the fact that none of the game’s systems are better than comparable systems in any other game, the way everything comes together is (mostly) enjoyable. Even if much of the story is telegraphed, even if some of the character VO is straight up bad, even if the inventory system is cumbersome, even if some of the body mods, guns, and upgrades are kind of pointless… I still found myself getting hooked enough by this game to want to see it through to the end (time to beat was ~15 hours).

I should really be giving this game three stars because at the end of the day while I liked quite a bit, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd universally recommend it. However, if you’re like me and you’re a sucker for cyberpunk themed games then this is could be a four star experience that will likely frustrate you at times, but if you can appreciate it for what it is then you’ll probably have a good time with it.