Deus Ex invicible war.
I did not have to think this more than a second. Never ever have I been that dissapointed by a videogame. Even an abomination like Dragon Age 2 doesn't compare to that. Ofcourse I had set my expectations really really high which explains my reaction to some degree, but heck how could I not? It was
the sequel to Deus Ex, one of the greatest games ever made. And even designed by same people behind the orginal game. Well it turned out to be a very good lesson on how even the greatest team of developers can sometimes overthink their own design…
I think Dragon Age 2 happened because of rushed release, short development time and EA, so devs are only partly to be blamed here. However Deus ex 2 happened because of man's foolishness and arrogance. I can't put blame on the publisher. These devs had all the faith in the world and lots of money to make a great sequel. DX Invicible War sucked because the whole game was just so poorly designed.
The horrendous inventory was the first insult. It wasn't just a bad console inventory. It was an inventory which really didn't make any sense. I even tried playing the game with a controller to see whether it would work better that way. A lesson to be learned here is not to fix something which isn't broken. Please don't complicate inventory management needlessly. Don't try to make it "cool" at the expense of user friendliness.
Anyhow I could get over the bad inventory, but the more major problem was how anti-deus ex the entire game felt. For instance I do recall reading that some memory related issues, poor engine optimization and consoles forced devs to cut levels to small corridoors with numerious loading zones, but it doesn't explain everything. They were never fully immersing the orginal formula of semi open belivable level design.
I also disliked smaller stuff like the removal of skill system and dumbing down augmentations. They also streamlined (aka dumbed down) weapons mods, location based damage and hacking to name a few. It was just a big insult.
And then there was the universal ammo. I can't understand how on earth they thought something like that would be a fun feauture. I've read so many reviews and player comments trying to understand and majority of those mention universal ammo as one of the most negative aspects. So it is stunning how little they understood good gameplay design.
However what really broke my heart was how un-deus ex the whole experience felt. There were no cool hidden secrets to be found, just as there were no things like datacubes, e-mails, books, newspapers etc which would reveal more about the world I was exploring. Absent were also those random fun discussions with npcs.
And I can't remember any truly memorable moments like finding a hidden A.I in Morgan Everet's home. Or deciding whether to close Illumanti leader life support. Those things had nothing to do with main story. There were just there to make the gameworld more belivable and intresting. Or how about debating world politics with a random Hong Kong bartender. Or those crucial main story moments such as deciding whether to kill Anna to save Lebedev's life.
Also the lack of memorable sidequests was an other nail into coffin. Deus ex 1 wasn't a very sidequest heavy game, but when there were sidequests, they always made sense and gave more information about the gameworld and npcs. Did Invicible war have any fun side quests? I can remember only the plotline about that pop singer.
I really struggled to finish it, but at the end I did it like a trooper, but just because I wanted reserve myself a right to complain.