Off topic, sorry about that, but those are exactly my sentiments as well. Original UT & Deus Ex are still the best PC games out there.
Something else they both have in common, to me at least, is that their sequels were very disappointing, as both sequels deliberately did away with many of the things that made the original game so good. The sequel to Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War did away with the RPG stats, the real world feeling (the sequel feels like it's set in bio-domes on a different planet), searching the bodies for items, the huge in-game levels (in DE:IW the much smaller sizes of the levels removed the exploring aspect of the game, including swimming and searching for alternate ways around a potential problem), and a lot of the atmosphere. And DE:IW's storyline was much less interesting too.
And with Unreal Tournament 2003, they somehow managed to remove almost everything that made the original game so excellent. I mean, it's bad enough that they removed the Ripper, the sniper rifle , the ability to have more than two teams (I like playing in three or four team death-matches, you can come across some really intense battles), but the new levels (or replacement levels, however you look at it) were often terrible by comparison to the original's. And they got rid of two great gaming modes; Last Man Standing and Assault, and the not too bad Domination. And they gave us the inferior and largely fun free modes Bomb Run and Double Domination. And they changed the feel (or the mechanics, or whatever you want to call it) of the original into the much inferior playing style of UT2003.
In fact, offhand I can't remember one single change UT2003 made that I liked. UT 2004 changed a lot for the better, and I like Unreal 3 (though I don't have it, since my PC won't run it well, and I don't yet have a current generation console), but to me the original UT is still by far the best of the UT games, and my favourite PC deathmatch game.
On the other hand, Deus Ex: Invisible War, though very inferior to the original DE, did add some good things, such as some better augmentations, the fact that you get augmentations earlier, the brilliant ability to be able to control cameras, gun turrets and bots in first person mode, and a more open stoyline. On the minus side, hacking is now an aug, so if you don't have the aug. you can't hack, but if you do have the aug. then that slot is tied up and you an use any of the other aug features for that slot. Worse, the shooting aspects aren't as good as in original, as there's no RPG stats, so it's just a straightforward first person shooter in that regard, except that the shooting engine feels bugged or random, as sometimes a head shot won't kill, for example, whereas other times the identical shot to the same foe will kill. The story line, though now totally open to you (unlike in the original, where you had to choose a certain moral path, I won't say what here, so as not to spoil in for those who haven't yet played Deus Ex), is very uninteresting in DE: IW. I've completed DE:IW several times now, but still don't fully understand the story, as I've never been interested enough to read all of the text. DE's story, though simpler, was much more interesting. In Deus Ex, you fight against terrorists, in a world dying of a mysterious, potentially man made, plague, and you have some interesting and memorable enemies and allies. In DE: IW, you get caught up between several political groups who (I think) are largely uninteresting, you get involved in trade disputes between tiny coffee shops, and the characters in the game are mostly flat and unmemorable.
And in DE: IW you use "univeral" ammo, so that all guns use the same ammunition. Which removes any strategy over saving ammunition for any particular weapon...
And in DE, the levels feel like real world locations, full of living, breathing characters. In DE: IW, the levels feel like small levels in a computer game. There's so little immersion.
Having said that DE: IW isn't a bad game, in some ways it's very good, at least as good as most other games. It's just that it falls way short of the excellent Deus Ex. Play DE: IW as a standalone game and you'll probably really enjoy it (I do, I've played it many times and will do again), but compare it to it's predecessor, and you'll be very disappointed.
Incidentally, as a mostly console gamer (I don't like PC gaming, I much prefer the ease and reliability of a console, and a joypad over keyboard and mouse), I have Deus Ex and Unreal Tournament on the PS2. Deus Ex is a very good port, being almost identical to the PC version, except for smaller areas (the areas themselves are the same size, but less is loaded into the PS2's memory at any one time, so each area has more areas to be loaded, if you see what I mean), better videos and better graphics (although the PC version can be played with downloadable higher textures), a slightly simplified inventory, and you no longer have to remember code names or numbers, when you've "read" them in game, just pressing USE over the keypad entry on the door, or whatever then enters the correct number.
It's a great port, and I'm really pleased with it. It's definaltey my favourite PS2 game, and 90% of the reason I still have my PS2 connected up.
Unreal Tournament, on the other hand, isn't such a good port. It's not actually bad (for a bad, nay, terrible port, look at Carmageddon 64 on the N64
), but it's dumbed down, having less options, less configurablity, and worst of all, a very generous auto-aim system that you CANNOT turn off. I don't like auto-aim myself, but I agree that console FPSs should have the option, but it should be an option, not forced upon you. If you're using a rocket in UT PS2, for example, then you'll almost always hit your oponent straight on, even if they're well away from your cross hairs. It removes so much skill, and makes the game much, much less enjoyable for me. And if that weren't bad enough (and it is), they removed the Last Man Standing mode, the ability to have more than two teams, the ability to configure bots, and there is now a low limit to the bots on each map.
Basically, it was just dumbed down.
And sadly, neither UT nor DE were ported to the XBox, Gamecube or newer consoles.
Edit: Forgot to say, one advantage of DE: IW is that (as far as I know), no-one is immortal in DE: IW, whereas in DE you cannot kill some characters, if they are set to die during the later story. In DE: IW any of them can be killed at any time.
And I should point out that I've only played DE: IW on the XBox, as apparently the PC version is very prone to bugging, and requires very high specs. at some points. The XBox version works flawlessly. I mention this in case anyone is thinking of buying the PC version.
