<P>You find yourself standing on a rooftop, overlooking a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. For you, that's not enough. You shoulder you LAW missile launcher and fire a blast at the main doors, demolishing them. And setting off the fuel-drums you had dragged there earlier, wiping out anyone who had the misfortune to be on the ground floor.
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<P>Rewind.
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<P>You find yourself standing on a rooftop overlooking a tower. You have to... oh bugger this. You head back to the alleyways and entertain yourself by throwing that basketball you found at the cats. Perhaps you'll go play pool in a bar later and have a few drinks. The mission can wait. Governmental Agents just wanna have fun.
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<P>Definitely rewind.
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<P>By now, people will be describing Deus Ex as a hybrid of several genres. A mistake in logic. Deus Ex doesn't merge the play-mechanics of singular genres. It just includes them as options. The primary character of a hybrid game is the demands you to perform tasks that were previously separate, while Deus Ex is about personal inclination and - this is the important one - freedom. The traditional relationship between gamer and game is one where the latter dictates to the former what it will do to have fun, a dictatorial axis that, more than anything in the history of our artform, Deus Ex destroys. Look everyone! Genuine Interactive Entertainment.
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<P>This also implies that lots of games which we though impossible to complete actually are feasible. For example, since Deus Ex has shown that one level can be played in diametrically opposed ways with equivalent enjoyment, things like - say - Superhero games where you can play radically different characters become possible. Previously, received wisdom would have stated that no level would be equally satisfying to a steroid-powered Hulk-clone or a shadow-clad Batman analogue, hence meaning such a game could never exist. Deus Ex annihilates that defeatist thought in a burst of near-future cool. Put simply, it has raised the stakes and all that remains to be seen is if the industry is willing to follow.