Today I was bored so I wrote a spoiler-free review

[Morti]

The Nameless Mod is the ultimate fanboy fantasy for Deus Ex. It's based in a Deus Ex forum and all the characters are avatars of real people who use the forum and the whole thing is essentially a love song to Deus Ex. It's an utterly stupid idea on which to base anything at all but somehow they've made it work. You can forget it's just a forum most of the way through and play it like any conspiracy-ridden story of a dystopian future. Seriously don't let the premise put you off, it put me off to begin with but I ended up really enjoying it. For the record, I'd never been on a Deus Ex forum in my life before playing this. I'd been on the Internet, that was enough to get most of the references and understand the dictatorship and tense power struggles inate to all online communities between users, moderators and admins. There's a lot of stupid stuff that pops up in online politics because people think the Internet is serious business and TNM satirises that. Many of the characters take themselves way too seriously for an Internet forum but all that helps to draw you into the world a little more; somehow you even start caring about these avatars. The premise is still stupid, mind you, but it's so very cleverly done that it works surprisingly well.

You play as Trestkon. You're brought in by your old friend, Phasmatis, to investigate the disappearance of one of the moderators, Deus Diablo. You go up to Phasmatis' apartment, he tells you what's going on and that's pretty much where the game stops leading you by the hand. You first mission is to gather enough money for a subway pass by doing little jobs for people or stealing. This first section works well to introduce you to the game world and its mechanics. You have several tasks which are entirely optional and each one can be solved in a variety of ways. I'll give you one example where you have to get a gang to leave town.

Option 1: You chase them all down with a knife you "found" on the body of a security guard in the first building. You collect your money.

Option 2: You talk to their leader and work out a non-violent solution that gets them to leave. You collect your money.

Option 3: You kill their leader and threaten the rest of the gang. You collect your money.

Option 4: You go to where their leader is hiding, fire a gun and have him chase you. The police shoot him down. You inform the rest of the gang. You collect your money.

Of course you can also just skip the mission entirely (and all the others) and break into a few shops to get all the money you need. Or you can wait for someone to contact you with a way to get a subway ticket without paying. The amount of freedom you get in this early section is mindblowing and the way the creators have made the game react intelligently to doing things out of order is similarly impressive. For example, one mission is to rescue an unconscious guy who's being tortured in a run down building. You can do that mission before anyone asks you to and the game reacts appropriately (it's pretty funny, too).

Right, so I mentioned you were brought in to investigate a missing moderator, yes? You don't even have to do that. You get the option early on of joining a megalomaniacal CEO to help him achieve world domination or, as I did, pretend to help him but have the metaphorical knife ready for when his back is turned. And that worked out fine. How many games give you that choice where you can either complete the task you were brought in to do or take over the world and rule it with an iron fist?

Deus Ex was about "here's your objective, here's the world, go" but often TNM adds an extra line to that which is "or do something else, that's fine too". There are huge areas, such as the sewers in the corporate district, that you can just go and explore for the sake of exploring. You might be rewarded for your exploration or you might be killed by a greasal, but either way you're going to smell pretty bad and somebody will notice. At one point I was tasked with heading into some ruins to collect an important ancient artifact. Which I did, eventually, but first I decided to join a cult and help them sabotage another cult by breaking all their fountains.

You also have the freedom Deus Ex gives you in character customisation. You earn skill points as you go and you can use these skill points to improve various abilities such as hacking or using rifles. Once your skill points are used up you never get them back, you can't "unlearn" skills, and there aren't enough skill points in the game to master everything so you have to specialise. By the end of the game you can expect to have maybe mastered one thing. You also, like Deus Ex, pick your augmentations and you can only have so many. Typically every augmentation canister gives you a choice of two and you pick your favourite depending on how you want to play (the best example is "run really fast" or "run silent").

TNM improves on that. The skills are more balanced and more obviously useful than Deus Ex (because they dropped "Swimming" and added "Fists") and the augs have received a few handy updates as well. The most noticable and useful of these upgrades is that you can now upgrade your light aug (read: torch) to not use up any of your limited energy. It's a simple change that makes such a difference to how you play (you never have to crawl blind through a vent again) and TNM is full of things like that.

My biggest gripe with TNM is when that freedom is taken away from you. There are a couple of missions that are very linear and, Half-Life style, the only freedom you get is how to deal with the enemies in your way. This is fine the first time you play it if you've gone for weapon skills, it's a standard FPS and there's no problem with that. Thing is most of TNM contains so many options and different ways of tackling missions that you'll only see about 60% of the game on one play through so you'll want to play it again. This is where the linear missions are game-breaking; they're fun the first time but after that they become a chore and the game could have been improved so much if there was an option to skip the linear missions altogether on your second play through but they're crucial to the storyline.

Again, by way of example, one mission requires you to get press a button in a building right in the centre of the map. First time I played I found a high point, got out a sniper rifle, shot everyone outside the building, planted mines to take care of the bots, went in guns blazing, pressed the button. Second time I stole a car and drove off the top of the car park straight into the side of the building, pressed the button, got out through the vents and used scrambler grenades to turn the bots against the remaining enemies.

However second time I played through an underground facility where you have to go through the same rooms full of traps and automated defenses I resorted to cheat codes just to get through it quicker. I did it fine the first time but the mission offers absolutely nothing on the second play through. What would be better is if, second time you play it, the guy giving you the mission says "you can go into the facility or we could send in a demolitions team while you explore the sewers or something". That particular mission was great the first time I played it; I had built my character in a way that was ideal for taking down robots and other automated defenses and it was a very tense, exciting and fun mission. The second and third times I played it felt like a chore and I just wished it wasn't there.

Then there are the bugs. I started with version 1.0.0 which was consistently unstable due to problems with the music library they hacked into Deus Ex. I didn't get very far. Then I updated to 1.0.2 which was fine until a certain level late in the game where it would consistently crash due to a pathfinding error and, because of my habit of quicksaving all the time, my save would load then immediately crash. 1.0.3 has fixed this but brought up a new bug earlier in the game that crashes after a particular puzzle, but this is a puzzle that can be skipped in favour of brute force so I just got into the habit of beating that particular area in a different way. My advice to you is if you are stuck in a small building after your entry point caves in save there and then before finding your way out. There are two ways to get out, both of which are made clear to you, and only one of them causes the crash.

These problems are to be expected from an amateur production but they only show up here because everything else is so professionally done. Every line in the game is voiced, usually by professionals, and is acted very well. There are many different accents and most characters sound very distinct from one another without many of them sounding silly. There are only a few bits that are badly voiced, you'll find them on YouTube, and on most of it the quality is outstanding. There's even some excellent acting.

The music as well is some of the best I've ever heard in gaming. The new music library they included that caused crashes in version 1.0.0 adds Ogg Vorbis support to Deus Ex so rather than the tracker-based music of old you get some great "real instrument" sounds like orchestral tracks, guitar tracks, etc, in addition to some quality electronic music. Each area has an ambient soundtrack and a combat soundtrack when a fight starts out. There's even one area that has a maximum (depending on your earlier actions) of two characters in the level, besides yourself. Both of these characters are friendly and you have no reason to kill them but if you do decide to murder one of your closest friends in cold blood you are rewarded with an excellent combat track as the other one starts shooting at you. Little touches like that make TNM a great experience with higher production values than many professional games which is why it's a shame that the odd necessary linear map and the occasional jumping puzzle ruin the experience.

It's worth soldiering through (or cheating through) the annoyances though because the end of the game is well worth it. I won't spoil it except to say that most of your decisions throughout the game are accounted for. There are different end sequences for the obvious choices like whether you're saving your friend or planning to rule the world but they change depending on exactly how you go about it and a summary section after the main end sequence shows how your actions have affected many of the minor characters in the game. For example there's a guy in one of the later levels who sits in an entirely optional area, you never have to meet him at all, but if you find him and choose to help him he'll get his own little bit at the end of the game telling you how his life got better because of what you did. In a game with so many options it's astounding that the developers have been able to add a section at the end that wraps everything up so neatly.

You can go through the game without killing a single person (although that's often hard and not usually worth it) or you can kill almost everyone you meet regardless of whether or not they're hostile and it will be accounted for. Characters on whichever side you choose to play on will react to you differently depending on how you speak to them and how many people you decide to kill. The ending when you're playing for the good guys changes quite dramatically whether you shoot first and ask questions later or negotiate like a reasonable human being. And then there is the secret ending and the secrets that lead to it which are very clever and very "meta". Keep an eye out for that.

In addition to the entirely new missions, characters, music, voices and other elements I've already mentioned there are also some new weapons. Main characters in the story often have their own customised weapons that are better than the standard ones you can pick up and tell you a little more about that character if you get hold of them. There are also a few upgrades to the standard weapons, the EMP rockets for the GEP launcher are all kinds of useful, and some entirely new ones. A couple are odd curiosities at best, I've yet to find use for a rifle that makes enemy characters grow until they explode, but there are a couple of really useful ones. The sword that becomes available on your second play through is obscenely powerful and very satisfying to use and the EMP pistol is one of the best weapon ideas and one I'm surprised I've not seen in other games.

TNM is a free download but could quite reasonably be put on store shelves at full price and you'd be unlikely to regret the purchase. If you enjoyed Deus Ex you really must give this a chance. Just don't feel bad about having the cheats turned on the second time you play through it. It has its flaws, as any project this ambitious would, but overall it's an excellent experience and, finally, we have a game worthy of being a true sequel to Deus Ex.

[bobby 55]

Excellent work there Morti. What mod doesn't have a glitch or two? I can only agree with your final few lines. I would definately have paid money for it. Mod of the year certainly. Game of the
year..... it deserves to be. Well done Morti, a balanced review, well written

[Xesum]

That's quite a good review there Morti, Good work.

[Morti]

Thanks, you're very kind.

[Trestkon]

Wow, a very thorough review, Morti You definitely put a lot of work into that thing and it's a great read! Do you happen to have a ModDB account? We could always use more reviews over on our profile

[Hassat Hunter]

Like everyone else; great review!

(get bored more often! )

[Morti]

(get bored more often! )

If only more things happened like that.

"Hey guys, I was bored today so I cured cancer."

[bobby 55]

That would be pretty sweet.

[Made in China]

(get bored more often! )

If only more things happened like that.

"Hey guys, I was bored today so I cured cancer."

Ha, had the exact same thought.

But yeah, it's a very thorough review - and making it spoiler free probably elevates it from the rest of the reviews.

[Morti]

Wow, a very thorough review, Morti You definitely put a lot of work into that thing and it's a great read! Do you happen to have a ModDB account? We could always use more reviews over on our profile

Registered, posted and awaiting moderation.

Thanks everyone for your kind reviews of my review.

[Ashsaver]

Somehow, someone never about some of the boring sidequests at all. hmm.

[bobby 55]

Somehow, someone never about some of the boring sidequests at all. hmm.

Point one, not everyone finds them boring.

Point two, you don't have to do them at all if you don't want to.

[Ashsaver]

Somehow, someone never about some of the boring sidequests at all. hmm.

Point one, not everyone finds them boring.

Point two, you don't have to do them at all if you don't want to.

But you have to do the *spoiler tag"Find the Goat city entrance"

Basically you talk to npc.a then go talk to npc.b then go back to where npc.a was to get certain item, then go back to npc.b and give him the item, after that either continue directly on to the holy melkyflowfree city OR go back to report to npc.a first if you want to stay on good side with npc.a because if you continue on your main quest without reporting back to him, he'll automatically assumes you'd betray him(wow,what a *beep*).

And it's not even just a side quest...

[bobby 55]

Oh! Yeah I suppose, but since it is a progression in the game it's not my definition of a side quest.

[Jonas]

blah

On the other hand you can just kill everybody

Do you realise how open that mission is? If you don't want to play fetch, just... don't.