So you're thinking about buying Deus Ex: The Fall on Steam

This means one of two things:

1) You've never played a Deus Ex game and you're looking for somewhere to start
2) You're a fan of the Deus Ex series.

I suppose it's also possible that you've played a Deus Ex game before and didn't like it, but then you either like being continuously disappointed or you do things you hate on purpose so you can complain about it on the internet. In either case, you probably shouldn't spend $10 on Deus Ex: The Fall and you probably shouldn't be using the internet.

Now let's say you fall into the first category I have up there. I can say with some confindence that Deus Ex: The Fall isn't for you. If you're a typical hardcore gamer then the obvious start is with the first Deus Ex. I don't even know why you're here. Seriously, everyone knows that Deus Ex is one of the best games ever. Go play it. Go. Now if you're more of a casual gamer, looking for an easier, less "old-school" story telling experience, then go play Deus Ex: Human Revolution (director's cut or not, all they really did was make the game easier). That's not to say that Deus Ex: Human Revolution is at all a casual game. It's a wonderful stealth-shooter with really great voice acting, writing, level design, you name it. It's just that HR has things like quest markers and an active level map. Go play those games and come back when you fall into category 2.

For all you remaining, let me try to break the game up by parts starting with the one you're probably most concerned with:

Quality of Port If you've been living under a Samsung Galaxy for the last few months, you may have been surprised to hear about a new Deus Ex game that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. That's because it's a port. Of an Ipad game. Yes, that's right. Eidos Montreal made the next Deus Ex game for the Ipad. I was almost as disappoint when they announced it as I was when the announced the Human Revolution - Director's Cut for the WiiU. But just like that, it's on Steam now, so everything it fixed right? Not really. The port isn't perfect. Sure it came with things like variable resolution, but keys are complete un-remappable. Also something was lost moving between touch controls and the mouse as I found myself having to click things several times and dance around like an idiot, waiting for the game to let me hack a panel without talking to the NPC next to it. The worst issue of all by far though, was the lag. Not input lag, but lag like I was playing a multiplayer game. Sometimes, I'd just pop back to where I was facing a second ago. When you combine that with the PS2 level graphics, it got to be incredibly disorienting. Overall, I'd give it a 4 out of Saints Row 2.

Story Deus Ex: The Fall picks up after the events of a novel by James Swallow called Deus Ex: Icarus Effect. And much like any canonology's expanded universe, it references events you may have never heard of and doesn't explain anything. Playing Human Revolution is pretty much all you'll need, but references to things like NSF and Janus may leave some more casual fans scratching their heads. I never read Icarus Effect and maybe everything is a little bit more hashed out there, but The Fall is pretty hallow. You play as Ben Saxon, former SAS member turned Belltower operative, recruited by the bad guys from Human Revolution. One day he learns the dark truth and decides he doesn't want to kill people for no reason anymore. Why? I don't know. Ben Saxon is pretty much "a soldier." He can never be out of character because he doesn't have one. You have a side kick whose name is Anna or something. She has at most 5 minutes of screen time and is basically Pritchard 2.0 only she's nice to you and doesn't actually do anything. Together you try to get your perscription filled and save the world. At least I assume you save the world. This is only part 1 of a longer story, the second part to which, I hope comes out for Android. I'll give the story makes-sense out of read-the-expanded-universe.

Gameplay Despite its mouse and keyboardless origins, the gameplay is all right. You vault over cover instead of jumping, but other than that, it plays almost exactly like Human Revolution. There are actually certain elements that I thought were better than HR. For one, there are more than one type of every gun that you can purchase at anytime using Ben Saxon's 3D printer augment (that's not mentioned in the game, but I can only assume that's the explanation). There are different shotguns, different assault rifles, plasma rifles, even a gold plated pistol. Each weapon has it's own stats. It would be pretty sweet if the game gave you enough money to try them all out. Additionally, the British army is way better at picking augmentations than Sarif. All the useless augments are gone and some are broken up, so you can better pick the augmentations you want. Best of all, there's an augment that allows more than one dead power cell to fully recharge. I guess Ben cares more about his candy bar intake than Adam. Other than that, it's pretty much the same as Human Revolution. Open world, do some side quests, cover and shoot, hack computers. The usual. The one bad and frankly really frustrating change (which I assume was a simplification for the sake of the Ipad) was the change in the AI. When it comes to stealth games, there are two kinds of bad AI, the kind that will never see you and the kind that will attack you from miles away anytime you leave cover. The Fall is the latter. The grace period between a bad guy seeing you and attacking you is way shorter than in HR and when one guard becomes hostile, everyone does whether he shot at you or not. The game has a quick save feature (if you're a casual), but you only get one save at all, so you really have to sneak carefully. Overall, the gameplay gets a gold-plated-pistol out of 10.

Graphics and Visuals I'm not going to linger on the graphics too long. It was an Ipad game afterall, and like I said, it was PS2 comparable. All the actors were incredibly stiff and some of the NPC's looked like burn victims, but that was pretty funny so I'll let it slide. As far as the visuals go, almost everything was cut and pasted from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Same robots, same posters, same Belltower guards. Even Ben Saxon's takedown animations were the same as Adam Jensen's. This of course leads to two conclusion:

1) Adam Jensen and Ben Saxon studied at the same dojo
2) Hidden arm-swords come standard issue with all augmentations.

Considering that Ben Saxon has only one augmented arm, it really leads you to wonder how effective a lot of Jensen's takedowns would be for Ben. There are a few new kinds of areas in the game which manage to be mostly original while still fitting in so that's a plus. I guess there isn't much to say really. If you like the way Human Revolution looked, you'll like the way The Fall looks. Except for all those burn victims. Ctrl-v out of 10.

Level Design It's, well, it's pretty good. Different ways to sneak through areas (except one or two loading zones which are unique entrances to areas) and while all the textures are similar to past games, none of the actual level layouts were too similar. Pretty cool. No sewer level out of 10.

Voice Acting Oh my god JC a bomb out of 10.

All in all, the differences in gameplay and level design made The Fall a neat little 3-hour Deus Ex experience. Can't say it was great, but I had fun playing it. If you like the canon enough to drop $10 on a "neat little 3-hour Deus Ex experience" do it. Else wait for a sale.