Deus Ex turned 20 years old last week. Despite its age, it remains the pinnacle of the genre it helped create, "immersive sim" role-playing games.

Deus Ex gives the player a variety of tools and sets them loose on the world; something as simple as opening a door might be accomplished by lockpicking, hacking a terminal, luring someone behind the door outside with noise, destroying the door with an explosive charge, or asking around for a key. This degree of freedom adds so much replayability that Deus Ex still feels fresh for me after six playthroughs.

The story starts innocently enough, but quickly sucks the player into a whirlpool of twists and conspiracy theories that keep their momentum from start to finish. The world building of Deus Ex is second to none, with NPCs, newspapers, journals, and the environment itself informing the player of the grim, dystopic future they live in.

If you can see past the early-'00s graphics and campy voice acting, you're liable to get pulled into Deus Ex's world like I was, where you'll figure out why so many games made in the last twenty years share so much of its DNA.

Deus Ex turned 20 years old last week. Despite its age, it remains the pinnacle of the genre it helped create, "immersive sim" role-playing games. Deus Ex gives the player a variety of tools and sets them loose on the world; something as simple as opening a door might be accomplished by lockpicking, hacking a terminal, luring someone behind the door outside with noise, destroying the door with an explosive charge, or asking around for a key. This degree of freedom adds so much replayability that Deus Ex still feels fresh for me after six playthroughs. The story starts innocently enough, but quickly sucks the player into a whirlpool of twists and conspiracy theories that keep their momentum from start to finish. The world building of Deus Ex is second to none, with NPCs, newspapers, journals, and the environment itself informing the player of the grim, dystopic future they live in. If you can see past the early-'00s graphics and campy voice acting, you're liable to get pulled into Deus Ex's world like I was, where you'll figure out why so many games made in the last twenty years share so much of its DNA.