Project Snowblind Review: The Lost Deus Ex Game.

This is “Deus Ex 3”. The original version. As you can see, there’s some issues, so it’s not “Deus Ex” anymore. I’ve had quite a few people tell me not to touch this game, and I get why now. But I always wondered, how this went from being a “Deus Ex” game into… this.

There’s some explaining to do. THIS is “Project Snowblind”. GRUNT: "Ahh!" Before I get into the game, I think it’s fair to tell you what happened, and why this exists. As you probably know, “Deus Ex” was a game that was released in 2000. It’s considered one of the best RPGs ever made.

The graphics weren’t exceptional for the time, and the style of trench coats and sunglasses were left behind with the “Matrix” movies and Columbine, but the story really held up. It has branching missions, open-world gameplay, and the plot was complex.

You were dealing with ideas like information control, terrorism and the military-industrial complex. It goes beyond holding up, to the point where these ideas are more relevant today than they were then. So, it was good, and they made a sequel 3 years later, called “Invisible War”.

It took place 20 years after “Deus Ex”, and was about Ezio Auditore blowing up Chicago. Besides Chi-town, the other big bomb was the sales and reception, because, unlike the first game, it was made for the Xbox. While it looked better, virtually everything else was worse.

It wasn’t a bad game, just… average. “Average” wasn’t gonna cut it for a “Deus Ex” sequel. The project director later said just how much they had screwed up the game. Developing primarily for console was an issue, but they had a lot of other problems.

So, the series lost fans who thought it was being dumbed down. Well, during this time, a third game was being developed, called “Deus Ex: Clan Wars”. It was designed as an action-focused game with multiplayer, but after they got the numbers on how bad “Invisible War” did, they rebranded it completely.

But they did this pretty late in development, so a lot is familiar. So, let’s get into it: “Call of Deus Ex”. The story would have taken place between the two existing “Deus Ex” games. China is undergoing Cultural Revolution: Electric Boogaloo, and not a lot of people are gonna survive it.

This is told to us by a “Command & Conquer” intro. And this direction kind of reminds me of “Metal Gear” games. And that won’t be the last time that comes up. The only ones there to stop it are an international peace keeping coalition, called UNATC… The Liberty Coalition.

So, you’re one of those guys. This game has no shortage of cutscenes, and they’re competent. It’s here you’re introduced to the younger version of Chip Hazard, named Nathan Frost. He’s being debriefed on how the country could escalate into civil war, which happens literally 15 seconds later.

“And every minute you…” Love that “Kung-Fu Panda” soundtrack… Then the game just sort of… starts. Before I could really even take in the graphics, I got a notification, saying that throwing a grenade was Shift, so I had to change controls. And there's… buzzing… It even affects the voice I recorded separately.

What is this?! At least, it’s only in the menu. This game has weird audio. Watch me move between the two music triggers. Jesus… Sometimes, cutscenes won’t even play audio – they’ll just play the environmental effects around it. This is awkward… Even if it works out, you’re not missing much with the music.

I didn’t add this in. KANAZAWA: “You are the future, lieutenant.” KANAZAWA: "The future of war. The future of man." Alright, that’s enough of that. The graphics are pretty bad for the time. This was also the end of the console generation, since the 360 came out a few months later.

I find the art direction interesting at times. After all, this was gonna be a “Deus Ex” game. Right in the first level, they pull out stuff like the walker robots. But even though it reminds me of “Deus Ex”, this is not it. The first level is generic shooter #2165, even with the turret section.

Finally, the mission ends when Nathan saves one of his friends from a… bomb? That’s a straight up bomb! Oh my God… Since he’s already wounded, U-NOT-CO fills him with experimental military augmentations. Kind of interesting that “Human Revolution” started this way too.

What it did NOT have was an 80’s life story monologue. PITNEY: “…gonna patch you up in no time, just hang in there!” PITNEY: “…gonna patch you up in no time, just hang in there!” NATHAN: "How did I get here?" NATHAN: "Growing up, listening to dad’s horror stories about the war, I never thought I’d join the army." NATHAN: "Yet here I am.

What’s left of me, anyway…" ♪ Out here in the fields ♪ ♪ I fight for my meals ♪ NATHAN: “My brother was a soldier. He died on duty.” ♪ I get my back into my living ♪ NATHAN: “My brother was a soldier. He died on duty.” Okay, this is his only monologue, and it doesn’t matter, so let’s skip it.

I kind of wonder how much was cut out in development, since this whole beginning is building up for some kind of plot. Frost being augmented is basically the same scenes from “Robocop”. Most of what remains kind of reminds me of Verhoeven films. Well, maybe if people replaced their limbs with bionical parts… So, once you’re augmented, you’re set free into open levels, to stop the evil Chinese general.

But they rushed you out, so some of your powers will just turn on over time. And don’t you worry about getting lost. They gave you probably the most obnoxious objective marker in all of history. Thank God it toggles… There’s a lot of named characters, and they all talk AT you, but there’s no conversation wheel or anything.

It just makes me more and more curious what the original plan for this game was. So, they gave you some powers. You can crawl in vents, stack boxes and hack items with your… Icepick? Ohh… So, are things gonna get better, now that it’s opened up? Well… kind of.

The issue is that “Snowblind” is very, VERY confused. Let’s get into some more details, so you know what I’m talking about. NATHAN: “Oh, yeah…” The first issue is: they gave me the power to slow down time and see through walls, but I really didn’t feel a need to use it, besides curiosity.

Which is because of the difficulty. Or lack of it… Enemy weapons barely seem to hurt you. Even heavy-duty stuff, like the turret. And this is before even finding all the health upgrades! Plus, you get a shield in the same level that makes it even harder to die.

Well, if THAT’s not enough, you could pick up some cyborg sips, and if you die, they will automatically revive you. WRAITH KING: “The Wraith King reigns again!” At this point, you might be yelling at the screen: “Just turn up the difficulty!” But I can’t! This is it! This IS the difficulty! Every weapon in the game has an alt-fire mode, but I had to load up a level and test them out, since I never found the need to use most of them.

The sniper rifle can mind-control people. But I never needed that! This isn’t a war, this is having a machine gun in a boxer rebellion! But it gets even worse, because the AI is terrible. Sometimes, you have to run in their face to get them to shoot you! “AH! Ripped my fucking pants!” There’s not really a point to giving me cool weapons and abilities, if I can’t really use them properly.

It didn’t help that first few levels were streets, hallways and sewer tunnels. When I got to the parking garage, everything was explained. Listen to this: PITNEY: "Proceed past the garage level and get to those cannons." PITNEY: "Security’s gonna be tight.

I’d advise a stealthier approach." He advises stealth, so I try that out, but moments later, he tells me to hijack cars. PITNEY: “Get creative with 'em.” I didn’t even know you could drive vehicles. What is this game? So, I got creative with the vehicles, but then, right as I’m going up the next ramp: PITNEY: "Lieutenant, don’t overlook hackable security elements." PITNEY: "You could do a lot of damage, confiscating one of their turrets! Just a thought." So, I need to be sneaky again, so I can hack into a terminal.

Ehh… okay… But, sitting in front of that vent is the first drivable military vehicle in the game. Even if you hack the turrets, they get blown up immediately by robots, and the alarms go off. It feels like you need to use the vehicle here, no matter what.

The alarms just alert enemies you’re around. They don’t call in reinforcements or really make things harder. And a lot of areas are already alerted, so it doesn’t do anything! So, now I’ve gone into a murdering rampage in a parking garage. PITNEY: "Hey, if you get a chance, try picking up some intel while you’re sneaking around." PITNEY: "Maybe you can overhear something useful." Wat? Okay, so I snuck past three people walking around… PITNEY: “Last security point.

Take it slow, Nathan. Nice and easy. Reflex boosting wouldn’t be a bad idea.” WHY? If there are three soldiers, which I slaughter by the dozens outside, he wants me to sneak past them. But if it’s fortified by soldiers, robots and anti-tank turrets, he wants me to run right in! And it doesn’t even matter, because the best and fastest way is to just go through normally! All the new upgrades and weapons are almost impossible to miss.

There’s no reason to explore or crawl around in vents. There’s no collectibles I know of – it’s just pointless. You have to kill tons of people in this game, so there’s no reason to go around. In fact, some of the vents are just dead ends. This PUNISHES you for looking around! You know what the name of this level is? The one you’re encouraged to sneak around in, or then get in cars? “Rampage”.

This is a mess… The game suggests one thing, the design tells me another, but experience is saying: just run forward and shoot everybody. If the enemies weren’t pushovers, and you could sneak past the guarded areas, this would make sense. But it doesn’t.

What if I sneak around and get caught? What if I just run into landmines? WRAITH KING: “Back again!” I just gotta keep going… The next mission is destroying weapon emplacements. I’m gonna state now that there’s not really any interesting missions. Unbelievably, my favorite mission was the sewer level, because it had invisible enemies with damaging weapons.

I actually had to use and manage my abilities here. I had a real chance of dying and respawning at a save station. I was surprised, because it felt more like playing a video game. By far the worst part about “Snowblind” is that there are SIGNS of a good game.

Any part where it’s pretending not to be a shooter is miserable. Ultimately, what kept me going was just seeing what there was. “Snowblind” actually has a lot of equipment and abilities. It kind of surprised me. You can use the hack tool in combat to take over a robot.

It’s a lot more engaging than shutting down turrets. You can drive a mech around, as long as you don’t get stuck in anything. You can cast a lightning spell for… some reason. There are poison grenades to gas the Chinese with. And since the UN has those, that means Alex Jones is right about something else.

ALEX JONES:"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! A-A-AHA-A!!" There are little spider bots you can deploy to hunt people down. They’re small, quick, and don’t do a ton of damage, but they’re a neat idea. The cloak you unlock is pretty ridiculous. You can touch people with it, and they won’t react to you.

Once you get it, you can walk past most of the game. Just turn it on and go there. But I didn’t do that. Like I said before, there’s some interesting weapons that are just wasted on the enemies. Some seem kind of redundant. You can shoot lightning out of your hands, like you’re playing an “Elder Scrolls” game, so you don’t really need a lightning gun.

The most useless weapon is the Harris-Teeter-brand version of the “Half-Life” gravity gun. I think that’s the only time I used it. One cool idea they had was the railgun. You don’t get it until near the end of the game. But when you do, it shoots right through walls.

The final boss is pretty pathetic, but the cutscene buildup is… interesting. “General Yan Lo, permission to terminate unit?” It’s got that “Metal Gear” feeling. YAN LO: "No." This dude was basically turned into a living RadioShack against his will, so now he thinks technology makes all humans weak, and we need a new Stone Age.

Yeah, right… Back to the Shadow Realm, or whatever Chinese hell is… So, that’s the game. “Project Snowbli…” “Nathan, we got choppers coming in from the east!” NATHAN: “A and B teams, regroup and flank that outside wall!” “Wait, they’re Coalition birds!” NATHAN: “Chung!” CHUNG: “That’s Sergeant Major Chung! Alive and kicking, lieutenant!” Oh, yeah, he was around for a level… So, even though that was a final boss , you get a mission right after to take down some SAM-sites.

Didn’t we do that already? CHUNG: “Those SAM-sites! Now!” There are still four levels, and they could have put them anywhere in the campaign. The final mission is blowing up the enemy facility and escaping with your life. Then, and only then, it’s finally over.

The final cutscenes are okay, but the credits are hilarious! It’s a montage of characters you’ve barely interacted with, during a bunch of scenes… not from the game. It’s like: “Yeah… Remember all these great moments… that didn’t happen?” I think the game might have broken me, and I’m going crazy, because I have no idea who most of these people are! It’s just played so heroically… And I don’t know who this guy even is! And we can’t forget the memorial for the great characters we’ve lost! Ah-h! You could say that the ending is justified, because it’s a sprawling campaign, but that’s not the case here.

I explored almost everything. I was also going back to re-record parts of levels, or showcase things. You know what my total playtime was, after all of that? 4 hours. But that was only the singleplayer! After all, this was gonna be “Deus Ex: CLAN Wars”, right? We gotta look at the multiplayer.

Besides, we know there is neat stuff here, maybe it will work better in multiplayer? Well, the online got shot down only about 3 years after release or so. It’s hard to tell the exact date, since there’s no real announcement for it. It’s a shame, because it could be an alright arena shooter, but I’ll never know! The only things I have to go on are looking at reviews and gameplay of the multiplayer.

Wait, why are these so high? This seemed like a pretty solid 4-6 to me. “Gamespot” gave it great scores, saying: “It’s like “Deus Ex”, but fun”? The weirdest part is: a lot of these are saying the multiplayer is the weakest part, so I’m missing something.

Yeah, THIS isn’t the good part! All the critics liked the campaign! This was puzzling me for a while, but I think I got it. This game came out right before everybody loved “Call of Duty”. The multiplayer was really praised, but a lot of people also praised the singleplayer for feeling like a movie.

This certainly got THAT going on… Where it failed in everything else, the presentation was good. It gave an appearance of having deep gameplay options, but… it wasn’t really there. I can only say that I think it tricked everybody. Or maybe there’s something I’m missing.

There were lots of games with cutscenes before. I just don’t know. So, that’s it! A rebranded “Deus Ex” game that showed where the games’ industry was going. I can’t really recommend it, unless you’re a “Deus Ex” superfan, who really wants to see this.

If it’s anything, it’s a weird little curiosity. Now, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to review “Elite Dangerous”, but I’m probably gonna wait until the Horizons Season Pass thing is done, before I do that. But it will be coming! And in the meantime I’ll be looking in the comments for more requests.