TL;DR – Deus Ex: The Fall is a much maligned mobile phone spin-off of Deus Ex: Human Revolution that serves as a prequel to one of the best WRPG’s of the 7th console generation. Much like Mass Effect: Infiltrator, Deus Ex: The Fall serves as a poor example of the series in large part due to the limitations imposed on the gameplay by the fact that it was limited to a touch screen interface. Now that it’s been liberated, the game can stand (or fall) on it’s own merits which are unfortunately fairly slim. While it’s an ambitious project and not terrible, the facial animations are poor, the game is very short and it’s generally not worth worrying about for those who “missed out” on it. With that being said, I still had a decent experience with the game due to it’s bargain-bin pricing and the fact that it’s an ambitious attempt at porting the series to mobile devices. It actually has most of the content you’d expect, but a few significant issues such as the unresolved cliff-hanger and lousy AI kneecap the game. As such I’d give it a tepid recommendation if you really liked Deus Ex: Human Revolution or are morbidly curious, while encouraging everyone else to skip Deus Ex: The Fall and stick with the rest of the series instead.
Quick Note – While this game was initially designed for Android and iOS, it’s only available on PC as of 2018. No console ports were ever released.
Considering the rough-and-tumble reputation that Deus Ex: The Fall received in the brief period of time in which it was relevant, you’d be forgiven for asking why I even bothered paying for it. Of course as my 5 (count em, FIVE) subscribers know I obviously didn’t pay any significant money for the game and it cost me around 150 pennies, but still. I could’ve bought a sausage roll, or a can of Stella Artois or something instead of what is widely considered to be the worst Deus Ex game – much to the relief of Invisible War. As ever my morbid curiosity got the better of me, as I have memories of trying Mass Effect: Infiltrator on my Gen 1 iPad back in the day and I just couldn’t get past the recurring idea that maybe those Android and iOS games from the 7th generation would’ve been fine with a normal control scheme. DE:TF kind of supports my theory, as once you play it on PC (which is now the only option!) it’s not a bad game. In fact if I were the type to dish out scores I’d give it a 6 because I was genuinely disappointed that it abruptly ended after a mere 4 hours of gameplay. Sure 6/10 isn’t a great score, but Deus Ex: The Fall is a valiant attempt at porting a great game to a lousy platform (sorry mobile gamers) and it largely succeeds, with a couple of big fat caveats.
Before diving into the issues though, I think it’s important to consider what’s actually been carried over largely intact. The core gameplay of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided has been ported over, with a decently sized weapon roster, fully functional weapon upgrades, levels that have multiple routes through them, unlockable augmentation upgrades that enable further routes and the lethal/non-lethal split for combat encounters. The game also retains the dialogue system and it’s associated upgrade, alongside e-books, a fully working port of the hacking mini-game and decent stealth gameplay. Of course there are some limitations such as some missing augmentation upgrades, smaller levels, less multi-choice dialogues and the like but the core systems are largely here and immediately identifiable. So if the core systems are fine, what’s wrong with DE:TF? Surely we should all be DTF (Down To Forgive) an ambitious and affordable game that successfully carries across most of the gameplay systems to a weaker platform of systems.
Well the first and most forgivable of the game’s issues would be the graphical limitations that come from it being designed first and foremost for mobile platforms over a condensed development cycle of only a year. While the game generally looks fine, it’s pared back significantly from it’s bigger brethren and the most noticeable cut back has been to the facial animations, with hair and eyes looking particularly janky. A considerably larger issue with the game that’s very quickly made apparent is how small each area is, from the single over-world hub that’s split into 5 areas and multiple buildings each with 0 overlap, to each of those various buildings that often feature multiple floors that are again split up by loading screens. This wouldn’t be an issue, but these areas have distinct AI and as such if you’re alerted in a building you can often just sprint past every enemy and then enter the next area. Alternatively if you take the stealthy route, you’ll often only have to deal with between 4 to 8 enemies between each loading screen. Sure the game remembers if you took down or avoided the enemies, to the point of even saving their alert status but it’s still a significant limitation. On the subject of the AI, it’s really terrible and has myriad issues. The stealth detection system doesn’t quite work right half the time and enemies manage to be both blind and surprisingly aware at the same time. Even if you’ve been detected though, the enemy is incredibly stupid and can often by tricked by simply moving slightly or even just remaining totally still on various occasions.
Perhaps the biggest problem faced by the game though is that it’s both incredibly short, with a run-time between 3 and 5 or maybe 6 hours for completionists. Short games have their place of course, but the real spoiler for Deus Ex: The Fall is that it ends on a totally unresolved cliff-hanger with a vague “TO BE CONTINUED” which comes almost as a bit of a shock. There’s even a warning that you won’t be able to finish any side quests in Hub #1 if you proceed which is true because the entire game just ends with a short cut-scene. The promise of a whole new batch of quests, essentially entire narrative and even a subplot featuring a nemesis from our protagonist’s recent past all end up going nowhere. To this day if you boot up the game there’s still an option for “additional content” on the title screen which when opened promises more content coming soon, even though it never will. So while the plot and characters are decent and make use of a rich setting, it never really gets to go anywhere and indeed will never go anywhere. You’re left with the first third of a potential game and everything, from the balancing to the story has been crafted with the intention that there will be considerably more content than what actually got made.
There are some other weird little niggles with the game that belie it’s roots as a mobile game, such as the fact that enemy “corpses” begin to disintegrate around 10 seconds after they “die” whether they’ve been taken down in a lethal or non-lethal fashion. This means that there’s no risk to having enemies be woken up by their colleagues, while non-lethal takedowns still give more XP so you get the reward without much of the risk. There’s also an in-game store, which is accessible from anywhere at any time via the menu and which enables you to buy basically anything. I can only assume the iOS/Android versions let you buy things with REAL MONEY but in the PC version it basically means that at any point you can just some more ammo, or an EMP grenade or whatever. You’re never really short of cash either, unless you’re aiming for the big ticket items so resource management isn’t much of a concern. As previously stated though the game was clearly balanced around having 3 separate acts, so I don’t think it’s possible to gain every unlock or item within the relatively small world of DE:TF. Finally it should probably be mentioned that the game has barely any enemy variety, you’ve got guards, guards with shotguns, guards with assault rifles, some rare robots (I counted 3), two turrets and a type of guard that goes invisible when they spot you. Oh and there’s a big boss robot. So basically 98% of the time you’re up against normal guys who have crap AI and anyone you knock out melts into pixels shortly after “death”. So it’s a pretty easy game, with the only real risk being that you could get caught while reading an in-game book as doing this doesn’t pause the game.
In conclusion then Deus Ex: The Fall is an ambitious game, that ports over all the core systems while botching the execution in various ways. It has a good story that abruptly ends a third of the way in, decent graphics that are let down by some poor posing and details, adequate combat that’s let down by poor enemy AI and variety, and so on. There are some decent story beats and the occasional cool moment, so I can’t be too mean on the game especially as it was made by a small team with a tight schedule for platforms with limited power. In fact the resulting game in the form of DE:TF is actually pretty impressive considering they gave about a dozen people a year to bash this out. Unfortunately though it’s hard to recommend, especially at it’s normal price because it’s just not finished. In spite of my inability to recommend the game however, I still had some fun with it and with the right mindset towards bargain bin gaming I’d say this is one to considering giving a shot. It’s nowhere as good as the main games, but of course it bloody isn’t. Most people will get this in a Deus Ex franchise bundle, and once you’ve played the bigger games this one is a fun little diversion. If you haven’t played the rest of the series, or take a dim view on deeply flawed games then obviously give this one a pass. But I personally have played much worse games, some of which I’ve even “reviewed”!