While Deux Ex’s JC Denton wanders Liberty Island at his own pace, methodically picking off NSF terrorists (or are they?) amid a huge open space and approaching the HQ building from any number of angles after any number of hours might have passed, Jo Dark’s knocked out two guards before she even hits the floor of the dataDYNE building. But what proves even more memorable, about the game itself, is the high-camp tone and giddying pace of it all. Ducking under laser alarms, pistol-whipping unsuspecting guards, stealing sensitive documents and materials, hacking bots, engaging in all-out firefights – and all potentially within a five-minute sequence. What proves memorable about Jo is the sheer breadth of her actions. What proves even more memorable, about the game itself, is the high-camp tone and giddying pace of it all. Eleven more months is a long time, but a lot’s going to have to happen in order for Rare to come out of this looking like Nostradamus. However, based on the first few weeks of January at least (this article was written towards the end of that month), it was spectacularly wrong about what the world would look like in the year 2023. It was definitely more cartoonish and overtly ‘fun’ than Ion Storm’s Deus Ex, which was released alongside Perfect Dark in 2000, but Rare’s game was no less serious about giving the player options. An array of mines, explosives, experimental alien weaponry, and outlandish melee objects gave you a real artist’s palette of weaponry. Sitting in the arsenal alongside traditional if fictional firearms like the KF7 Special and the ZZT were freewheeling, bonkers concepts like the Laptop Gun – utterly deadly in multiplayer – and the Psychosis Gun, an entity still not officially recognized in psychiatry manuals, which warps the target’s sense of reality and thus renders them harmless. This was a game that expanded the run-and-gun (and occasionally laser stuff with your watch) toolset of Pierce Brosnan into something that seemed immersive and sim-literate.

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