The game is from Square Enix, and it is designed in the spirit of the popular Windows 10 game Lara Croft GO. However, instead of exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization, Deus Ex GO has you playing the role of a secret agent gathering evidence in a more modern, urban environment.
Available for Windows 10 PC and Mobile, Deus Ex GO challenges your skills at timing, stealth, logic and patience, and it's wonderfully animated. There are more than 50 puzzles to solve as part of the game's main storyline, with time-limited special events. Currently priced at $4.99, Deus Ex GO is an entertaining Windows 10 puzzle game.
Deus Ex GO's primary menu charts out your completed puzzle levels and the next few levels you face. Along the top of the primary menu are navigation buttons to access the game's community puzzles, level editor, store and settings, and you can rate the game in the Windows Store.
When you first launch Deus Ex GO, the game carries you through a series of storyboards that highlight the game's underlying story. You play the role of Secret Agent Adam Jenson, who must use his skills of stealth, combat and espionage to complete more than 50 puzzle levels to search for clues and defeat a terrorist plot. Once the introduction finishes, Agent Jenson finds himself breaching the perimeter of a mansion fortress, and he's challenged by the game's first puzzle level.
There is no tutorial guide to help you sort out gaming features, but it is not difficult to figure out Deus Ex GO. Each puzzle level has a pattern that leads Agent Jenson to an exit portal. Throughout the pattern are dots that represent movements for Agent Jenson and any enemies that might be present.
Movement is turn-based in, and you tap dots to move Agent Jenson toward them. If the Agent comes into view of an enemy guard, the guard rushes towards Jenson in hopes of bashing him into the ground, if it can get within a move of your agent. Jenson needs to move out of the guard's line of sight and avoid the attack. Agent Jenson can attack the guards, but in my experience frontal attacks are not successful. Here is where Jenson relies on stealth to sneak up behind guards to attack them or use cloaking boosts that become available.
Guards can be out maneuvered, but cannons can be trickier dangers to avoid. If you move Agent Jenson into a cannon's line of sight, the cannon fires and the shot is not restricted to the same turn-based movements the guards use. To get around the cannons, you need to position something (perhaps a guard) between you and the weapon. If a hacking boost (computer icon) is available, you can use that to hack into the cannons to disable the weapon or use it to take out enemy guards.
Should you fail to reach the exit portal, the game offers you the option to retry the level or use a hint feature that walks you through the puzzle's solution. Hints are limited and can be replenished through the game's store via in-app purchases or earned during gameplay. You also have an undo button that erases your agent's last move. The undo button is limited, with refills available in the store and via game performance.
Chess-like action
The gaming experience with Deus Ex GO is fun and time consuming. There are milestones within the puzzle levels that unlock clues, and each level is slightly more challenging than the last. New dangers are introduced, and new tactics are required to safely guide Agent Jenson to the exit portal.
There are times you have to repeatedly trace your movements to get an edge on a guard or time the movements to have the guards shield you from enemy canon fire. In many ways, Deus Ex GO plays out much like a game of chess.
While Deus Ex GO has just over 50 puzzle levels to tackle, a level editor lets you create and share your own puzzles, and you can also draw on the community chest of puzzles submitted by other gamers. Needless to say, Deus Ex GO has plenty of gaming opportunities to keep you busy.
There is very little to complain about with this Windows 10 game. I would have liked to have seen a tutorial level available to guide you through the basics, or explain the boosts, but the mechanics of play aren't terribly difficult to sort out. And replaying the levels doesn't seem to get old very quickly.
The graphics look sharp, gameplay is challenging, and overall Deus Ex GO is an excellent Windows 10 game to spend a little down time with.
