Deus Ex

First-person RPGs with an emphasis on stealth and choices in the layout of the world are my shit. Otherwise known as immersive sims, these represent the pinnacle of what games can be to me, and even the ones that don’t entirely set out to be immersive sims share a lot of DNA with them! Deus Ex is one such immersive sim set in 2052 in a vision of America that’s been beset by an epidemic and huge disparities between classes. Flip some numbers around there, and Deus Ex could feasibly (and alarmingly) take place next year. Besides its prescient qualities, Deus Ex is also just one of the most preeminent examples of an immersive sim in the medium. Famously, you could scale a wall in the game by sticking mines to it, jumping on them, and then repeating the process all the way up. If that doesn’t sound like the most ambitious and asinine way of solving a problem, I don’t know what does. You too can climb a mine-laden wall by snagging Deus Ex GOTY Edition for $2.79. Alternatively you can pick up the most recent installments, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, for $3 and $4.49, respectively.