How To Improve Old Games On Windows 10 – Part I

I’ve been on a retro game streak recently and it’s clear that older games are still as popular as ever. I’m talking about games launched around the year 2000 and even before, with hundreds still being available on platforms such as Steam and GOG (Good Old Games). On GOG, many older games that you buy are already patched and tweaked to run on newer operating systems, but the same can’t really be said for Steam. Further modding, however, is a matter for the individual because many mods and tweaks make fundamental changes to games, not only graphically but AI and gameplay-wise. Personally, I’m more of a graphics and texture mod fan, because many of the AI tweaks can take away much of what the original developers intended when they designed the game.

Deus Ex

Deus Ex, launched by Eidos/ION Storm back in 2000 — remember the millennium bug? — is considered a ground-breaking game and is thus considered a classic of the genre (RPG/FPS). In fact, I still have my original CD, pictured above, which I remember buying from PC World, Hereford (UK) back in the day and only last week I installed it on a modern system running Windows 11.

In order to improve how the game runs on modern Windows, the first thing I did was to patch it to the latest official version, 1.112FM (GOTY), so I headed over to Kentie’s website, grabbed the patch, and then the executable which when run gives you options for configuring resolution and other aspects of the game. It also acts as a mod manager which is a very useful feature if you intend to grab loads of mods.

I also downloaded Kentie’s Direct 3D 10 renderer which improves the game yet more by giving even more compatibility for modern systems. Being able to run such an old game in 2560 x 1440 makes a huge difference and is so much more immersive than 1024 x 768.

Deus Ex Mods

There are dozens of mods for Deus Ex as this list from Fandom Spot shows. However, since I also have Deus Ex GOTY Edition* on both GOG and Steam, I discovered that the Revision mod appeared in my library and it’s enhanced by including a small assortment of community mods. *GOTY is Game Of The Year.

You can either download the Revision mod directly from Revision, MODDB, Steam or GOG and as far as I know, all Deus Ex mods are free of charge.

Another interesting mod is GMDX (Give me Deus Ex) which has its own installer and works in conjunction with other texture mods such as HDTP and New Vision.

All these mods bring the game to life in different ways, the most standout feature being sharper and higher resolution textures, but I’m very wary of mods such as GMDX which change the AI and gameplay too much because as far as I’m concerned, Deus Ex’s gameplay is fine as it is.

Deus Ex uses the Unreal engine, so naturally, Kentie’s DirectX 10 renderer can be used on Unreal, another ground-breaking game, this time from 1998. In part two, I’ll run through ways of improving Unreal.

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