The world depicted in 2027 is as complex and evolved as that of Deus Ex, moreover its complexity sometimes surpasses the Deus Ex universe, providing the player a brand new level of game play's nonlinearity, in-game interaction and detail.

The level of meticulous detail evokes in player almost real world experience. This prodigal discovery could be only explained by level design — the developer of 2027 modification draws an attention to the real world objects reference that you can readily imagine yourself walking down the streets of Moscow, even though you may never have been to the city. Due to the immense design of represented objects, it seems that every small detail has a meaning, which could potentially affect the whole game play experience — indeed, such an accuracy adds a mimetic value to the real world imitation in 2027 modification, and by virtue of this fact, contributes to the concept of “emergent game play” of which Ion Storm has dreamed since the beginning.

Furthermore, level design is not only detailed, but also very balanced — the seminal attention paid to even small aspects of city environment does not ruin the aesthetical pleasures of spatial recognition. Contrary to many existing Deus Ex modifications (like Red Sun or Zodiac), 2027 does not abuse the geometrical symmetry — it is as asymmetric as real world is. The item placement is well thought through — you will always find items where they belong — there's plenty of investigative elements for those who want to play it that way (in this manner 2027 resembles the notorious Cassandra mod). The non-linearity of game play is echoed in the high interactivity of items — besides standard carriers of information (datacubes, newsletters, terminals, personal computers, books) you can extract a lot of useful information from items located in offices.

Being a true Deus Ex mod, Project 2027 inherits the model of alternative goal solutions: you can work either for the militari or hackers, bribe, hack or kill people; you can infiltrate the desired location using a lockpick, a multitool, stealing a “door-lock” code, or just finding a hidden route.

There are many hidden or abandoned places and your exploration is always awarded by exploration skill bonus rewards. Much alike to Deus Ex, hidden places are not so easy to find — I would even say, that they are much harder than in original places. However, visiting the secret hideouts is a benefit feature of your playing experience.

From the technical point of view, the 2027 modification is the true heir to Deus Ex, but it still has some new extra cool add-ons and implementations. The authors of this mod has spent a lot of time to overwrite classes inherited from the original game. As the result — the player are given a totally new interface. Not to mention that 2027 — in contrary to existing modifications — has unique voice acting.

When you will be playing this game, you will be most certainly surprised that most of the game play's elements behave the same way you have already experienced in Deus Ex. Your previous Deus Ex gaming experience will handle your 2027 progress. Like in a famous Stanislavsky's dictum “If you have a rifle on the wall in the first act, it will fire in the last act”, when you see a vent valve in the sewer, you somehow realize that it must be turned off for the purpose you might not even yet be aware of.

I assume you have seen the welfare ideology-driven CNN documentaries concerning the doomed state of post-soviet Russia — then perhaps you may easily recall somehow the gruesome and alienating image of Moscow city, over-crowded with stranger-looking people, hopelessly roaming the streets in the search of an economical deadlock exit; perhaps you can even revive in your memory the stereotypes of Russia — according to them, in Russia, bears stalk the streets; Russian people wear only fur hats; drunk Mafia Russians shoot each other with machine-guns etc. But this is not the world where 2027 mod events take place. To be more precise the mod is all about being a Russian in the near future – and besides a strange and dark cyberpunk dystopian world, typical for the original game world settings, it includes the atmosphere filled with Russian flavors. Thus, 2027 modification aims first at conceptualization of the perceived near future of Russian social ambience (life, culture, governance, economics) in terms of cyberpunk. In this way, the story behind this mod perfectly suits the game design.

The plot of 2027 mod — or in other words, the chain of causation which dictates that game play events are somehow linked, and that they are therefore to be depicted in relation to each other — all this is organized around using chapters of the game play story. Each of 4 chapters reflects a certain part of all the events which are to be depicted in a game narrative and which are connected by means of a plot: technically speaking , each chapter entails 2—4 locations which are logically divided into levels and sublevels. As in original game, the game-progress depends on achievement of goals received by the protagonist. And as far as it concerns non-linearity of game, your game play flow will directly depends upon the choices you have made prior to it.

You play a biologically modified mercenary/hacker, (depending on how you decide to develop your game style with the character), seeking for information about a mysterious project “Titan”. In the alpha version of mod you start your walkthrough in Moscow, you visit interesting places, meet Russian people and sometimes in order to achieve goal (and skill bonus as well) kill them. You are offered alternative (but not contradictory) jobs by gangsters and hackers. As you will progress the game, you will be given a catching story and branching game play within the general plot of the MJ12 and Illuminati conspiracies in the pre-apocalyptic world of 2027.