Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] So, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (aka DX:HR) has been out for a couple weeks, and undoubtedly you've seen reviews all over the place by now. Of course, as many fans of the series know, no Deus Ex game (even the crappy Invisible War) has been small enough to properly review anything more than its basic mechanics within a week of its launch. That's why here at TG, we let the others charge ahead and write their reviews early - and now we can give you the stuff they all gloss over. In many games, that stuff is all the extras and the goodies and the bonus tweaks - but in the Deus Ex franchise, those extras ARE the game. The original DX was known as an amazingly open-ended choose-your-own-adventure style game wrapped up in a first-person interface, with different early game choices putting you on the same maps with completely different objectives later. Multiple paths crossed in ways that sounded more like a John Grisham meets Michael Crichton novel than a video game, and the "augmentation" style leveling system meant that you could never explore ALL of the paths in one playthrough. The game's plot wrote you in as a pawn between huge world powers, and stepped you in at the shallow end - lending a pound of truth and a bucketload of believability to the feeling of getting mixed up in something far greater. Even its endings left you wondering whether you made the right choice - and I note the plural because there are several different ones. Deus Ex stripped away the "feel good" sense of accomplishment behind your objectives and laughed at you for your optimistic desire to save a world you didn't even understand. I grew to love and hate the story at the same time - amazed at the intricate and believable writing but hating what I felt was a world best described as hope in freefall. Good and bad blended together so well that you could justify almost any action - which was made harder by the fact that you could do much of what you thought about. In the end, the game has sat in my "Top 5" since it came out - never to be toppled as my #2 gameplay experience ever. I've replayed it several times, and each time I find a new thing or try a different approach - and am always rewarded with things I'd not seen the last time through. Now forget that story, here's a new one... Fans of the series will have a lot to look forward to, but let's get one thing straight - DX:HR is a prequel, and it will not require any knowledge at all of the first two games. Though you do get rewarded with a lot of insights into the history of the Deus Ex universe (character ancestors, for example), playthrough of the original is a bonus and will mostly just help you feel instantly at home with the game's mechanics. DX:HR casts you as Adam Jensen, the head rent-a-cop for Sarif Industries - a big biotech company based out of Detroit in the near future. The company has created a tremendous scientific breakthrough called augmentation, which involves the fusing of digital circuits and mechanical "muscles" to a person in order to restore limb function. At the story's opening, the technology is still somewhat new - but by the time you really get into the world, the company has grown tremendously and augmentations are a hot item - and a cause for debate. Some say that it's uncapping our evolutionary power, while others argue that it's ruining everything that it means to be human. There's merits to both sides of the debate, and it doesn't take more than a single mission to understand that there's a downside to "augs" - a need for lifelong treatments by a drug called Neuropozene, which prevents painful (if not fatal) body rejection but is addicting in its own right. Your own augmentations are forced on you by your employer in a lifesaving operation shortly after the start of the game. Sure, they give you some great abilities - but it brings a bit of personality to the "augs or no augs?" debate that you hear all around the world. After all, you weren't given a choice in your augmentation - and being augmented gives rise to some prejudices that must be overcome (by persuasiveness or force) by key figures in the game. It doesn't help that your augs are a "gift" from your employer that can keep you on a short leash - betray him, and the world just became much more dangerous for you. Throughout early wanderings in the Sarif headquarters, you'll stumble on bits of correspondence that let you know they have you just where they want you. It's a chilling feeling, and adds to the "pawn"-like feeling of the original. The rest of the story involves considerable spoilers, as even the introductory mission sets the tone for a variety of sidequests later in the game. If you're a proper fan of the series, you've probably not even watched many of the videos before firing up the game, and if not... well, there are enough rehashes of the story specifics that I don't need to include another one here. Outside of the narrative, the story transpires in "chapters" that you'll only be able to identify in the loading screens. When not on a loading screen, you move from chapter to chapter seamlessly, and you instead feel constrained only to the city you're in, which the game calls "hubs". Each city is filled with people, places, sidequests and also some little extras that don't really do anything except make it feel a lot more alive. The game will reward you for finding these little out-of-the-way spots, which is a neat (if a little immersion-breaking) way of thanking you for taking the time to look around your environments - whether it be a few credits (the game's currency), a couple rounds of ammo, or just a bit of experience. City streets have people on them, most of which have something to say, are individually voiced and well-rendered. Alleys have punks and bums, streets have police and citizens, and the world feels alive. There were even points where trash blew up (realistically) from the ground in alleys. All of these things contribute greatly to the feeling that you're not just in a "filler" space, but in a real place. Even the exits are blocked believably - a car accident fills a Detroit tunnel, complete with a few people yelling at each other and a police officer trying to resolve the dispute. Trains carry you from area to area in a Chinese metropolis, letting you feel like areas that DO get broken up are done so well as to feel believable. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Shoot 'em Up... or, not.][Top Ad] One of the greatest things about the Deus Ex franchise has been the very many ways that you can complete any and every mission in the game. There are options for stealth, for heavy artillery and for good ol' run-and-gun techniques. Whichever you chose, you'd better have a plan to clean up your mess (or make more), as enemies who found tranquilized or killed partners, blown out doors, etc. will always alert the whole place. Though Deus Ex: Invisible War constrained the game world compared to the original (ridiculously so, in fact), even it provided some simple requirements for disposing of bodies and slinking about unseen. DX:HR functions in much the same way, though its scope is very much more like the original. Missions almost always have both a violent and non-violent resolution, and every side mission can be refused. Many of these side missions crop up amid your normal business, but some of them are quite out of the way and are discovered only by going places that you had no business wandering into to begin with. Main mission paths provide numerous (and I use that term specifically) methods to get to your objectives - even the very first mission provides ductwork to crawl through and areas to slink around that can get you most of the way without even seeing an enemy. The trouble is, you have to find them - which is a risky strategy on its own and often involves exposing yourself without being prepared to fight back. Weapons in DX:HR allow you an immense amount of personal choice - from the Doom lover's double-barreled shotgun to my personal favorite, the silenced 10mm pistol. Further to the extremes are rocket launchers, rail guns, crossbows, sniper rifles, and a host of other amazingly potent items, all of which can be enhanced with bonus weapon upgrades that you can find lying about... making no two guns the exact same. Along with the wonderful choice of lethal armaments comes a host of non-lethals as well, including a tranquilizer rifle with a scope for distance and a stun-gun for those up-close-and-personal moments. Knocked out enemies will not come back during a mission (if they're not found by comrades who wake them up, at least), making them just as effective as kills - without the moral issues. If you don't fancy using your weapons (or are out of ammo for the weapon of choice), there's the option of getting down and dirty with your hands at a cost of one cell of energy - which is a much more limited resource in some ways than ammo (we'll cover energy in just a minute). Takedowns can also be either lethal or non-lethal - sneak up behind someone and do a quick tap to knock them unconscious (in a pretty awesome looking scene), or hold the same button to drop a razor blade from your sleeve a la Wolverine and put them down permanently. Either way involves a little finesse, as you need to sneak behind the intended victim to perform the maneuver, but it makes a great option at times and a nice change of pace. It also lets you switch it up between being nice and being mean on-the-fly, no matter what your weapons loadout. Weapons (and ammo that isn't in the clip) take up inventory, which is quite limited in space. Inventory can be upgraded in the augmentation process (more on this shortly), but management will very quickly become key to your gameplay. Fortunately, DX:HR does something no other game in the series did - it provides an auto-manager that rearranges inventory for you to find the absolute best use of space at any point. You can choose to...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

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