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Going into Deus Ex: Human Revolution, there wasn’t much expectation from my end. The original Deus Ex was a revolutionary game that really defined the RPG/FPS hybrid genre and went on to be one of the best games in history. Knowing that, it would be hard to say that Deus Ex: Human Revolution would live up to the legend that it once started. Invisible War, the sequel to the original, clearly did not fit the bill and that was mainly because the game was built with the console gamer in mind. I feared that Deus Ex: Human Revolution would suffer from the same fate.

I was clearly wrong.

Prepare the Beer Goggles

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the prequel to the original Deus Ex. Set about 20 years prior to the events in Deus Ex, DE:HR starts off during a time where human augmenting was in its primitive stage with not-so high tech mechanical augments as opposed to the nanotechnological augments explored later in Deus Ex. If you don’t know what the hell any of this means, that’s fine because you can easily jump into the storyline without having any prior knowledge or experience with Deus Ex. The game places you behind Adam Jensen, a security guy who ends up getting roughed up during an invasion and forced into getting the Robo Cop treatment. Brought back to life and being Sarif Industries’ gofer dog, you’re sent off doing missions to help figure out just what the hell is going on and probably saving someone from trouble, one way or another.

DE:EX works much like an RPG. You have your main mission line which progresses through the story and then you have all these side missions. Completing these missions will net you some rewards such as credits and experience points. Experience points will level you up and will give you access to praxis points. Each praxis point acts much like a talent point that can be distributed to the different augments that you have access to. Each of these augments are unique and bring significant chances to the gameplay. These can range from having a Metal Gear Solid like radar which displays line of sight to being able to land from many stories high without breaking a sweat. Depending on how and what you augment can largely depend on how fast you can access these praxis points and what kind of play style you wish to adapt.

Just don't copy these augments though.

This is definitely is one of DE:HR’s strong points: it adapts well to your play style. The game is a first person shooter but it makes it clear that you can go through the game guns blazing or hiding and sneaking without ever firing a single shot. This is done well by the intuitive cover system that is usually found in third person shooters. While very useful in seeing what’s around the corner and to provide cover during fire, I never really felt forced to have to put my back against the wall all the time; something that I feel most games with a cover system seem to abuse. The game offers an array of weapons to either knock out or straight up kill your adversaries. If you want to get up close and personal, you also have the option to physically knock out or slice open anyone who gets in your face. While this does show a very nice (or gruesome) cutscene, note that there is a resource meter that will restrict you from abusing this again and again. While the cooldown is not slow to the point where you’ll rarely use it, it is slow enough to prevent you from clearing up an entire room. For those occasions though, you can augment the Typhoon system and kill off enemies within an 8 meter distance with one press of a button.

Don't like anyone in particular? Kill them off with style!

The freedom of a typical RPG much like Oblivion or Fallout is present here, though the complete openness that is offered by those games might be a more closed off than one would hope. While the game is not completely open world, you do have the opportunity to explore, hack, punch, shoot and mingle anywhere you want. This also means that you are given a lot of options as to how you want to approach your missions. Do you want to just go through the front and go balls out? How about sneaking behind the backdoor? Perhaps run through the sewers and pop a surprise to everyone? Maybe bribe someone to keep things kosher? The possible outcome to some missions can also warrant a replay as different outcomes could occur depending on how you handle it. Even if you’re not on a mission, there are plenty of things to explore in the city hubs that you will be running around in. And heck, if you really wanted to, you can punch anyone that you see as long as you’re ready for any repercussions that could happen.

You "could" punch this guy if you really wanted to.

The choices in the game does give players that great freedom but I also felt like most of these decisions does not affect the outcome of how the story plays out in the end. It’s still a very linear story no matter how you bend it with maybe a few dialogue changes but even a lot of games arguably are like that: Mass Effect for example. This can be a good thing as you don’t feel too inclined to have to pick a certain path to play the game. Like a human, you can be all selfless and helping the needy one day and then decide to be a complete douchebag the next day. This actually feels very liberating to know this that you do have this freedom to really do whatever the hell you want. You don’t always have to make people’s lives miserable but you can easily go back to it if you felt like it.

For how nice the city looks, it would be sad to just screw up someone's day in here.

This falls true for the game play as well. If you really wanted to go through the start of the game like a ghost and be stealthy, you can do that. If you want to switch it up later on to kill everything on sight, you can do that without having to make too much effort to adjust. You can’t refund your praxis and redistribute your augments but you won’t feel the need to. You may need to make a few switches in terms of weapon choice but you will never like you’re obligated to stay with one method of playing throughout your playthrough.

This is also what I feel is another strength of this game: you do have restriction and obligations that may not be from the game itself but rather limitations stemmed by the user. If you choose to go get the pacifist achievement and beat the game without killing a single person by your hand, be prepared to make some harsh decisions as there will be some things that you may not be able to do. There might be some decisions that you just have to sacrifice because of personal gain or because you have no choice. Yes, in the end, it does not change the story the long run. However, your emotions starts getting played by the game because you know that things could have been done differently for that one event and you know you could have done something about it. With feelings of remorse and regret, you can either choose to carry on, go back and try again (thankfully you can save your game and reload at any time) or swallow your pride and give up what you need to to make things easier.

Though I do suggest upping your hacking as soon as you can though.

Considering all of this, your play through DE:HR is going to be different every time. Every person is going to experience something different and I doubt it would be possible for any one person to really experience everything that DE:HR has to offer on one playthrough. As both me and Lissy started to play DE:HR, our methods and experience are already completely different. She opts for a stealth approach and exploring every little bit that Detroit has to offer while I go for a more “kill if needed” and straying ever so far from my objectives if I feel the need to (I have to write this review at some point). But I also find myself just wondering around for hours with no real objective or goal in mind. Sometimes I just choke hold random people because I knew I can get away with it. Sure, it makes me sound sadistic but at the time, I swear it, I needed credits to save a girl from debts to the Chinese mafia. Again, going back to the emotionally torn point.

Some will praise the graphics that DE:HR can churn out and while I did not play this on a high end machine, I will say that the atmosphere is definitely within that dark moody cyberpunk area. The cities that you’re thrown into are filled with that hazy dark, sepia damp feel. You feel so immersed walking through the alleyways and the city that you’ll want to see everything that this world has to offer. Thankfully, the augments do make things easier on your end so you just walk in, wearing your sunglasses at night. For whatever area you wish to traverse in DE:HR, you will find some amazing details and even some interesting internet references. The guys at Eidos Montreal definitely have a sense of humor.

Final Verdict:

I definitely cannot speak enough about DE:HR. It would be wrong to say that everything in DE:HR is original. Some of these aspects have either already been done in the original Deus Ex or in other games. However, DE:HR definitely did everything right. It’s very hard for me to really state any sort of flaws in the game except for maybe the difficulty towards the later part of the game. Bosses become extremely easy due to the Typhoon augment and it can be really tempting to just resolve each situation with a curtain of bullets. However, this alone does not make me want to say it isn’t a perfect game. The time spent from beginning to end was just a great dinner that I can eat as slow or as fast as I want and I could not ask for anything more beyond that… Except maybe a DLC mission or two for desert.

This review is based on the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution with some time spent with the OnLive version (which is also based on PC) and some Xbox 360 time at a friend’s house, showing him just how awesome the game was. This review was also built on top of discussion and feedback from various members and fans of The Mog Blog, including Lissy herself.

MogKnight  

Hanh "MogKnight" Nguyen is owner and Editor-in-Chief of The Mog Blog. A fan of pushing buttons and making things happen. He has recently been seen going around random GameStops to slowly rebuild his Dynasty Warriors collection.

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