It’s been eight years – eight long, tiring years for some – since we’ve seen the last true Deus Ex game, Invisible War on the original Xbox. Since that time, a lot of first-person shooters have changed the landscape of the genre, including Bioshock. Does that mean Eidos’ series, now in the hands of Square Enix, has bitten the dust? Hardly. This week marks the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game that dares to be even more revolutionary than the preceding effort. But can it live up to such strong standards? Surprisingly, yes – just as long as you’re willing to make the proper adjustments along the way. Taking place 25 years before the original Deus Ex (2027, to be exact), the game puts you in control of Adam Jensen, an agent with one of the leading augmentation agencies in the city, Sarif Industries. An attack on the agency leaves Adam in dire straits, and his love interest killed in the crossfire. To save his life, he’s implanted with said augmentations, modifying his body in ways he’s only seen secondhand. He’ll need every one of these skills too, as he investigates the attack on his employer and looks further into a looming war between Sarif and a group called the Humanity Front, a movement dedicated to everything anti-augmentation.
It all wraps together into a story where your choices become crucial. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game that relies heavily on which way you select to go. Not only is it important to gameplay, but little things, such as conversation, help shape your character to be. For instance, during one part of the game, there’s a situation where a normally obedient soldier finds himself taking a hostage in order to survive. As Adam, you have the choice of calling his bluff and trying to end the situation violently, or talking him out of it. While the conversation bubble isn’t quite perfect (sometimes you have to run through a situation more than twice before they “get it”), it does add some depth to the game, and makes you wonder how things would’ve played out differently had you gone the other way – adding to the replayability. As for the gameplay front, it too has its choices. As you proceed on each mission (including those assigned to you by Sarif and secondary tasks picked up by various characters throughout the city), you can choose between various pillar types, including Combat (where you specialize in shooting and smacking folks around), Stealth (sneaking and such), Hacking (using computers and devices to get around) and Social.
You can expand these abilities as you pick up currency, stopping by one of the 24/7 LIMB shops to upgrade your augmentations and snag a few extra items to help you out during the mission. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, there are no easy choices, and eventually you’ll have to face some sort of conflict, whether it’s fending off a hallway full of police officers after a detector catches you, or trying to escape a firefight when your ammunition runs dangerously low – a situation we’ve run across more than once. The AI in this game is set surprisingly high, to the point that some people might give up within the first hour when they think they’re out of options. But that would be a mistake, as Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a variety of options. You can sneak around situations (through air ducts, out of sight of detectors and guards, etc.) or go all out on the violence. Both ways work quite effectively, and should suit various types of gamers. Again, though, no matter which way you go, you’ll have to deal with harder-than-usual enemy types.
As for the gameplay itself, it fits the Deus Ex style. You’ve got mostly first person shooting, though the game wisely switches to a third-person view when it comes to adjusting for cover and peeking around corners, so you can see if your character’s in harm’s way or not. You can also use light and brutal melee attacks, though they take some time to recharge (until you augment your strength better, anyway), so you’ll want to use them sparingly and, in some cases, hide the body – you can pick them up by getting close and holding the X button to drag them around. We have no problem with the gameplay, aside from the fact that the ammo system has changed. Rather than pooling everything together in a unified format (like Invisible War) did, you have to rely on second-hand pick-ups from guards and those poor saps you kill. This does provide an initiative to search them and nearby rooms to find codes and other useful information, but it also limits you in combat.
This feature review continues on the next page, please click Page 2 below to read our final thoughts on Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
