Review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

As somebody who holds the first two Deus Ex games in the highest regard as to what gaming is capable of as a medium and believe that the first game is the greatest piece of coding ever put to disc, I was incredibly nervous and apprehensive about what Deus Ex: Human Revolution would become. While it's natural to be apprehensive about reviewing such an ambitious undertaking, the game should be judged based on its own merits instead of by its legacy. If every game were held to the same standard of Deus Ex, then practically every game ever made would get abysmal scores and let's face it, there is no way that Deus Ex: Invisible War is anywhere near as bad as the dime-a-dozen Shovelware beat-em-up platformers on the Wii. So judged purely as a stealth shooter, is Human Revolution worth your $60? The answer is yes.

The first thing that anybody new to the game will realize is that it's impossible to run and gun. Adam Jenson simply can't take much damage while most enemies take a crazy amount of punishment. Cover, stealth and headshots are absolutely needed if playing on any difficulty above easy. This isn’t Quake and it doesn’t try to be. It’s a far smarter game that forces players to come up with a plan of attack before executing it and level geometry is every bit as important as twitch aiming skills.

And yet while DXHR forces players to play intelligently, there is still a wide variety in terms of playstyles. Do you hack the robots and get them to clear out a room for you, do you snipe enemies, ambush them up close or simply sneak past? The choices are seriously that open ended and there are always at least two different ways to solve any problem and almost always a non-lethal option layered atop both. Many games promise depth, but very few actually deliver any below the surface. Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually follows through where so many titles fail... and the urban exploration is far deeper than what most studios would even dream of attempting with massive areas and very little loading between them and two to three sidequests to be found in each hub that are squired by going to out of the way areas and thinking outside the box.

Without Alexander Brandon doing the music, I was fearful of what might have happened to the soundtrack, thankfully Micheal McCann manages to make a score that not only remixes much of the music from the original Deus Ex, but also brings forth some brand new tracks that are more subtle than Brandon's work but work surprisingly well in context. Some music is used throughout the game as a motif but it's a forgivable flaw given the high quality of the sound in general.

The graphics are usually excellent to the point where I frequently tried to interact with static objects that were meant to just be ambiance but looked like I could interact with them. Environments all have a strong sense of atmosphere accomplished through light filters, architecture and a certain grittiness to them, even in places that are cleaner and more colorful. Sadly, there are a handful of characters in the game with unfinished, blurry textures who look like they could have been in the original game which detracts from a game with some impressive and varied art design.

As far as customization goes, Adam Jensen is a simper model than JC or Alex Denton which keeps the lore in place but without streamlining the process too much. The actual level ups for acquiring new abilities are a hybrid of the way that the first two games handled leveling up. Much like in Invisible War, there are points to spend but at the same time, the player does accumulate experience points that can be spent to upgrade Adam's abilities. Unfortunately, upgrading energy cells is a waste since only one cell can auto-recharge and melee attacks cost one cell each, effectively preventing the player from creating a melee character and putting the emphasis on the various upgradable guns and there aren't as many active abilities as there were in the original.

And of course, the story touches on some incredibly complex themes like the power of transnational corporations, what makes somebody human, media bias, etc. The fact that these themes are present puts the story miles ahead of pretty much every game on the market. The only problem that I have with the story is the low profile of the villains. They simply don't get enough screen time to have any sort of personality nor do their motivations appear until the end of the game. I didn't really feel any connection to who I was fighting, even after knowing identifying them as they just seemed to play the role of vestigial boss fights thrown in for the sake of variety. It’s a shame since the boss characters in the original game all had distinct personalities and in a way, the player was supposed to feel remorseful for having to kill two of them, now bosses are just cannon fodder.

My biggest gripe with the game happens to relate to the system that I played it on. For whatever reason, I always play Deus Ex on the worst platform available. Between the extra load screens inserted into the PS2 version of the original and the PC version's horrible frame rate in Invisible war, I really can't ever seem to pick the right platform to play a Deus Ex game on. The difficulty of the game normally wouldn't be an issue except for the fact that the 360 version suffers from some unforgivably long load times. Granted, the problem can be solved by installing the game to the 360's hard drive but it's still noticeable. If the PC or PS3 version isn't available, then a hard drive larger than the 20GB standard will dramatically improve the enjoyment of this game due to the sheer amount of player deaths, notably during boss fights where one-hit kills are the norm and even then, sometimes a single shot from a pistol on normal difficulty can do 73% damage which is just insane.

Still, easily remedied loading gripes and an inability to play a melee character aside, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of the smartest, deepest and most rewarding games produced in years. What's even more amazing is that this was the first title produced by Eidos Montreal and yet it's managed to redeem Square-Enix's name as one of the best RPG developers in the world after several years of high-profile flops. No game will probably ever top the original Deus Ex in terms of quality but after eight years of waiting for a sequel, Human Revolution is a great return to a great franchise.

Pros: Excellent art direction, a genuinely deep story that doesn’t talk down to players, the ability to play the game in different ways, good soundtrack, fun weapons, immersive world, sidequests that actually have depth to them, rewards you for exploring

Cons: No melee options that don’t use up energy, shallow villains that lack characterization and backstory, lack of active abilities, low health even on normal difficulty, long load times on the Xbox 360 that at times caused me to spend more time watching the load screen than I was playing the game.

8.7