Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Augmented Edition [Download]

Introduction

I came into this game not knowing very much about it at all. I'd played Deus Ex and Invisible War almost 10 years ago (for the latter at least). I hadn't followed the development of this title and it was always something I'd kept meaning to look into. I spotted it in a shop for £13.99 and thought "oh yeah, that game" and bought it. On the way home I noticed it was as DX11 game which was a nice addition.

Storyline

The story gets going right from the start. You start in your ex-girlfriend's office, Megan Reed, on your way to see your Boss, David Sarif. She's preparing to travel to Washington to showcase some of the fantastic breakthroughs in science her and her team have engineered, most importantly with human augmentations. She takes you through the science labs and you meet several key players of her team before taking the elevator up to Sarif's office. She splits off to get into a helicopter and you make your way to Sarif to reassure him your security measures will hold up, because Megan and her team are highly sought after... Then there's an explosion an an alarm. You're sent to investigate (since you're head of security) and discover a team of spec ops mercenaries butchering scientists in the labs, you managed to make it to Reed but not before a behemoth of a man throws you into a machine, leaving many internal organs hanging out, and then finally shooting you in the face. In the face! Next there is a cutscene where there is a team of doctors rushing to save your life and scrap out as much debris and organs as possible and heavily augmenting you... And so the game begins.

First Impressions

I got the game home and promptly installed it. There was a couple hundred MB update to download extra via Steam, once that was done I was playing. I was a little lost at first because I kept looking for characters I'd recognise from the previous games, but I quickly realised this was a whole new game in itself (and would see people I recognised later ). The first thing that struck me was the art style and soundtrack. These are not things I usually pick up on in an FPS game... but then this is not really an FPS game. Sure you can play it as a shooter if you like but you'd be missing a huge portion of the game. You have time to soak in the visuals and the score.

Gameplay

The gameplay reminded me heavily of Metal Gear Solid and I'm sure this is supposed to feel like that. There is even an Achievement called "Foxiest of the Hounds" a nod to FOXHOUND from Metal Gear Solid, of whom Solid Snake was a member of before he quit and they went rogue. The similiarities don't end there, but I don't think the dev team in Montreal created this intentionally and simple recogised later on that this was where they had gone.

When you start your first real mission after the prologue, David Sarif, your boss, asks you which way you want to proceed with you mission, do you want to be a lethal player, or a non-lethal player? Short or long range? These affect which weapons you start with (but you can collect the rest later in the game if you wish). This was a nod towards the previous Deus Ex games where you were encouraged to be a non-lethal player, but of course the choice was always yours.

As a Stealthy player most of my time was spent in cover, luring guards towards my position so that I could take them out using the takedown feature. You have two possible ways of taking out a guard, lethal and non-lethal. Both sets of take downs have roughly 8-10 different takedowns and all of them are bone crushingly cringe worthy. During one of the lethal takedowns Jensen uses his augmented robotic arms to spin his wrists around while holding someone's head... snapping their neck entirely and you hear every bone crunching. I'm not proud of this, but by the gods I loved that.

In relation to the Original Deus Ex

As a Prequel, this game contains almost none of the original players from Deus Ex and Invisble War. In fact, Invisible War isn't mentioned at all (to my recollection), but there are heavy mentions of Deus Ex. Spoilers abound: spoilers ;) (Click to show)
Conclusion

This is a fantastic game that is fairly well paced. Towards the end it can feel a little rushed as there isn't much to be doing and the enemies aren't as they used to be: spoiler (Click to show) but it paces itself fairly well. There is some backtracking within the game that seems kind of forced, but there's also instances where you can achieve something before the actual mission and it still tie in properly, for instance Spoiler (Click to show) This is a good design decision. It feels like every step of the way throughout the game the developers thought "what if the player wants to do this?" And instead of finding ways to block or stop that, they've worked to enable it.

Some of the augmentations are out of place, for instance the analyse for hacking is useless as hovering the mouse over them shows you that anyway. I also feel like there was too much penalising people for going down the lethal route of gameplay. If you kill someone you get 10 XP ("Man Down"), Headshots give you another 10XP. Whereas a non lethal shot (stun gun, for example) gives you 20XP for "Merciful Soul" and another 10XP taking them down also. Non-lethal takedowns give you 50 per person, 125 if you do a double takedown, compared to just 30 for a lethal takedown and 80 for a double. I can understand the aversion to encouraging killing people, but when I can walk around the game headshotting civilians without much of a hindrance it seems daft to penalise people too much for killing guards.

Overall this is a player-focused game with attention to detail. I personally give this a 5/5

Pluses

• Great Soundtrack
• Great Storyline
• Good range of moves
• Great Graphics - not dated like some have said
• Immersive

Minuses

• Some augmentations are useless
• No "new game plus" mode to add replayability and allow you to play with all augmentations
• Some ragdoll effects seem out of place

While Human Revolution does not match up to the original, it is still a decent game. You have a mild choice of actions to complete most quests differently, and I always enjoy the RPG aspect which gives you a choice over skills and weapons. In this age of COD and Battlefield, a week or two with a different style of FPS game is pretty refreshing. Also, the takedown animations are great fun.

My main complaint with the game is that you don't truly get the choice you did in the previous games. Regardless of anything you do in game, your character is uneasy with the fact that he got "augmented" following a horrific injury. This shows up ranging from actions you take before the game starts (breaking a mirror in your apartment after looking at yourself), to the dialog in the conversations in game. Even when you try and choose a reply that isn't against augmentation, it's still obvious your character doesn't approve. The game also is designed to purely be played going for stealth. It's possible to run and gun it, but you loose pretty much any bonus there is. The other two games in the series, for the most part, let you make your own decisions on a variety of social issues, and also let you approach each obstacle your own way. In the others, if you kill the hostages you might loose out on some credits, but that is because your employer didn't approve of your actions and makes that clear to you- the game does not judge you, and your character doesn't let anything slip either.

Still, I would say this game is worth playing, if you can find it for a good price. I did enjoy hiding in a duct and sniping someone, then watching the other people run around trying to figure out what the hell just happened. It falls short of the other Deus Ex games, but mostly because they were good, not because Human Revolution is bad.

I don't really review things in the conventional sense. Much like Joystiq does. I also don't focus a lot on game mechanics, I don't think I'd be an accurate judge.

I've always liked Deus Ex, even Invisible War. Though that was mainly because I love the world. If you've never heard of it. DX:HR puts you in the place of ex-cop-turned-security chief Adam Jensen. Following an attack on his workplace's headquarters, he then proceeds to follow the trail of clues left behind to figure out what happened. In this world, augmentation of self is the new hip thing. As always there always two groups: those for and those against. Full of conspiracies left and right; such as the Majestic 12 and such, the thrill ride doesn't end for quite a while. I know I'm doing a bad job of selling it...

...so here's 2 videos:

[VIDEOhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq5KWLqUewc[/VIDEO]

PLUS Points

• Gameplay is a blast, not since Chaos Theory have I felt the DESIRE to be stealthy.
• Jensen is a mostly likeable character, important for any playable character. It's important to note that his almost personality is done perhaps purposely.
• The year 2027 is depicted beautifully and should be built upon.
• The world feels like on the verge of collapse and it just feels right.
• The use of orange and yellow is quite fitting and pleasant to the eye. The warmness of those two colours hides how cold the world actually is.
• They referred to Chinese as Mandarin! As it should be!
• Neat references to previous characters in the Deus Ex universe and two other big-name games.
• The use of multiple ethnic groups was welcome, and mostly in non-cliche positions.
• Not once did I feel like killing anyone. I genuinely felt remorse if I did kill someone.

MINUS Points

• The Chinese section of the game could have been more...Chinese.
• Some augmentations seem tacked on. (Kudos if you got the wordplay)
• Character models are nothing special to look at and have rather stiff animations
• Suffers from pre-fabrication buildings like Mass Effect
• Sense urgency is lost after the cool first mission.
• Not enough backstory.
• More sidequests would have been nice.
• No matter what you do, there's always a way around/out. Debatable though. I just think that certain paths should have lead to dead-ends or punishments of some sort. Not because the player is doing it wrong, but in the context of the game.

The game had me sucked me for a couple days and I can safely say it's a welcome addition to the Deus Ex universe. I think it's a brilliant first try from rookie developers Eidos Montreal.