Sequels usually have big shoes to fill, either the expectations are really high if the series is highly acclaimed, or the expectations are very low if the series have a foul stigma of bad previous games. There was much to be worried about with this new Deus Ex, mainly because a lot of people loved the first game (it’s in my list of all time favorites) and many hated the second (I haven’t played it mainly because it doesn’t work on my machine for some odd reason, though Khalid found it to be okay and he is very critical of consolized sequels). That isn’t the only thing that got me worried, and to add more to that it’s very difficult to replicate the cyberpunk genre anymore, so what Eidos Montreal got very large shoes to fill.

You take on the role of Adam Jensen, ex-SWAT who works as the head of security in Sarif industries, an industry leader in human augmentation. Human Augmentation is a fruit of the “near future” this game is set in (2027, 25 years before the first game), robotic human prosthetics that improve on human abilities and make them able to do things beyond what their regular limbs can do. Fans of the first Deus Ex would already be aware of the reference, in the first Deus Ex, augmentation would be small discreet gadgets within the human body rather than prosthetics, like two particular characters from the first game that were called “mechs” for the old technology they are using.

A terrorist group attacks Sarif, kidnapping the major scientists (including Jensen’s ex-girlfriend) and severely injuring Jensen, forcing him to be “rebuilt” with human augmentations. Six months later after the attack, he is assigned to find out what happened to the scientists and track down the ones who organized the attack. Like the old game, the main theme in this game is global conspiracy, though theme here is weaker than previous games and is more on corporate corruption, which is a bit of a let down since the first game delved pretty deep with those themes.

The world is pretty well thought out, in many cases I was worried it would be difficult to make an authentic cyberpunk setting at this day and age when a lot of technology in our modern time had phased out many things a lot of cyberpunk fiction foresaw in the future. It should have been double as difficult for the developers as they needed to make the tech of Human Revolution’s world less advanced than the one in the original Deus Ex, and in the same time make it relevant to today’s technology since what the world saw back in 2000 was majorly different to what it is now the technological norm in the third quarter of 2011. What they did was good enough to be viable on both terms, very good job indeed.

The game, structurewise is very much like Metal Gear Solid, there are boss fights with oddball bosses, you get phone calls from scientists, there are expendable soldiers sweeping areas that are ready to take you on (or like in Metal Gear, dumb enough to throw themselves into your bullets’ path) and forget you ever existed if they can’t see you in five minutes (like Metal Gear), and you do stumble upon a lot of easter eggs here and there.

Though, remember this is Deus Ex we’re talking about, not Metal Gear Solid. Sure both games heavily rely on stealth (while Deus Ex has it as merely an option), if I wanted Metal Gear Solid, I would go play Metal Gear Solid, I am here to play Deus Ex. What is it here that makes the game in any way Deus Ex? There is somewhat of a RPG leveling up system in the game, unlike in the first game where you need to go explore, looking for items that give you a choice of one of two augmentation abilities that will aid you throughout the game, you have all the abilities pre-installed, and you will need to unlock them with ability points (praxis points) that you gain by following certain guidelines of how to get experience (hacking, smooth talking, killing/non-lethally-take-down an enemy, discover hidden pathways, complete side quests, etc.). While this simplifies things for a lot of players, this completely weakens the element of consequence which was key in making your choices in the first game.

I personally don’t like this new leveling system, it oversimplifies things and gives your choices less significance. While they warn you that you won’t be able to max out everything by the end of the game, I was able to max out everything I need with the addition of a few useless augmentations, and even by then I felt like I was overpowering everything. Another gripe would be that most of the augmentations are passive, there are only four active augmentations for you to use, and most of them aren’t that useful and one of them breaks the game.

There are no melee weapons in the game, the closest you have are “takedowns”. You have two forms to aid you in the game, the lethal and the non lethal. The reason why there are two is you are given a choice if you would like to temporarily take them down quietly (non-lethal), or permanently take them down with enough sound to cause a disturbance in your surrounding. The only difference in the end result is that they stay down permanently, unless you go for the non-lethal route and another soldier finds their unconscious comrade and can wake them up.

While takedowns subtitute melee, it is very limited, in case you are not careful (and not have the unusually locked “multi takedown” augmentation) you will find yourself in that awkward moment of not being able to do a second takedown because you ran out of energy. While I understand the reason why you have energy bars in this game (well the first game did), but when a takedown as simple as a straight punch in middle of an unsuspecting soldier’s, that cannot be replicated to the next soldier because the first punch drained your energy, why do you have it?

Inventory management in this game has got to be the most efficient I’ve ever seen in a game in a really long time, while you do need to organize the block-based inventory (See first Deus Ex, Resident Evil 4, Fragile Dreams and the like), the game does a very good job of organizing your inventory to fit everything whenever you pick up anything. There’s an augmentation for bigger pockets, which is very odd, but then it is very essential as the dropped items like ammunition and health items swing between scarcity and surplus overflow. To the point that even with a maxed out inventory size, the only thing between you and a new weapon is one unused bullet.

Bosses were a very unnecessary addition to the game, while the first game had a few, they were entirely optional, there have been a few that I had sniped and others I made self destruct in the first game through a mere conversation with them. Here it is a blatant rip off out of Metal Gear, to the point that you get the achievements “The Mantis” and “The Snake”. They’re not exactly interesting bosses either, there is no hook or personality to the bosses beyond their appearance, and that’s not saying much since one of them is a stereotypical U.S. Army “sarge” archtype that is harder to take seriously than to take down.

Another Deus Ex feature would be the hacking and conversation trees that dictate many of the consequences and decisions in the game. The hacking is a bit of a simplified stealth game where you sneak into a specific part of the computer without the firewall detecting you. It’s not too bad, but then at least it is better thought out than the pipe dreams minigame that was in Bioshock. Though the challenge again is not there, if it’s a REALLY hard hack that you keep failing, you can go back to hacking it again after it temporarily stops you with a “system shut down”.

Conversation trees in this game kind of remind me of the conversation trees in Mass Effect. while they’re not as branched as the ones as mass effect, they do feel a little more focused since they concentrate on one direction than a multitude of them. Though where the decision comes in is how you approach topics, your comebacks go according to how you answer, the game will give you options depending on the approach or the tone of voice you want to argue with. In most cases, the person you’re talking to will give up depending on how you argue with them, you can tell from their body language most of the time when you are winning the argument.

The developer have said that the definitive version of the game is the PC version, boasting Direct X11 support and eyefinity (3 monitor display set ups). While I do have confirmation that the 3 monitor display works great in this game, the game isn’t the prettiest PC game out there. While the game definitely has a unique art style, it does not translate very well with the sort of graphics they went for, the overdose bloom makes the game look very muddy and somewhat less appealing. I have no idea what they were on, the trailers looked infinitely better in many of the gameplay bits, it’s a case of “fastfood pictoral menu” syndrome. To make things even worse, the cutscenes are lazily made cinematics that look compressed and atrocious rather than ingame realtime cutscenes, what’s the point of beating the direct X11 drum if they’re not using it?

All in all, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a good game, but if you’re coming to with expectations of it being the second coming of the series, you will be disappointed. New comers to the series will find a whole lot of treats in this game.

What We Think: I came in expecting Deus Ex again, and that was completely brought down by many things, health regeneration, linear gameplay, oversimplified augmentation system, very easy gameplay (even on hard, minus that one overpowering boss midway through the game), very stupid bosses, disappointing final boss and very anti-climatic endings. That being said, it’s not a bad game, think of it like that crazy insane 70s sports car you loved as a kid that got got revived as a brand new model – it looks slick and technically a more driveable experience, except due to the updated standards for safety it’s less of what it use to be and more of something else.  Highly recommended if you’re new to the series, fans of the series need to play it as something else.

Mohammad AlHuraiz

Founder, editor and host of Lochal Archade. Mohammad has been running Lochal Archade for years and working hard in bringing video game-related content to the UAE and the Middle East as a whole.

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