The Deus Ex: Human Revolution Journal: Day 1

And so it begins.

The next few months leading up until Christmas are going to be a typhoon of quality game releases. After a summer of relatively nothing of note, we’ll have new titles in the Gears of War, Uncharted, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls and Saints Row series.

But today we’re talking about the starting pistol shot that is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It’s the first quality title out in months, and from the looks of it, might do a great deal more to innovate than the above games,  most of which only feature a few tweaks or adjustments over past installments.

Rather, Deus Ex enjoys a more refined history, one that began way back in the year 2000 when it was an innovative cyberpunk PC game making critics’ swoon. At thirteen, I wasn’t allowed near guys with machine guns wearing trenchcoats, so I never got to experience the original. So that makes Human Revolution my first time with the series, but as this is being released so far after its past installments, I feel like I’m not at a disadvantage.

Hands down the best trailer of the year at the very least.

There are elements drawn from the original obviously, but this is a completely new game for a new console generation. After my first day with it, I can’t say I’ve experienced anything quite like it, and it’s taken elements from a number of different genres and mashed them all together. The result so far isn’t seamless quite yet, but it is certainly unique.

What has captured me the most out of everything thus far has been the story, one that is both engaging and well told through the medium of gameplay and cutscenes. The world of Deus Ex is bordering on chaos. America is at the brink of collapse due to an oil bust and rising income inequality , and subsequently corporations are starting to have more control over society than the government. Sound familiar? Depending on who you ask, Deus Ex is perhaps the most plausible vision of the future we’ve seen across any media recently.

Also believable is the central issue of the film, human augmentation. We’ve seen already how mechanical hearts and limbs can aid the wounded and sick, but what happens when that technology is pushed one level further? What happens when mechanical and computerized body parts can make us faster, stronger or smarter than we would have been without them?

That’s the story of our hero, Adam Jensen. He’s a SWAT cop turned security chief for Sarif industries, one of the leading manufacturers of augmentation in the world. But after his company is attacked by mercenaries and his friend is killed, Jensen must uncover the truth behind the anti-aug movement, and the shadowy figures waging a covert corporate war.

The game takes place in Detroit, which somehow looks better in a dystopian future.

Adam’s augmentations allow for the best explanation of typical video game mechanics to date. What I mean is that rather than accepting that there’s a HUD and leveling system, it’s carefully explained that the display is from Adam’s optical implants, and the “leveling” is him biologically or manually unlocking various augmentations from the metal covering most of his body.

These enhancements have made Adam a stealthy killing machine, and immediately a dichotomy is clear in terms of gameplay. There would seem to be two major paths to take. You can be a balls-out, gun-slinging cowboy, or a silent and deadly assassin.

This sounds like a choice that many RPG-type games give out, but Deus Ex often makes you blend the two, and more often than not, leans heavily toward stealth, where most games favor heavy gunfire. In fact, direct combat would seem to rarely be the best option, as with unknown numbers of guards pouring in and you only able to take two or three bullets, you’ll often be dead before you even get off a few rounds with your assault rifle.

In the open? With a gun? You fool!

Rather Deus Ex seems to have a decent amount in common with games like Metal Gear Solid and Batman: Arkham Asylum. You sneak around, disabling baddies one at a time and hiding their bodies so patrols don’t find them. You slink under cameras and avoid triggering alarms. If you do, you want to hide until the alert level has been nullified.

But this game is mostly in first person, which makes it quite a different experience than previous stealth titles. The controls take some getting used to, as left trigger is the “find cover” button, where the game zooms out to third person for a better view, but most of the game will be spent crouching, sneaking around trying not to make a sound to anger the beehive full of enemies. X is the interact button, not A, and clicking the right stick has you aiming down your iron sights, which is not the most comfortable positioning of that functionality.

Its rather clumsy gun controls make Deus Ex more of a puzzle game than an action shooter. It’s figuring out how best to get through a room without detection, using murder only as a last resort. I tried my usual guns blazing style, but found it both more difficult and less interesting than stealth.

You can purchase and unlock various augment upgrades that aren’t your typical RPG fare. There are damage and life ones sure, but there are special abilities like being able to see through walls, viewing an enemy’s vision cone on your radar or seeing how much sound frequency you’re emitting to attract attention. There are perks that make you better at hacking, an interesting puzzle type minigame that has you opening doors or reprogramming cameras or turrets. There’s even one for making you a smooth talker, as your HUD analyzes behavior patterns and as a last resort can emit pheromones that trick someone into doing what you want.

I haven’t managed to locate the “find injury” perk yet, which I don’t think exists.

They all seem fantastic, and it’s like being a kid in a candy store trying to figure out which you want to buy first. I’m unsure of how long the game is, but hopefully a decent amount will be able to be acquired in one go-round, as I’m not sure I’d want to put another 20 hours in just to unlock the other half.

My biggest gripe with the game so far is one I’m not sure how to fix. With these stealth missions, one wrong step or pin drop and you’re immediately swarmed. This creates a circumstance where you feel you have to save after literally every enemy encounter (really missing a quicksave options, which for some reason doesn’t exist on consoles), and so far I think I’ve spent more time looking at the loading screen than I have playing the actual game. It’s not just that the load time is long (it is), it’s how frequently you’ll have to sit through it as you will die or restart a LOT, as it’s impossible to have a perfect plan for each area your first time through.

Alright, as you can see, we’re doing this review journal style, so that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s definitely a cool title, but requires a bit of adjustment if you’re unfamiliar with the stealth genre. I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here.

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6 Comments

  1. You’re playing it on a console?
    I played the shit out of the beta on PC and
    the controls are a lot more satisfying than the experience
    you describe with one of those awful console controllers.

  2. I have to say, playing on PC the aiming is great and the quicksave has removed a lot of the stress of being seen by enemies. I am just about to finish Detroit (as I post this) and stealth does seem to be favoured ever so slightly. You die in very few bullets because of the regenerating health. The first game (set after this one) did not have regenerating health (until late game) so Eidos Montreal “balanced” it by making you out of cardboard.

    The opening credits I think surpassed the trailer for the game. They were really well done

  3. * I just had to bite my tongue before writing this post, as I was going to attribute the intro credits as a new take on the Robocop origin story, but then I remembered the Six Million Dollar Man. Whoops!

  4. Saying first quality title in months isn’t exactly right. Catherine is a pretty amazing game, and took the money I was thinking of spending on this one. With Gears 3 only a month away, I’m debating whether or not I’ll have enough time to devote to Deus Ex to make it worth buying right now. Then there’s Arkham Asylum, Dead Island, and the Skyrim juggernaut right around the corner. Looks like I’ll have to come back to this one later.

  5. Crap. Boss fights. Almost every review claims that the boss fights are terrible (absolutely terrible) and you MUST fight your way through them. There is no avoiding them like in Deus Ex. I actually ran right past the first few bosses in DE only to have them appear much later in the game and much angrier. Its a shame (“what a shame*”) that you cannot avoid them in DE:HR.
    *DE reference

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