The Deus Ex Journal Bonus Round: “Guns Blazing”

Last week I concluded a rather lengthy review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game it took me probably about 20 hours to beat, and I had plenty to say about it. One of my more frequent statements was that the game was best played in stealth mode, which required a degree of nuance and strategy that you wouldn’t get just flying through the game with guns blazing.

But I hadn’t really tried that, had I? I was making assumptions based on the firefights I did stumble into and the limited ammo I did find, but what did I know really? I decided that this game was good enough to play twice, and so over the past few days I beat the game a second time, leaving no one alive as my bullets rained down from the heavens.

What I found was not a worse game than my first playthough, but rather an entirely different one, and honestly one that was equally as fun, if not actually more so. I quickly found that playing through with guns blazing solved a lot of gripes with the game. The constant saving and reloading was no longer necessary as you’re not trying to avoid detection. You might save before and after a firefight, sure, but you won’t save after you pick off each individual guard, or successfully walk 30 paces across the room.

In addition to hyper-saving, the boss battles that would make you tear your hair out became a joke. All the boss fights which took multiple saves, reloads and many, many minutes were over in literally seconds at a time. If you’re upgraded as an assault fighter, these confrontations go from impossible to cake, as nothing can stand up to a few frag grenades and exploding .45 shells.

It’s about to get loud in here.

Stat point allocation was much different this time around. The first thing I invested in was increased armor, as I quickly learned that was an absolute necessity with this sort of playthough. Without it, Jensen can even glance at a bullet and be dead in under a second, but with it, you’re far more durable.

I also bought the Typhoon explosive system, something that would NEVER be useful in a stealth playthrough, but one that came in handy a great many times for blowing up a room full of enemies or a rather pesky robot.

One thing that didn’t change was that hacking was still extremely important. Leveling up hacking access and hacking stealth were the second and third things I got after armor, as you get just SO much money and XP not only from the places you can explore via hacking, but from the minigame itself. If you can capture all the bonus nodes, it’s a HUGE benefit for your character, and with that ability early on, my assault character was leagues more powerful than my stealth one by the end.

When you’re going in for a full-frontal assault in Deus Ex, you feel like wayyy more of a badass than you would slinking around the shadows, and the cinematic style of the game puts you in the shoes of Neo from The Matrix. There were so many cool moments that just weren’t possible in a stealth playthrough.

It’s murderin’ time.

Instead of sneaking around picking off gang members in a mission one by one, I had killed one in the open, and a half dozen were outside a singular door waiting for me to come out. I threw in a flashbang, and flung open the door as they struggled to their feet and I blew each of them away with the shotgun before they even knew what was happening.

My “lobby scene” moment was when you first talk to the Asian woman and she runs away and calls the guards. Rather than skulk around and pick off the soldiers searching for me with my crossbow and tranq gun, I sprinted to where they were having a briefing about fanning out to look for me and I lobbed a pair of frag grenades into their ranks. It blew up half the battalion, and I picked off the rest as they scattered with my machine pistol and assault rifle.

I’d say the most gratifying moment however was (spoilers) being able to save Malik when her ship crash lands. I didn’t even know that was an OPTION during my first playthrough, as after a minute or so her ship simply explodes and it doesn’t seem like there’s terribly much you can do about it. But rather than slink around through the shadows picking off the assault team way too slowly, I jumped right in front of her downed craft, let loose my Typhoon explosives which took out two heavy guards and a giant mech, and proceeded to murder everyone else with my exploding revolver as I pumped myself with hypostims. Malik fixed her ship and flew away safely. It was definitely one of the times I’ve felt the most badass not just playing this game, but any game.

I had a “no silencer” rule. Also, this is the most overpowered pistol in a game since Halo 1.

I don’t know, despite the fact that stealth requires much, much more strategy, I just had more fun playing the game this way. Playing stealth you’re forbidden from using half of the weapons and powers, and don’t tell me that increased radar diameter or target tracking is as fun as surrounding yourself with a circle of exploding pellets or the ability to snap someone’s neck through a wall.

What’s also interesting to note about playing the game this way is that exploration is actually far easier, and you’ll discover far more. After all, it’s quite easy to be able to search every inch of an area when everyone is dead, and you’re paying no mind to inquisitive cameras or alarm systems. I found many more secrets on this playthrough, and my character was overflowing with Praxis points and had $20K in the bank I couldn’t even spend by the end.

So the moral of the story is that I was too quick to judge a play style I hadn’t tried out for myself, and when I did, I found it was quite a bit more fun than I anticipated, and actually bested stealth in many ways.  I highly recommend anyone who likes the game to try out both, as they’re two distinct experiences that are both very much worthwhile.