The Deus Ex: Human Revolution Journal: Day 10

Read journal #1 here first.

I’ve just finished my marathon experience with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and to be honest, I probably should have squeezed in one more journal installment before this one. But when I looked at my loading screen and saw that I was on the ninth out of ten missions, I figured I was almost done.

But not so! Soon after, I loaded up the game again, and found myself staring at 5 NEW missions, this game was 50% longer than I thought!

I love Deus Ex for this. Too often, linear single player games are painfully short with campaigns anywhere from 5 to 10 hours. I must have probably put in 20 or 25 into Deus Ex, and for a title that’s not technically “open world,” that shows how much thought and effort Eidos put into the title.

However, I must admit that a huge chunk of those hours with the game was spent saving and reloading, as I was trying to be as stealthy as I possibly could, and any misstep would jeopardize everything and would be cause for a do-over. I mused that it was almost impossible to play the game as a straight up assault warrior, and while I found that to be somewhat untrue, I still don’t recommend that’s the way anyone play it.

Someone’s about to have a bad day.

It’s just so much less gratifying to storm into each room and play the game like it’s a typical cover shooter. You barely have enough ammo to do so, but it’s far less enjoyable, and you don’t get the satisfaction of sneaking around completing missions without even being seen. If you play Deus Ex as a combat sim, you might think it fairly mundane, but if you spent the time to carefully plan out strategies to avoid detection, and searched each area for alternate routes and secrets, it’s a far more rewarding experience.

But however, we do come back to the saving and reloading, as this was really meant to be played on the PC, so the a console with long load times and no quicksave button is annoying to use in this manner.

You should save BEFORE you attack a guy, in case some unforeseen camera or robot or soldier sees your misdeed out of the corner of their eye. You should save AFTER you take down a guy, as you don’t want to re-do that whole process if you’re spotted soon after. You should save BEFORE you try to hack a security system so when you use all your stops and nukes and still fail, you can reload. You should save AFTER you hack a security system, so you don’t have to go through it again if you’re spotted. You should save if you’re walking through a level for more than a minute or two, or else if you randomly run into something you don’t have to make the journey again. You should save after each damn volley you manage to score on a boss, so when you inevitably die, you at least have hurt him a certain percent, and perhaps ten saves later, you’ll actually beat him.

Save just in case he sees me, save after the KO three seconds later.

Needless to say, it’s a bit excessive, and on the console, was a giant pain the ass to have to save so often. Autosaves are few and far between, and the game will probably take you twice as long if you don’t employ this sort of OCD saving tactic.

But as annoying as that aspect may be, it doesn’t change the fact that Deus Ex is an amazing title in many regards. The primary jewel in its crown would have to be its atmosphere, as I can’t think of another game since say, Bioshock that did a setting so well. The world of Deus Ex feels rich and well developed, its visual aesthetics are striking and memorable, and have more than a few echoes of the sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Adam Jensen is a iconic hero, Batman voice and all, and the way he decimates enemies and how his powers grow over time feel grounded in a reality greater than that of a mere video game. If you don’t believe me, I have a documentary you should watch.

Yeah I think Blade Runner might be a BIT of an influence here.

As the game is so long, you are in fact able to purchase a large amount of your useful upgrades by the end. You spend a long time nail biting about what you should buy next because there are so many cool options, but by the end you have so many Praxis points, you’re putting them into things you know you probably won’t use.

For those just starting out in the game, there are some upgrades that are absolutely essential that you might not think would be. The abilities to jump higher, not take fall damage and move heavy objects are a must for exploration and finding shortcuts and hidden items. The same goes for hacking. It’s a frustrating experience at first, but trust me that the stealth upgrades that decrease detection make it a piece of cake. Also surprisingly useful is the personality implant, which makes dialogue trees a breeze, and as with successful hacking, swinging a conversation your way gives you a big boost of non-combat XP that comes in handy.

Going stealth, there’s one upgrade you wouldn’t think to buy that turns out to be a must have, although you might figure that out too late. That would be the dermal plating, which makes you take up to 45% less damage when fully upgraded. If you’re stealth, and never actually engage in firefights, you may think that’s a waste of four Praxis points, but as soon as you’re thrown into your first boss battle, you’ll see why it’s a necessity.

Never a fair fight.

Deus Ex‘s boss fights are far and away the most perplexing parts of the game. Why on earth would you base an entire game around stealth, only to have each boss encounter thrown Jensen in a tiny room with a hulking enemy with automatic weapons and nowhere to hide? If you don’t have the armor upgrade, these sections are maddening, and even if you do, you’re still going to have a damn tough time as augmented goons unload superpowered weapons directly into your face, with you having no chance to rely on your usual stealth tactics. The only way I found these boss battles beatable was to use my quick saving technique. I’d literally have to fire a clip into them, run, hide, save, and then try to do the same again. Probably three out of four times I’d die trying to do this, but after building up enough saves, they were beatable eventually. But still, if that’s the strategy you have to employ, it’s not a very well designed encounter.

Similarly frustrating is Deus Ex‘s desire to hide very important things. I can’t quite think of a reason for the game to hide gun dealers, side quest givers or optional mission objectives from your map. Most of the time, your objectives have a clear indicator, but for example, I beat the entire first level and at the end, a woman asked me, “did you save the hostages?!?” “No, they’re all dead.” I said. What the hell? I had heard about these hostages when I started the mission, but didn’t come across them at all in the level, and I didn’t even understand this was a side objective.

I suppose this is an attempt to have the player “explore” more, but finding new paths around enemies, or uncovering secret loot stashes are more than enough reason to explore as is. Why do you need to hide optional mission objectives that you won’t even know exist half the time? Even worse, I have zero idea if I actually completed all of the optional side missions in the game, because you literally have to explore every single area and talk to every single person in order to find them. I almost missed this one Shanghai hooker who gave me two hugely beneficial side missions because she was one floor up from my actual objective. It’s great I found her, but the entire game I had to wonder even with hours of exploration, what had I missed? Why couldn’t I just be told where to find these other missions? I’m literally just skipping content that you put in the game for me to play, and it’s a lose-lose for everyone.

My final gripe has to do with the energy bar system that limits how players use their powers in a way that feels far too restrictive. You start with one energy bar, which lets you do one action like take down an opponent, look through walls for a few minutes or go invisible for a few seconds. You can increase your amount of bars, but the problem is, none past your first bar will ever recharge by itself. You have to manually fill them up with powerbars you find, but the majority of the time, you will usually only have one bar at your disposal, no matter how many extra you’ve bought.

I can use X-Ray or I can take someone down, but often not both.

It’s unclear why they couldn’t make the other bars fill up over time. Is it really worth using a super rare item that fills up all my bars so I can use my invisibility power ONCE? Is it so insane to think that I might want to take down more than one guy within thirty seconds? There’s just no real advantage to getting extra energy bars because of this, and you’ll steer away from energy heavy augmentations for this reason alone, meaning some of the cooler upgrades in the game you’ll never even get to use.

The inventory system is a bit cluttered, but acceptable for its purposes. Even carrying five guns around feels like you always want more, and some (the Laser, Heavy and Sniper Rifles, the Machine Pistol, Rocket Launcher and Revolver for example) I didn’t even get to use because of how much damn  space they took up. But it’s all about sacrifice, and if you want that chance, you need to give up a gun you’ve come to love. I could never let go of my dart gun, crossbow, assault rifle, pistol OR stun gun, most of which I’d upgraded in various ways, and you never want to throw one away (plus all its ammo, a few grenades and some powerbars) just so you could try out a gun that with its ammo takes up half your inventory space. Plus being stealth made me never want to use the vast majority of the weapons anyways, as most were far too loud and could only be used effectively with a silencer. So 90% of the time it was either a tranq dart, crossbow bolt or silence 10mm round finding its way into someone’s head. I suppose I’ll have to play it again and use an entirely different set of weapons the next time around.

The environment and world the game has created is amazing, and the plot is pretty decent as well. It doesn’t quite live up to the potential of the fascinating world that’s been set before us, as when one enemy was revealed, I almost laughed, but overall it does a pretty good job of making a grand conspiracy seem understandable. The load screen recaps certainly helped out a bit with that. The end of the game has you picking from one of four options literally laid out before you that could affect the entire fate of the world. It’s a rather profound moment, and I was nervous my choice, but it got a little less impactful once you realized you could just reload the game after you beat it and pick the other three options just to see what happened in scenarios B through D.

The majority of the time Deus Ex is an absolute blast. Sneaking around trying to work your way past guards and security systems without being seen is the most satisfying sort of puzzle game I’ve played in a while. Upgrading yourself with jumping, lifting, wall punching and hacking to be able to discover the countless hidden areas in the game is equally fun, and this is the most fun I’ve had exploring in a game in a long while, and it didn’t even need a 10,000 square mile open world to set me loose in.

Detroit and Shanghai are beautifully designed in dystopian glory.

The level and overworld design is intricate and full of fantastic secrets to discover, and each mission can be completed in a whole list of ways, half of which won’t even occur to you until your second or third playthrough.. Even little touches like eBooks and emails help make the game shine, and the fantastically written dialogue (albeit not fantastic voice acting) will make your head spin about a number of issues relating to government, technology and power.

How much you enjoy Deus Ex is really up to you. If you want to run in guns blazing, marching to each new mission objective without a second look around, you’ll probably miss about 80% of what makes the game great, and think it’s just a relatively generic shooter. But take them, do things the “hard” way, and explore you’re environment, and you’ll end up playing one of the best games released in recent memory.

4.5 out of 5 stars