Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review
Deus Ex: Human Revolution turned out to be a much, MUCH better game than I anticipated. It quickly went from a game that I knew existed, but didn’t have much hope for based on how the original’s sequel fared and because of some of the action heavy footage I had seen leading up to its release, to a game that I am extremely happy to have played and may play again someday. Human Revolution is a prequel to the original Deus Ex. You play as Adam Jensen, an ex-cop turned head of security for a company that develops human augmentations such as mechanical limbs. Things quickly go bad and Adam is left with a mostly augmented body without much choice in the matter. What follows is a plot full of surprises, conspiracies and moral ambiguity that just isn’t found too often in games these days. Too say more would be entering spoiler territory, but if government conspiracies, cyberpunk aesthetics, and Robocop are your kinds of things, this is definitely a game you should check out.
Not only does it tell a pretty interesting story, the game looks pretty good too. While maybe not the most technically impressive game on the market, it’s obvious that great care was given to designing the world of Deus Ex. Geometric patterns are on everything. The ceilings in most buildings have complex geometric lighting hanging overhead. The walls are decorated with giant hexagonal monitors. Even the gold overlay that lets you know that a door can be opened is made of interlocking triangles. Speaking of gold… I hope you like it. Everything in this game is viewed through a gold lens. While at first, I didn’t think I would care for it, after a few minutes, I stopped noticing it. That being said, there is an excellent mod in the works that removes the gold filter and updates some of the lighting that makes the game look even more amazing.
In the controls department everything feels like it should. I can’t speak for how well it performs as a straight-up shooter because I stuck to a mostly nonlethal, stealthy style of play, but for this covert style it felt great. Going in and out of cover is as easy as standing next to something and holding the spacebar. This avoids the annoyance of getting stuck to cover like I find in a lot of other cover-based games. However, if stealth isn’t your thing, there are plenty of big guns in the game that do a lot more than knock guys out.
To help facilitate the wide variety of play-styles in the game, there is skillpoint style upgrade system that you can use to upgrade Adam’s abilities. On the stealth side we have temporary invisibility, silent running, and hacking skills, but if you’re more into a kill everything approach there’s aiming improvements, recoil reduction, and 360 degree explosion of death called Typhoon.
My only problem with the game is the boss battles. Plenty has been said about them by this point and I have to agree with most everyone else. They kind of suck, especially if you’re playing a stealth character. The boss fights are 1 on 1 fights to the death, so if you didn’t bring the right tools for this job, you will have a much more frustrating time than someone with body armor and a rocket launcher.
Aside from the boss fights though, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a great game. It is slower paced than your typical FPS, so if you’re expecting Call of Duty, you may be disappointed, but if you are looking for a cool, modern FPS/RPG you might want to check this out. Fans of the original Deus Ex, don’t be scared, Human Revolution does the series proud.
This review and other gaming nonsense also available on my blog Final Boss.
