Deus EX: Human Revolution

Check out my awesome mechanic eyes. Yeah.

It's the year 2027 and you're one bad ass ex-SWAT working as security for a company which is researching bio-mechanical implants. Then all hell breaks loose when an unknown commando force breaks in the factory, wreaking havoc and killing everyone around. You take a bullet to the face and wake up weeks later to find out your life was saved by the doctors, who had to extensively repair your mangled body with these new state of the art implants.

After you've spent several long minutes in this intro, which starts with a mysterious corporate CEO smoking a cigarette which reminded me a lot of Mass Effect 2, you're thrown into the tutorial mission which takes a little more of your time, because it's suggested you do everything slowly and stealthily, before the game really begins. This sets the tone for me, this game is gonna draaaaag.



Human Revolution is a prequel to the original Deus EX, which I remember playing like ten years ago, and of which I don't recall much other than something about the Statue of Liberty... and that it was the first time I encountered a role playing and first person shooter fusion.

Detroit is the first city you get access to. There's the choice of focusing in the main quest or do some favors and errands to minor characters. I'm somewhat of a completionist, that is, I like to do everything there is to do in a game, so these side quests consume a lot of my time. There's the feel that between character speeches, cutscenes, scattered pieces of newspapers, there is a lot of story going on. The replies to conversations and the paths you take all affect how things flow and that's a major plus. In the very first mission, for example, your responses can save or doom a female hostage's life.

As far as the technical aspects go, the graphics are good, as is the sound and overall gameplay, although it falls into that stupid "press X to get to cover and be completely invulnerable" fashion in games lately (specially those aimed at consoles). The stealth elements are pretty well done. The AI seems to be tuned in a way they will investigate an area if they think they've heard or seen something, but will not home in on you like player-sniffing robots. On the other hand, sometimes you're "hidden" despite it being quite obvious your head is popping out of some boxes.

The role playing part of the game goes through the very linear way of experience points and levels. It's nothing revolutionary, in fact, I think it's about time someone came up with something a little more fresh for role playing games. In this case, reaching a new level means getting a new "praxis point", which you can use to upgrade many parts in your new cyborg body. It's justified as "your brain adjusting to the new implants", but come on. You get experience for taking a guy out stealthily with your strikes, less experience if you shoot a tranquilizer dart, and even less if you shoot them with your gun and kill them... but none if you just walk by them as far as I know. So your brain is quite selective as to how to adapt. I just don't buy it.

Hacking into computers, it's an interesting minigame.

All in all it seems to be an interesting, well built and engaging game. It looks like it, but somehow I'm not drawn back to it. Maybe it's that feeling that's gonna take me a lot of boring hours to read all the bits of info to get the full experience, or that stealth is encouraged, while fun, it's somewhat slow.