Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Review from Matt - Monday, 10 October 2011 @ 3:09pm

First of all I'd like to apologise for the delay on this game. I actually already previously did a video review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It was me talking about what I liked about the game, so it degenerated in muttering "Deus Ex" over and over while masturbating into a cup. Youtube pulled it off. No pun intended. So I've decided to avoid a repeat, I'll take the opposite approach. Here's what Deus Ex did wrong.

I don't want to make it sound like this isn't a good game. If anything it's the quality of the game overall that make these omissions and issues all the more striking. You notice the flaws in a precious diamond a lot more than you notice it in a poopie.

You have a plane! Awesome! It's a helicopter plane thing.

Before I do we should probably mention what a Deus Ex is. The story is set before the original, 2001's Game of the Year, and to many people including me the Game of the Decade. What made Deus Ex particularly notable was open-ended gameplay. The game allowed you to make your own choices, approach in multiple different ways, using heavy weapons, stealth, hacking, or a range of different techniques and augments to get through the obstacles in your path. Rather than being strictly a stealth game or a shooter, your own choices affected gameplay.

The Deus Ex world has advanced from now and technology has improved, especially "augmentations", mechanical add-ons that improve human capabilities. Adam Jenson works as a very fancy security guard at a lab building these augmentations.

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions starts, as every game should do, with an involved sequence of whining at the ex girlfriend. Then you get attacked by a team made up of Jack from Tekken, the dude from Prison Break, and Rhianna. After a short time you get your butt kicked and soon wake up with more metal in your arms than a friday night with Lindsay Lohan.

Note: Under legal advice we do wish to point out that there's no evidence Lohan has used IV drugs such as heroin.

However it's fairly clear she's taken more hits of coke than a South American trade union.

Other note: Under further legal advice we wish to point out that there's no evidence that since 1989 Coca Cola bottlers have employed paramilitaries to torture, intimidate and assassinate union leaders in Columbia. None at all.

Six months later Jensen is back in the saddle and the game proper begins.

Yes but WHYYYYY don't you love me anymore? :--((((((((

Let's just talk about Adam Jensen, shall we? It's noted that recovery has been difficult for Jensen, and he whines about it regularly, says how hard it was, and is generally just emo about the whole event. The dude got bionicked up hardcore. The dude has concrete punching robot arms, rocket boot legs, and presumably some sort of jackhammer dick. When you can kill everyone in the room with bombs that shoot out of your torso you don't get to whine about it.

That's the lesser problem with Jensen, though. The greater issue is his chin. Seriously, it looks like someone put a Toblerone on it. I get that they wanted to avoid the "square jawed protagonist", but triangles isn't better. He looks like his stupid beard has hardened and fused, like a rhino with nifty sunglasses.

Moving on, and beyond the trivial, the issue that is getting the most attention is the boss fights. The bosses here consist of the first person from the evil trio that munched you previously, then the second person from the trio, then the third person from that trio. And then the film Minority Report.

It's probably fair to say that they're not a great fit for this game, they feel kind of artificially tacked on. And indeed, apparently that's literally true, the boss fights developed externally and then slotted into place. This boss fight issue isn't unique to DE:HR, of course. Games often feel the need to add some sort of boss fight and crappy ending to a game, in what I call Bioshock Syndrome, and Human Revolution is not immune.

It's also fair to criticize Human Revolution for the fact that these boss fights force you into combat, something that you may have otherwise been actively avoiding and ill-equipped for.

But this is a symptom of a deeper problem. In the original Deus Ex you could play through with a heavily upgraded pistol, as this kind of silent assassin. Up to a point. Then your pistol runs out of ammo, because the game has decided you should be using a machine gun.

I really didn't think Human Revolution would make the same mistake. But it does. At some point, HR decides you should be using a machine gun now, and all but confiscates your pistol.

Stealth gameplay at its finest

I ended up taking out dudes with non-lethal kills not because I wanted them to live, I really did not, but because I didn't have the ammo for my pistol. Taking away that option is balls.

Another issue is the radar. If you're one of those tards who plays an FPS on console then feel free to ignore this and chew on your shoes for a while. Your Fisher Price interface didn't have this issue, but on PC with a decent resolution the radar is so small it might as well have a price on it and a picture of the Queen. And of course, the radar being useless also renders a whole path of augmentations utterly pointless.

The silent stealth kills are nice, and particularly when there are two guys to kill at a time, quite fun. But they're not silent. Doing it often alarmed guards nearby, even a floor or two up. If these aren't silent, what's the point?

Speaking of guards, they have some pretty good animation, though you'll see a lot of them repeated. What is less good, though, is the animation of a range of other NPCs. They look kind of stilted and fake. Less good games (such as RAGE) are doing a better job of this, and it's a pity that this critical story-telling area is a weakness of Deus Ex.

But all of that is forgiveable. There is only one thing, one decision in the game that really hurts gameplay.

Under your health bar is an energy bar, which displays the batteries that power your augments. It's confusing what uses up those batteries. Punching a wall will drain a battery segment, as will a silent kill. But floating down from the sky like an angel from the Matrix apparently takes no energy at all. Weird.

This bit actually looks really impressive. Atmospheric lighting effects all up the wazoo.

Anyway, the point here is that the energy drains as you do fun things, and refills as you sneak around.

Except that it doesn't. The energy will only fill up the cell or segment that is part full. Killing a dude, for example, uses up a whole segment. And you're not getting that back. Ever. Stay in stealth for too long and you're not getting back all of the energy you used.

What this means is that in general you walk around with one single segment of energy. Maybe other's experience differs from mine, but I had almost no energy bar pickups, and other people had stacks of them filling their bags.

But what this essentially means is that unless you stop for a quick snack, you can't actually do anything interesting. Want to cloak, sneak up behind someone and stab him in the throat? Too bad. Not enough energy. Want to use your Xray vision to see when a guy is behind a wall, then take him out? Not enough energy. Jensen is the PSP of operatives.

This mechanic actively stops you from doing things that are fun. That is aggressively stupid.

There seems to be an augment to fix this. You can upgrade your battery. But all it really means in the end is a larger battery, thus making it actually technically emptier. If those augs upped the MINIMUM instead of or as well as the maximum the game would be better for it.

Nope, no way he can see you there.

I have actually heard this justified. I've heard people say that the reason for this is to prevent you being too overpowered. But honestly, when the main character is a heavily armed military spec cyborg surely it's a little late to worry about being a bit unbalanced?

I should clarify in conclusion that Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of the best games I've played. It's intelligent, beautifully realized, and a rare example of flexibility, morality, and consequence in games. I would declare it Game of the Year on the assumption that I doubt anything will beat it that's yet to come.

Now. Where's my cup?

Pros

• Intelligent gameplay and story
• Stealth elements are a lot of fun
• Epic and impressive graphics, esp in certain areas
• Genuine emotional connection to some NPCs
• Emergent and entertaining gameplay

Cons

• All of the stuff above, really. Did you even read this, or just skip to the bottom.
• Long load times. Really quite surprisingly long.
• Shithouse endings.