Deus Ex is an old gaming franchise, one that I’ve never managed to delve into before now but thankfully for me this game turns out to be a prequel and knowledge of the two previous titles is completely unnecessary.

 

Set in the near future humanity is on the cusp of a technologically forced evolution, the long awaited singularity is in sight and the future is full of doubt. Humans have been changing their bodies with robotics, these augmentations allow the lame to walk, the blind to see and the deaf to hear but also allow us to become smarter, faster and stronger that we could ever hope to be with mere flesh and bone. We play as Adam Jensen a security chief of a major augmentation research lab, Sarif industries. During an attack on the lab Jensen is almost killed and to save his life Sarif almost completely replaced everything with cold metal, allowing him to do things the average person couldn’t hope to dream to do, but at what cost? Jensen is sent out in the world to track down the people that attacked him at the start of the game; uncovering conspiracies and probing philosophical questions.

 

 

Plot wise it’s an interesting game that attempting to provide both sides of the argument “are augmentations a good thing” as impartially as it can. It’s also a fully fleshed out world, with 100s of hidden e-mails, newspapers, TV reports, E-books and conversations; that if you really want to you could become lost in the lore this game has to offer. Be warned through, if you do take an active role in reading everything the game has to offer, then you’re likely to think Jensen the character is a complete idiot.

 

For me this game feels a lot like Alpha Protocol, it gives us an objective but it’s completely up to us how we reach that target and each one is just as valid as the rest. I’ve been informed that Deus Ex: Invisible War had a similar mechanic (and of course did it before Alpha Protocol). So you can quite happily stock up on weapons, blast open a door and wipe out all the guards that are waiting behind it. Or sneak through the air-vents, avoiding combat and only doing stealthy melee attacks on lone soldiers. Add to this various skills that open more routes there is so much freedom in the levels that if you’ll never find yourself stuck if you chose to play as one style rather than a mixture, which is what happened with Alpha Protocol.

 

 

Well that’s almost the case, there are four bosses throughout the game and each one will test your combat prowess; no ifs ands or buts. Particularly jarring if you’ve decided to sneak through the game on your first play through and have neglected collecting any lethal weaponry. After the first boss you’ll then make of point of stocking up on ammo and various grenades. It’s a real shame too because aside from bosses you can go through the game without killing a soul, or focusing on hacking computers, so suddenly you may find yourself outclassed in a straight up fight which seemed counter to the general feeling of the game.

 

The game also has an interesting levelling up system, as you progress through the game you’ll unlock Praxis points which can be used on Jensen’s augmentations. These can upgrade existing skills or add entirely new ones. Your choice to what to upgrade will affect the way you play the game. Fail to upgrade your hacking skills for example and you’ll lose a lot of sneaky access points and the ability to shut down cameras, turrets and robots. Fail to upgrade your armour however and you might find yourself staring at the loading screen the moment you’re discovered. Other skills like the ability to jump like you’re superman, or to fall from great heights without damage, or to make yourself invisible, or the ability to punch through weak walls; will also affect the routes you can take.

 

 

At the start of the game its careful balancing act, right up until after the final third of the game you’ll be carefully selecting what to upgrade. While you’ll never have enough points to fully upgrade everything; if you’ve being exploring a lot, hacking a lot of computers and completing the various side-quests you’ll actually become a Machine God by the end.

 

There are a couple of sticking points. The cover mechanic isn’t as good as Gears of War and can at times feel stiff and unintuitive, while not broken it’ll take a little getting used to. You may end up lost in the hub areas between missions, the map isn’t a great help and more than one occasion I just ended up wondering around hoping to find where I was supposed to go. Also some side-quests are only able to be fully completed if you invested into some skills and not others, which again doesn’t feel in keeping with the rest of the game. The loading screens are extremely long as well. Also towards the end of the game you might find your interest waning. Overall though these are only minor issues that shouldn’t ever put you off playing the game.

 

 

Deus Ex: Human Revolution provides 20+ hours of a stealth/FPS game, with an interesting plot and fun gameplay. I highly recommend it.