At a glance...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution review

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is all about persuasion. It's about making the right choices in conversations in order to get access to information or areas without arousing the suspicions of the hired gunmen. It's about using your pheromone augmentation to influence someone depending on the type of person they are. It's about keeping your boss happy, but also standing up to him when necessary. It's all about persuasion. That is, until you enter a room packed full of guards whose first instinct is to shoot you. No amount of small talk is going to get you out of this one.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is all about stealth. It's about getting past those guards without them even realising you were there. It's about using the excellent third-person cover mechanic to hide and to find out where to move to next. It's about silently knocking out enemies who can't be sneaked around, and then stashing the bodies to avoid any suspicion. It's all about stealth. That is, until someone spots you and opens fire.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is all about combat. It's about using the game's first-person perspective to take accurate sniper shots from across the room. It's about being able to fight back when you're spotted, and taking down enemies using your augmented powers. It's all about combat. That is, until you run out of ammo after continuous runs of back-up units arrive on the scene to take you down. And then a powerful gun-toting robot arrives and your chances look rather slim.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is all about hacking. It's about capturing nodes silently with 'nukes', and slowing down the tracking software when you're spotted. It's about finding a good route between the start and end points in order to unlock a computer or other terminal. It's about finding the security console, hacking it, and then turning off the cameras. Turrets and robots can be turned off too, but they can also be turned against their owners. It's all about hacking. That is, until you realise you can't hack that terminal without being spotted. If only someone would let you in instead...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is about all of these things. It's about finding an approach that suits you. More importantly, you don't have to chose one style over another; you can mix and match to a great extent not just between missions but during them. Of course, it's hard to be stealthy in a room where you've just got a guard in plain sight, but maybe after you've cleared the room you could disable the alarm through hacking, and then take a quiet route through another floor. Everyone who plays the game will have a story to tell about their experience, although you're unlikely to have one element that played a part in mine; my PlayStation 3 died when trying to view one of the alternative endings.

I bear no grudges against the game which, after all, didn't really kill my PS3, it just happened to take its last breath after making an appropriately anti-technology story choice. The original Deus Ex, which arrived back in 2000, was also a game filled with choice, and the freedoms it presented helped to cement its place as one of the best games of all time. Its successful blend of action and RPG was well ahead of the current trend, and its dystopian vision of 2052 presented an intriguing world of conspiracy and human augmentations.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel, taking us back to 2027, a time when augmentations were establishing themselves in society. Biomechanical technologies have made human body enhancements possible and commercially available, such as improved senses, increased physical abilities such as running speed, and the ability to slow your decent when falling. This version of 2027 features a world that is struggling to come to terms with these advancements, and decide whether they are actually a good thing for humanity. There are big corporations with vested interests in the progress, but there's also groups, ranging from the political to the terrorizing, who oppose all augmentations. These elements are integral parts of the story, and it's an intentional minefield of moral ambiguity, allowing you to make the choices about which side you're on - or even if you're on no side at all.

You play as Adam Jensen, a security chief for one of the most powerful of those human augmentation corporations; Sarif Industries. But that doesn't mean you are a pro-augmentation lackey. An incident at the start of the game sees Adam forced to undergo surgery to save his life, which involved fusing augmentations to his body, done without his consent because he was unconscious and near to death. Thus while Adam derives great benefit from his new enhancements, he's not always comfortable with the new technology which has been thrust upon him.

It may be 25 years earlier than the original game, but the conspiracies are just as rife. The story encompasses multiple cities across the world, with the main focus being on Detroit in the United States where Sarif is based. It's a gripping tale with plenty of intrigue, a few plot twists, and fully fleshed out characters. As an RPG these bits are fleshed out in multiple ways. Key elements of the story are told via cut-scenes, compulsory junctures in the main story thread, and other times it will come into the conversations you'll have with the characters. There are also side missions which can sometimes provide a welcome distraction, and sometimes allow for the main protagonists to be fleshed out a little. If you're looking for the complete back story then you'll want to pick up (and read) all the e-Books which are scattered across the various rooms and corridors of the cities.

A couple of the cities provide large areas which you can freely explore, allowing you to pick and choose which side missions to take, or when you want to continue the main story. While they are optional, the completion of side-missions is heavily encouraged through the experience points they offer, which in turn provide you with the ability to bolt on some more augmentations. This process becomes addictive, as your new powers provide new ways to take on each mission. This might include being able to detect the type of person you are talking to in order to have more chance of persuading them, or enhanced abilities to hack into storage lockers and safes. Human Revolution does seem to love hacking, providing many opportunities for you to hone your skills. In addition to the objects that are important for your current mission, credits, weapons and more can be found if you put the time in to explore and crack away. It's one area that has notably improved since the original, and the process of hacking nodes silently and covering your tracks is one that manages to be engaging all the way through the game. Unlike in Mass Effect where I was bored of the hacking mini-game by the end of the story, the scenarios here are still enjoyable many hours later.

The freedom to take on a mission in your own way unfortunately does not really extend to the main narrative of the game. Certain people can't die at your own hands, and some events have to happen as planned. This seems justified as it is extremely difficult to cater a story for everyone's own actions, and in particular when it could mean that entire portions of the game might rarely be seen. What are less justified, however, are the boss fights, which seem strangely abstract from the rest of the game. While there are multiple approaches to completing these sections, they don't fit in with the playing styles available in the rest of Human Revolution. You can't sneak past the bosses, you can't negotiate with them - you must attack and ultimately destroy them. The need to go into combat is particularly a problem if you've been gearing all your upgrades towards those non-conflict abilities, and if you're going for a run-through without killing then you need to make an exception here. The Trophy for that process does have a cop-out about the bosses, which is unfortunate. Thankfully there are only a handful of these scenarios in the whole game, and thankfully they are the only jarring and slightly annoying part of an otherwise highly enjoyable game.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution manages to be that highly enjoyable game thanks to not only the exciting augmentations and intriguing plot, but the missions themselves. They are varied, and encourage that freedom to try out different ways of proceeding. Aiding this is something that should feature in more console games: quick-saving. It often only appears in the PC versions and can sometimes be seen by developers as cheating, but in a game where the choices are so vast, it only seems fair to let you try out options, and then fall back to where you've saved if it all goes belly up. The A.I. seems to cope well with all the different scenarios you can throw at it; you'll attract suspicion, and probably gunfire, if you stand around hacking in front of guards, and you certainly have to be aware of sound as much as sight to avoid getting caught. There are occasions when you can get away with the Metal Gear Solid trick of being spotted but get away because you headed to a different floor, but sometimes this plan will backfire as they'll outflank you or simply send for reinforcements right into your path.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game that you'll find hard to put down. It has some fantastic visual design, and while the game isn't pushing Unreal Engine 3 to its limits, it is great at providing the right atmosphere for the situation at hand. Along the way you'll make plenty of choices, but you're not changing the final story; when all is said and done we'll all have a shared experience of what happened to Adam Jensen, but we'll have plenty to discuss about how he got there. And, if you're talking to me, about how a PS3 died along the way too.

Ratings

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