Reviews// Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Regardless of your decisions, Adam’s intense brooding will always give him a bit of an anti-hero-like edge, even if you’re playing him as an absolute saint. Sticking to this patch of middle ground as opposed to leading you down the road of a traditional knight in shining armour or borderline-psychotic loose cannon does help make Adam a fairly well-rounded and likeable character though, despite his deadpan attitude and sandpapery rough vocals.

The game has incredibly slick presentation all round, with a clear interface that manages to give you all the information you need without getting in the way, even as you acquire upgrades to your radar and senses that display even greater information about nearby enemies. The menus are easy to navigate and understand, and despite your inventory being handled in a potentially annoying grid system, all of your items are automatically arranged to fit in the best possible way.

Graphics might be the game’s weakest area, though it’s more of a credit to the gameplay and storytelling than anything else. Though Adam and his supporting cast are all interesting enough and well-designed, once you get to the background NPCs things start to look very bland, if not sometimes outright ugly, and very same-y.

I don’t know how many unique NPC models there are, but it doesn’t feel like many once you’ve wandered around a few times. The game is beautiful though; a strong, consistent design style and expertly-used lighting really bring the different locations to life and give them a realistic, not-too-futuristic look.

Without a doubt, Human Revolution is a huge game that you can sink a lot of hours into, and the many different options and gameplay styles that can be pursued make it really suited for multiple playthroughs. From almost the very start of the game you’ll be able to start making small decisions that will branch out and have different results, many of which will continue to be brought up later on in the game.

Lots of side quests and huge locations to explore mean a first-time playthrough will take a long time itself. Even if you’re not interested in seeing everything that the city has to offer or completing all of the side quests, Deus Ex’s main storyline missions are plentiful and challenging enough to keep most gamers busy for quite some time.

The game isn’t flawless, but pointing out some of its faults feels nit-picky in the face of everything it does so well. Probably one of the pettiest complaints would be the fairly long load times, which would be less of a concern if the incredibly strict difficulty didn’t mean you were likely to see them so often, sometimes in rapid succession.

Human Revolution is a mercilessly challenging game, and I’d definitely advise you to manually save often despite the autosaves being quite frequent, just in an effort to avoid any unnecessary frustration if one of your plans goes wrong. And if one of your plans goes wrong you’ll probably find yourself on the receiving end of one of those lengthy load times quite quickly. Once discovered by your enemies, you can almost feel them mocking you as they close in on your desperate attempt at a hiding place while their reinforcements pour in behind them.

It could be said that despite the effort put into keeping the gameplay as open-ended as possible, stealth is still quite heavily favoured over the more aggressive combat-orientated options. Even packing the high-end physical augmentations, Adam doesn’t take a lot of punishment before going down for the count, and once discovered it won’t be long before you’re outnumbered. Considering how sparse ammunition is, even players dedicated to wiping out as much of the opposition as possible are going to find themselves tucking their tail between their legs and scrambling into the nearest vent on a regular basis.

In light of this, the game’s biggest weakness is probably its boss fights, where you are forced to rely on combat skills that you might have been neglecting (in favour of all the generally more useful utility augmentations) and thrown into a one-on-one duel to the death with a much stronger opponent. This really doesn’t mesh well with the freedom of the rest of the game and the difficulty spike in these sections will likely be frustrating to some, especially when the loading times start rearing their heads again and again. Of course, the natural payoff for this frustration is the immense satisfaction of hard-earned victory, so they shouldn’t leave too sour a taste in a determined gamer’s mouth.

Conclusion
The best way to sum up Human Revolution would be that it is ambitious. With enough RPG elements to qualify as a great RPG in itself, shooting mechanics that flow seamlessly between first-person and third-person and work equally well in either, and gameplay that encourages and rewards the player for experimenting with better ideas than just charging into trouble guns blazing, Deus Ex: Human Revolutuon succeeds at so many different things that it’s hard to imagine a gamer who couldn’t find at least something to enjoy here.

SPOnG Score: 94%