Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the third installment in the franchise by Eidos that combines first-person action shooting and strategic RPG. You play Adam Jensen, a private security expert for the bio-mechanical augmentation company known as Sarif Industries. Human augmentation has changed the planet and caused both great praise and distress.

Sarif Industries is one of these companies that researches and builds technology that can be used to enhance anything in the human body. Right from the beginning, Adam Jensen is forced to undergo massive human augmentations after a devastating attack on Sarif Industries by an array of supersoldiers who steal valuable data pertaining to a new piece of technology and kill all the Scientists working on the project.

It is after this event that Adam Jensen is swept up into a global conspiracy revolving around these new and dangerous enhancements. As Adam Jensen, it is your job to uncover the events pertaining to the initial attack on Sarif Industries. You will be sent to areas such as Shanghai, Montreal, and Detroit to complete objectives given to you by David Sariff. The story starts off slow but once it gets going you will be sucked in from start to finish.

Human Revolution explores the relationship with the media, big business, and the government, which helps illuminate the story by combining elements from reality to help the story progress. The player will make decisions that will be projected on new reports via televisions and newspapers that acknowledge how they completed missions. Data logs and emails are also scattered around the environment, giving hints into the world around you and sometimes diving deeper into your past.

Players will also encounter an array of characters. In the world of Deus Ex, you will encounter those who think augmentations will steer humanity to the next phase of evolution, while others think it is a threat to humanity. The atmosphere does a good job of allowing these ideological differences to develop. Choosing how you talk to the people that flood Deus Ex can determine how you complete a quest or how they respond to you. Making these decisions throughout the game will determine how the story develops and which of the multiple endings you will receive.

The style and look of Human Revolution are something to admire. Deus Ex's beautiful color palette combines black and gold to depict this shady time of human advancement. This type of visual consistency is common throughout the game, but very striking. Human Revolution tries to create a believable futuristic setting by populating the various locations with things such as hobos cluttered around fires, gangs in the streets, and people looking through trash cans for food.

It’s this desire that Human Revolutions' technical issues become more apparent. Cities are big but not enormous, and facial textures are dated, with lip-to-voice synchronization. The environments themselves are impressive, but it is obvious that the developers tried to get more from the graphical engine than it could handle.

Deus Ex: plays from the first-person perspective and shifts to the third person when behind cover. Human Revolution's finest appeal is how it allows the player to tackle each objective in a number of different ways. If you want to go in guns blazing or sneak your way into a complex, it is your choice.

At times, you can be overwhelmed, in a good way, with the number of ways each mission can be completed. However, despite the number of ways you can finish a mission, no element is done any better than another, especially when compared to other games.

Players can enhance several different abilities and weapons that give Jensen access to different areas. As a player, you will gain experience points that, when accumulated, will earn you praxis points, which in turn can be traded for skills and enhancements.

If you choose to play Deus Ex as a shooter, you will find the cover-based system to work effectively enough, but not as effectively as Gears of War. Enemies aren’t challenging, and waiting for the enemies to reload before pumping them with lead is an effective tactic. There is also a stealth option that rewards players with more experience if they complete the mission without casualties. 

One of the most enjoyable sequences in the game is watching Jensen take down an enemy using either the lethal or non-lethal combat option. The camera pulls out, and the player watches as Jensen takes out one or two guards in an incredible fashion. Often, these situations are interrupted by overlapping textures, but they look so good that I found each take-down worth the risk.

You can even choose to look for alternative points of entry, such as vents hidden behind heavy and light objects, punching through weak walls, or hacking through an unguarded door, which involves you completing a mini-game to create a digital network path before you’re shut out. Human Revolution is predominantly flexible and encourages the player to scavenge for options for most of the objectives.

At first, the game encourages choice, but there are certain situations that abandon this mechanic and force the player to complete an objective under specific terms and outcomes. In these types of situations, there can be frustration because situations that demand this ask for specific abilities. If you didn’t upgrade a certain ability that is demanded, you can be left in the cold.

In the beginning, I never found myself overwhelmed by the choices I made, and I also had avenues of success despite the strengths and weaknesses of my point distribution. However, during specific events, the element of choice was eliminated, and now I was forced to tackle missions using specific tactics that I didn’t prepare for using my Praxis points.

This can lead to a lot of frustration, especially during boss fights for those who targeted their enhancements towards non-combatable developments. For a game that focuses on the choices of the player to have them made for you is misleading.

The other issue with Deus Ex is technical. There are game stability issues that can cause the quest to break, as well as frame-rate issues. There is also an unbalanced difficulty in the AI. At times, I found enemies unable to see me in plain sight or somehow able to spot me from unbelievable positions. There are long load times that separate small areas, despite showing that this game doesn’t push the limit of modern technology, regardless of the platform.

Despite its flaws, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a great game. You can pick out many flaws in many aspects of the game, whether it is the gameplay or the presentation. However, when taken in as a whole package, this first-person action RPG is an appealing and satisfying adventure. I found this interpretation of the future particularly disturbing because certain elements are grounded within our reality to make it sound.

 Deus Ex: Human Revolution is an extensive 20-25 hour game that encourages replay value, especially for those looking to unlock everything. The longer you play the more the story will suck you in. Human Revolution doesn’t do any one thing great, but it combines them into such an enthralling atmosphere and exciting versatility that after beating the game, you will want to go back for more.