In 2000, Warren Spector helmed a masterpiece ship into the lochs of gaming history. Deus Ex was the recipient of numerous Game of the Year awards, and universally praised by critics and gamers alike. Offering gameplay beyond the standard run-n-gun variety, the game threw players into a wide assortment of situations and gave them their choice as to how they tackled the situation. In every encounter, it was possible to gear up for, and attempt, to start a third world war, or decide to stealthily creep through back doors and vents, remaining unseen and unknown. Aside from choosing a plan of attack, and whether to kill or leave enemies unharmed, if a little less conscious, players could choose and upgrade several incredibly useful augmentations and skills that proved incredibly useful. Supporting all this choice-laden gameplay was a rich story full of double- and triple-crosses, among other twists and turns, such as modern-day conspiracies about the Illuminati and other secret factions warring over control of the world’s population. With everything so masterfully executed and the game so absolutely chalk full of details a player could run through several playthroughs and still discover brand new things they hadn’t noticed the previous four times, it’s no wonder the game was a phenomenal success, often regarded as one of the absolute best games of all time. Obviously, making a sequel would be an incredible undertaking.
Considering the overall failure of the first attempt at a sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, no great expectations should be levied against a sequel well over half a decade later. So upon the moderately unexpected announcement of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, hope for a worthwhile sequel was unsurprisingly low. Even throughout the lengthy course of promotional material leading up to the release skepticism reigned as a leading comment about the upcoming game, due mostly to the shortcomings of the past attempt.
So, going into Human Revolution with low expectations yielded a great time, one almost entirely worthy of the “Deus Ex” name. Implementing gameplay reminiscent of the original Deus Ex, and a conspiracy theory story that doesn’t run nearly as deep as the original’s, but is still captivating, Human Revolution is a game that gives new players a lighter version of the original experience, and players of the original a refreshing aftertaste of what they came to love in the first place.
Opening up almost the complete opposite of the original, Human Revolution starts you out in the tightly scripted shoes of Adam Jenson, the super high rank in charge of security stuff for one of the leading biotechnology and augmentation firms, Sariff Industries. While taking a guided tour of a soon-to-be-revealed scientific discovery that everyone is hesitant to tell you about, bad stuff happens. During the next fifteen minutes the game plays like any other generic sci-fi shooter, after which Adam gets his augmentations, and the game opens up for you to make what choices you will.
It’s at this point that Human Revolution starts earning its namesake. Upon returning control to the player after the opening titles, the game presents an immediate objective that is free to be ignored in preference to exploring the environment to pick up goodies and figure out the mysteries of the ladies’ room. In a very nice detail, as in the original, these explorations are often more than just exploration. These little side areas offer up spare ammunition or other items, extra dialogue, side-quests, and alternate paths. There are few dead ends that are without some use, and any that appear initially empty are often returned to later, their purpose then revealed.
The game absolutely revels in these asides in the hub locations. Side streets and alleyways are littered with useful items or experience bonuses, and although these hubs are absolutely huge, there’s almost no wasted space, with level design reminiscent of The Chronicles of Riddick in its use of space. The hubs encourage all sorts of varied exploration as well. For example, at one point I hacked open a relatively high level door, behind which was an empty apartment hallway with inoperable doors. But past these was a window I could open, leading out onto a series of air conditioning units that found me on a lower roof of a neighboring building. Upon this roof there was naught but an air vent that, upon entering, yielded a silenced sniper rifle. And this is but one of a multitude of similar situations the game employs. There are plenty of items stashed on precarious perches or in areas requiring skilled acrobatic jumps to reach. Again, offering up choice, players with the ability to do so can often choose to take the shortest route between two points and simply punch straight through the wall. There are several routes only available with the proper augmentation, such as immunities to electricity or to falling damage, but there are almost no areas that are inaccessible without them. Sometimes you just have to take a different or longer route. Throughout the entirety of my play, I was constantly taking one route and, upon reaching my destination, would notice another route I could have taken, that sometimes would have saved me some trouble. Unfortunately, the strength augmentation that allows a player to pick up heavy objects is almost required, as a lot of the side passages through vents are hidden behind otherwise immobile vending machines or large crates.
And such explorative treats aren’t just limited to the hub locations either. Missions themselves also feature several alternate routes and side rooms, nearly always serving a purpose, whether offering up extra items, ammunition, or, at the very least, a different point of access or a place to store bodies. However, for all the extra outlets or ventilation shafts, the mission levels are stringently linear. While nowhere near as limited as a corridor shooter, it’s less like being put into an area and given an objective to accomplish than being carefully steered down an incredibly wide field, bounded by fences, and only going in one direction. Despite the relative straightforwardness, the illusion of freedom is exceedingly convincing. The story progresses with the mission well and the sense of moving forward is so compelling that it never feels like you’re being pushed along, rather you’re readily trying to keep pace with, or even ahead of, the story. Keeping ahead though, is another matter entirely.
While not the conspiracy epic of the original, Human Revolution is still a highly intriguing tale of corporate espionage and world domination, full of twists, turns, unknowns, and plenty of other hard-driving story caveats. Obviously most details are spoiler-laden, but without giving away too much, the story revolves around protagonist Adam Jenson’s position as chief of security at Sariff Industries, and the various breaches of security that take place. Following leads about these problems, Adam goes globetrotting, only to discover something far more involved than he could ever imagine. As mentioned previously, the story is gripping, and genuinely worth pursuing, though occasionally, in its effort to be mysterious and conspiratorial, it tends to leave the narrative confused with missing or mixed-up details rather than withheld ones. This never derails or gets in the narrative’s way, but at times I wished I could call up some sort of recap. Perhaps the only viable complaint is that the ultimate antagonist seems to have unsure or conflicting motives, and one of the reveals the game treats as Earth-shaking is ultimately nigh inconsequential and was something I had guessed literally fifteen minutes into the game. Even with these really-hard-to-actually-call-detriments, the story provides an incredible backdrop. Constantly, through conversations, news reports, radio broadcasts, books, and newspapers, almost everything is talking about the controversial augmentations that people choose to get or sometimes are forced into getting. The themes of basic human rights, equality, justice, fairness, addiction, and all sorts of “if augmentations were real, how would our inherent evils be amplified?” stuff are the story the world constantly tells you while you uncover the true story of what’s going on with Sariff Industries. All of the events and arguments are well done and convincing enough to provide a believable setting for the game and a tangible world to simply sit back and soak up.This is the background to the great gameplay that makes this game so very good.
As previously stated, Human Revolution is relatively linear in design, but within those bounds the gameplay is rich and open. The game gives you a wide berth as to whether or not you want to be loud or stealthy, killing enemies or being a pacifist. It gives you a sizable amount of freedom to choose how you tackle the myriad of situations Adam gets thrown into. The shooting is relatively tight by default, and with augmentations you can tighten it up even more to your advantage. The stealth is very functional, and the game has achievements encouraging a nonlethal, no-alarm playthrough. It even allows you to “ghost” the game, a la Thief, in which no one ever knows you were there, not even by waking up hours later, or dismissing something they “thought” they saw. An exceedingly explosive firefight is rivaled in excitement and satisfaction by getting through an area without anyone ever having a paranoid thought cross his mind. And whichever style of play you choose, the augmentations available are, for the most part, helpful.
There are offensive augs, like taking down multiple targets at once or aiming stabilizers, defensive augs like armor plating or cloaking, useful augs like hacking or negating fall damage, or redundant augs like showing an enemy’s field of view when the radar upgrade does nearly the same thing. Likewise, the augmentation that lets you kill all enemies in a circle around you is relatively useless for a tranquil character. But there are ultimately no completely useless augmentations, depending on your playstyle.
One of the few universally useful augmentations is hacking. Although anything that needs to be hacked to progress forward is low enough that any player can hack it, the majority of the game’s goods are locked behind hackable doors or safes. An aggressive player can break down doors, but the higher level upgrades to hacking are nearly invaluable. It also doesn’t hurt that the hacking game is fun, providing a challenge and giving a nice thrill when you complete a hack with less than a second remaining. There are two power-ups for hacking, but I never used them except on a single Easter egg computer near the end of the game. At the end of the game, I had twenty-something of one power-up, and thirty-something of the other. There are also some mild control issues with hacking, such as difficulty selecting the action you wish to perform, especially under pressure, and when trying to survey your surroundings while hacking, the controls just aren’t sensitive enough to look around quickly and completely, at least not without a controller.
As for the non-computer enemies in the game, the enemy AI is capable of holding its own in a firefight and has a neat trick of looking behind it as it goes around on patrol, but this always happens in the same spot. Obviously, it wouldn’t be fair if the AI didn’t do the same thing over and over, and it’s pleasant that they dispel the previous genre staple of enemies not turning around. But apart from that, the enemies are relatively stupid. Hiding in a vent is practically invulnerability. While hiding in a vent with the entire Detroit police station mad at me, I was able to kill about two thirds of the station by sitting in the vent and waiting for them to move in front of it, whereupon I promptly shot them to death. And while headshots are an instant kill, crotch shots are not. I shot several people six or seven times right in the groin, canonically bringing “male enhancement” into the augmented age. While an actual combat area may not have that exact issue, the AI still reeks of the stupid. Provided they’re not alerted, every gunshot fired alone is free, only instilling curiosity instead of alarm. In a dream world, the AI would notice some random gentleman wearing a trench coat and covered with augmentations in an area he doesn’t look like he belongs in moving a vending machine out of the snack area and stacking a crate on top of it underneath the balcony of a restricted area, but as is, the AI serves its purpose of providing dumb guards to avoid and beat up on.
The one major flaw with the gameplay resides solely in the boss fights. Completely out of place within the game, each and every one of them brings the game to a screeching halt while it takes on a very arcade-like persona within such a beautifully crafted and reputable world. The mobile bosses all seem to have brain damage, as even those with a ranged attack seem to run right towards you. There’s no explanation for the fights, so beating them is a matter of trial and error. During one boss fight, lacking a certain augmentation will lead to several instant deaths, when on the hardest difficulty, that seem to come randomly, until you notice that if you let them hit one of the computers it shocks the ENTIRE ROOM, with no safe zone for you to retreat to. It’s also a pain that, while it’s a given, that as a boss fight they’re going to have a large health bar, I dumped a war’s worth of ammunition into every boss before they went down. Who knows what would have happened had I decided not to carry any ammunition for my super-stealth, no-kill character? Which highlights another issue with the boss fights, and that’s the fact that the game encourages you to build your character how you want, so someone who decides to be a super stealthy hacker type is suddenly thrown way out of his element in these forced boss encounters. They’re so bad that they almost ruin the game while in them, but as soon as one of the fights is over, the game resumes doing everything right.
In technical aspects, Human Revolution is extremely solid. The game looks pretty good and, even on my aging system, runs buttery smooth. The animations are pleasant, especially when the AI turns while walking or falls asleep when you tranquilize someone, and they truly shine when Adam takes someone down. Browsing online, I found several reports of horrendous glitches, but in my playthrough it only crashed twice. And other than a few bugged ragdolls, was glitch-free. One thing that really stands out is that the game has a setting in the options menu to widen the field of view for those of us in the PC gaming master race. It’s beyond incredibly nice that there isn’t a required FoV hack or any ini modification. It’s just a setting right there in the options menu.
The game is also full of throwbacks to the original Deus Ex, with Easter eggs littered about. The soundtrack has murmurs of the original Deus Ex’s soundtrack scattered throughout it, at one point going so far as to use the actual UNATCO theme music for the in-game radio. Emails from FEMA director Joseph Manderly and other such references make the game feel like part of the Deus Ex storyline but aren’t used to root itself into the world, instead using them as additional spice. The game also features Easter eggs not related to Deus Ex, including a Megadeth Easter egg that made me smile for several minutes after I found it.
Considering the way that Deus Ex: Invisible War was a fair game in its own right but should have never had “Deus Ex” in the title or used Deus Ex story elements, it could easily be expected that Deus Ex: Human Revolution should be approached with only the last two words of the title. However, thanks to much better story, and game design, it fully earns the initial two words as well. Even if you aren’t a fan of Deus Ex, it’s a great game. The fact that it happens to be part of the Deus Ex universe, and a well-orchestrated part at that, just puts the icing on an already incredibly delicious cake.
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