Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

Deus Ex: Human Revolution review

By Cyraxis

Deus Ex: HR is going to be a hard game to write a fair review about. This is a game I have been looking forward to since it came out, have played and loved its predecessors and have a personal spot in my heart for the setting, so if it seems I'm a little bias towards the game that's why. Now to start, THIS GAME IS AWESOME!!

Is it possible that this game was sent to us to save us from the mundane swamp of bland first person shooters and mediocre action games in which the gaming community has been drowning for so long? Is it possible that gamers at last can raise themselves from the pits in which they have been cast by the rest of society and claim that their personal medium of entertainment requires sophistication and intelligence on the same level as reading a good book? My answer...no and I explain why. It is simply because the vast majority of the drooling mongrel race that plays games will see this game's title and realise that its acronym is not a type of fish and give up on it. Others yet will leave it on the shelves because they can't play with their equally thick headed friends in some thoughtless death match online.

In short I don't think enough of the gaming community is going to play this game to force a realisation that other companies have been starving them of any quality in their games for a long time with only a few bright exceptions. However those that play this game for whatever reason will realise that Deus Ex isn't quite up to the standard of the first two games but is still going to be up with the greatest of the recent generation of gaming.

The storyline is complex and I'm still not sure I've quite got my head wrapped around what exactly is going on. What I do understand is that a businessman has a desire to purge the world of augmented humans because he thinks the world needs to be restarted with him in charge (he has a god complex to rival my own). At the beginning of the game a bunch of scientists are killed in an attack on a lab that leaves you as a small puddle of jelly on the floor which someone then shoots in the head for good measure. Through the miracle of science you are restored to life as an augmented human who is so cool he has sunglasses built onto his face and a trench coat which looks awesome from a distance but up close you realise the shoulders have a weird floral pattern on them that I think matches the wallpaper in his apartment. The story is basically one of revenge for the scientists with a twist at the end that isn't that big by the time you get to it as anyone with a brain had worked it out...OK so maybe you'd work it out if you hadn't spent years turning your brain into just another lump of CoD merchandise.

The gameplay does something that hasn't been seen for a while and actually has ways for you to traverse a level that don't include direct combat. Call of Duty fans probably just shit themselves in fear of the prospect (I really do riff on CoD fans a lot don't I) but you can stealth around a group of enemies and then sneak away to the next bit of level without firing a shot. You could also change the turrets in the room to recognise the enemies as targets if you just have a murderous appetite. The problem with this is most people will just use the vents to get the best position, kill all the guards, collect their guns then go hack all the doors and consoles to get all the exp. The problem is that there is no specialisation in classes so you don't just focus on one way of playing the game so you have an all rounded character who can hack consoles or sneak or shoot his way out of a problem. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it does take away from one of the focal points of the first two games. Another problem is that all the characters end up with enough exp to buy any upgrade they want so that at the end of the game you are almost unstoppable.

To mention the ending I need to start at the title. Deus Ex is part of a latin term Deus ex machina which is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. And the endings of this game certainly are pulled straight from the writers arse.

Damn this review is gonna be too long again, oh well. A key feature of Deus Ex is a huge debate between normal, boring, sappy, weak, pathetic, slow human beings and the new, improved, strong, smart, fast, super humans who became too attached to their computers. And this is ridiculous because their isn't a person alive on this planet who is happy with their pathetic existence and wouldn't change a thing, and if science gave them a way to do it they'd snap it up in a heart beat. The main argument is that the augmented people have lost their humanity and to this I shout FUCK OFF! What's so great about humanity anyway? Humans rape, pillage and murder, that's not going to change if our nukes come out our chests. Anyway I pretty much gave up my humanity when I started praying at night for an excuse to go insane and become a super villain. Were I given a choice to become part machine I would leave this pitiful flesh behind and become even more of a god then I am now. I WOULD PURGE THE STREETS OF ALL WHO OPPOSE ME AND MY FOLLOWERS WOULD RAISE ME UPON HIGH TO THE HEAVENS WHERE I BELONG!! sorry about that I think I lost track of myself. (as a special note as someone did mention this to me following my GTA review, I'm not prejudice against any one race, I hate you all equally).

In conclusion I would say that Deus Ex is likely to be my game of the year, It has its faults but I doubt anything will shift it from pride of place at the moment and while I refuse to give any game a perfect score as no game will reach my lofty demands I will happily give it a 9 out of 10.

Final thoughts: I never really thought of dragging unconscious guards into provocative positions until someone else mentioned the idea, maybe I'm just not that puerile. Also if you are interested in following me as your god into the future please submit applications.