When you land in a new location, be it China, or Detroit, or Montreal, you feel the mood change from wherever you were before. You walk the city streets, and see billboards on the buildings above advertising unique things that kind of subconsciously tell you what that individual place is like. I can honestly say, I don't remember the last time a world was so fleshed out for me and in that respect, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a masterpiece.
I need to mention that on a graphical scale, this game wasn't terribly impressive, but I am not taking that as a negative, so much as a positive, which is what I believe Eidos Montreal did when making it. They decided to not make everything look super realistic and instead stylize everything...and I mean extreme style. The cyberpunk setting has never looked so good, at least, not that my eyes have seen.
Anyway, while I could talk about the stylistic visuals all day, and the overwhelming commitment to the main character's coolness, this game is a storyline game, so how does it hold up? The story starts off with you playing as all around badass Adam Jensen, who is the head of Security for a company called Sarif Industries. He is going through the security details of a very important press conference that is going to be showing the world great new advances in the field of cybernetic implants, which are already taking place in this world, but they are far from perfect. Suddenly the labs are under attack and before anyone can figure out how, Adam rushes into action to try and stop them and to save the lead scientist, his ex, Megan. It's important to note that Adam is just a man, and if you are playing on the highest difficulty (awesomely called Give me Deus Ex), you will get the most engrossing experience out of this game, as you will be very stressed every time you see a guy with a gun (which you will a lot). When Adam finally finds Megan, he gets beaten badly by some heavily augmented mercenaries and ends up nearly dead. This is where the game starts.
At this point, Adam is now rebuilt from head to toe, without his consent. He's disappointed in himself, because he wasn't able to save Megan and the scientists who died in the attack, and worst of all, the details just aren't adding up as to what happened that night. Even though he is on a much needed medical leave, he is called in to deal with a terrorist attack on one of Sarif Industries' factories. It is at this point that he get's involved with something that leads him to a global conspiracy. That's what this series is all about.
Good sci fi to me is all about presenting morally grey issues in a specialized setting where it can make the viewer really think about it. In this story people are divided on augmentations as some think it's an abomination, while others think it's amazing. There are a lot of comparisons in the storyline to Icarus from Greek mythology, which I think is really applicable here and gives a message, which very few games bother to do.
Earlier, I mentioned that it was almost perfect for story. Where is the flaw? There are a few things wrong with the game, but to me, the biggest one is the ending. I'm not going to spoil anything but I will say there are multiple endings and the execution of picking which ending you get and the endings themselves are the laziest things I've seen in modern gaming.
There are a few things that this game did that really felt fresh in today's gaming climate. First off, so many games go with a morality system, where if are good you get good points and if you are bad you get bad points, and those effect you in some way or another. In Deus Ex, you really don't get the sense of that. It feels like the game puts you into spots where you can do a good thing, or a bad thing, or choose between two bad things, or two good things, or any other combination of that. The game just throws it's hands up and says, it's your call, and to be honest, it makes making decisions a lot harder and meaningful. Another thing I would be crazy not to mention is the augmentation system. As you play you will occasionally acquire enough experience to upgrade your body parts, and unlike a lot of games where you upgrade things that you'll never use, you'll find yourself playing differently than you were up to that point. Enemies will kill you super fast on the highest difficulty, so you need to get enhancements to know where they are. You can see through walls, or walk quietly, or you can detect which way they are looking, and all of these things, make it so that you can strategically deal with situations, without ever making the game easy.
Seriously, this game made me feel more like Batman than Batman Arkham City did. In fact, this is Metal Gear Batman. I snuck through the whole game and killed no one, unlocking the Foxiest of the Hounds trophy. If you are a fan of Metal Gear Solid, you can see that the guys who made this game were too. This is a worthy successor to the original Deus Ex, and I couldn't be happier with it. Hopefully if another one comes out they will put a little more effort into the endings, and the boss fights (which ultimately are shoot em up bits after sneaking and killing no one for a few hours), but they have created something amazing and I want more of it!
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