Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

The hype machine behind big games often mirrors the precarious Icarus
myth - fly too close to the sun, promise too much, and you're just as
likely to tumble out of the sky as deliver on your potential. Eidos
Montreal have promised so much with Deus Ex: Human Revolution
that it's hard to see how they could succeed, how they couldn't burn up
in the harsh heat of audience expectation - of the potential assigned
to a predecessor now more than a decade past. That heat already turned
on one Deus Ex sequel, scourging it beyond all rhyme or reason. Playing
the part of a better Daedalus, Eidos Montreal has given Human Revolution
the wings to fly true - with just a few scorch marks to show for it.



Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in a future you can see from here
through half-lidded eyes. The world of Human Revolution meets somewhere
between Blade Runner and Robocop - caught between the utopia of
revolutionary scientific discovery and the dystopia of the people
inevitably left behind. Protagonist Adam Jensen becomes swept up in a
globe-spanning conspiracy hinging on powerful - and dangerous -
augmentation technology. Adam's employers sit on the cusp of a
breakthrough that might fully "unlock" human potential, courtesy of a
love interest from his past, Megan Reed. But before you can say "Alex
Murphy," Reed is dead, and Jensen lays mortally wounded on an operating
table, receiving an involuntarily hands - and legs, and lungs, and eyes -
on crash course in humanity's future in the post-human era.


The majority of Human Revolution involves Jensen's quest to unravel that
conspiracy through missions spinning off of main city hubs all over the
world. While each hub has a central plot thread carrying through
Jensen's investigation, side missions populate each locale. These aren't
the maligned fetch-quests of other RPGs. Each mission has several
layers to it, several angles to be explored or not, several perspectives
to consider, and several possible outcomes that often tie into the
greater mission at hand in unexpected ways. This creates a well-realized
sense of choice and consequence throughout Human Revolution.


The most obvious choices you'll make involve your augmentations. As you
play, you'll earn Praxis points, which allow you to unlock and upgrade
new abilities. Augmentations are responsible for the biggest differences
in moment-to-moment play between one player and another - the wide
variety of abilities force you to pick and choose what you want to do.
Do you want to hack terminals and discover the hidden secrets of some
random guy's apartment? Then you might not be upgrading your sight to
see through walls, or jumping ten feet straight up, any time soon.


Eidos Montreal's prequel quickly establishes what the world of Human
Revolution allows. There's a vocabulary of play that you'll learn
quickly, and once you speak Human Revolution's language, if you can
think of a solution, it's probably an option. There's room for stealth,
there's room for guns blazing, and there's plenty of middle ground too.




I never felt like the game punished me for particular choices in
augmentation, or in my play style. There were advantages and
disadvantages to my selections, but I was always given avenues to
success - and I always, always felt like a badass. Eidos
Montral brilliantly coaxes players into a space where experimentation is
comfortable. It's fun to feel like you're outsmarting a game's rules.
But Human Revolution provides a particular kind of satisfaction as it
rewards you for it. Human Revolution incentivizes everything, as
everything you do yields a reward, more or less. Whether that means
playing the part of cold cyborg or tortured, empathetic ex-cop, or
choosing between stealth and direct action, your choices define your
experience.

That experience comes wrapped inside a considered, cohesive
presentation. Human Revolution takes cues from futuristic cyberpunk
fiction, but it finds an identity in the past. The color palate eschews
the blues of more pedestrian depictions of the future for a look that
borrows from European painters like Titian and Rembrandt. There are
visual references to the Italian Renaissance everywhere - from
architecture, to fashion and body armor, and to the ornate construction
of augments themselves.


These artificial limbs don't look manufactured; they seem wrought by
blacksmiths and artisans, crafted like the clockwork machina of the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment. There's so much care and
consideration obvious in Human Revolution's look and style and execution
that it's easy to forgive some of the game's genuinely uglier spots –
see many of its less important NPCs and their botox faces, and a spotty
framerate here and there, for example. You'll even pardon some
occasionally stiff voice acting and awkward moments in the script amidst
a phenomenal soundtrack.




It's rare to see so much intention in a
game. There's a striking unity of vision in Human Revolution that pulls
you in. It keeps the story together and moving even as it pushes at the
edges of plausibility at times, and it doesn't feel like any plot has
gone missing or become a casualty to the inexorable push to ship the
game on time. This is especially impressive given Deus Ex: Human
Revolution's length; meticulous players determined to find everything,
to hack every terminal and pry out every secret, might spend as much as
40-45 hours on their initial playthrough.


In fact, the promises of freewill and experimental play that Human
Revolution makes and keeps, and the palpable illusion of choice and
consequence—call its shortcomings into glaring contrast, making
objectivity difficult during the few instances where true player
influence break down. While the gameplay maintains flexibility
throughout, some major plot decisions are made for you, via cutscene and
the like. And the "bosses," such as they are, yield comparatively
disappointing and 'gamey' results, save one possible moment of
turnabout late in the game.


The free-form approach found everywhere else gets winnowed down to
murder alone here. While you can experiment with the best ways to bring
these augmented killers down, these points always signal the brief but
blatant removal of your free will, an unexpected turn from the same game
that allows you to make your way through the entire affair without
killing anyone else, ever - except for those bosses. Even if you might want
to let them live. There's no room for subterfuge, no room for mercy,
and no margin for deviation from a very straight line story-wise.


Other games do this as well. But few games encourage and reinforce
creative problem solving and the importance of your own moral compass
the way that Human Revolution does. To see that cast aside means little
from a pure gameplay perspective. But as an experience, Human Revolution
suffers more than any game I can think of because of it.


Is it fair to punish Human Revolution holistically because of its
inability to deliver on the logical progression of its promise? Probably
not. But as the credits rolled, I contemplated that as much as I did
the human existence-altering options I had to choose from along the way.



Closing Comments
While
Deus Ex: Human Revolution can't be the revelation that Deus Ex was in
2000, it's an achievement nonetheless. It's a visionary, considered
piece of work, and while my thoughts drift to the things that could have
been and the compromises made due to the possibilities of video games
in 2011, they're just as quick to consider playing through it again.
Human Revolution is a smart, rewarding piece of transhumanist noir that
does justice not just to Deus Ex, but to the fiction that inspired it.


IGN Ratings for Deus Ex: Human Revolution (X360)


Rating Description

out of 10	Click here for ratings guide
8.5	Presentation Human Revolution's interface is well-integrated and unobtrusive, but the waypoint system leaves something to be desired. The story holds together well though, and moves along without stumbling.
8.5	Graphics From a technological standpoint, Human Revolution isn't doing anything special graphically. But it has some of the best production design and art of any game this year. Or last year.
9.0	Sound Some awkward voice acting notwithstanding, Deus Ex's sound design is excellent, and the soundtrack is phenomenal.
9.0	Gameplay Human Revolution establishes a gameplay vocabulary and rewards you for learning (and abusing) it. It's insanely flexible - save for a few points where it isn't at all.
10	Lasting Appeal Practically demanding multiple playthroughs, Human Revolution will take you anywhere from 25 to 40 hours on your initial run.
9.0 OVERALL	Amazing (out of 10)