There’s a common saying on the Internet that every time someone mentions Deus Ex, someone, somewhere re-installs it. This obvious exaggeration is a testament to the game’s popularity among old sschool gamers who love it with all their heart cherishing every pixelated moment even in 2011. Now nearly a decade later, developer Eidos Montreal have attempted a franchise resurrection attempting to please both old school fans as well as newcomers alike with Deus Ex: Human Revolution (HR), an intense action RPG (Role Playing Game) that does not disappoint.
In HR, you play as Adam Jensen, the security head of Sarif Industriez, a company that deals with human augmentation in the not so near future. After a horrific accident at the start of the game, Adam finds himself augmented with all sorts of mechanical parts in a bid to survive. It turns out he was only an unfortunate incident in the larger picture of things that you’ll have to uncover over the game’s 20-odd hour campaign. Yes, it’s a huge game and even though I rushed through most of it to finish the review ASAP, it took me nearly 24 hours.
Size does not matter
The game like any RPG is full of content be it in its side quests or chunky story. Like its predecessor, the game favours stealth heavily and if sneaking around a game for hours on end doesn’t sound too appealing, this obviously isn’t the game for you. Unlike the Splinter Cell series that revolves around staying hidden in the shadows, HR is all about moving in and out of a place undetected. The game’s essentially played out from a first person perspective but while taking cover, it switches to a third person perspective allowing players to survey their surroundings before making a move. While the cover system itself isn’t as fluid as the one we’ve seen in Splinter Cell Conviction, it does fit in rather well with this game.
Sneaking behind a person allows you to either knock them out or take them out permanently using contextual takedowns. And for some weird reason, every time you take someone out, you drain an entire battery in the process. Drain all your juice completely and you’ll be unable to execute a takedown till it refills automatically. Thiz for some reason seems counter-productive as on one hand the game does want me to use stealth but on the other it’s scared I may abuse the Takedown function.
Ready for war
Since you’re already augmented to a certain extent, Jenson can further enhance his abilities by upgrading or purchasing augmentations using Praxis points. These include the ability to cloak temporarily, move around without making a sound, jump from heights without taking any damage and lots more. You have to make sure to chooze the upgrades that reflect your play style. If you don’t prefer stealth and would rather go in guns blazing, you’ll require a different set of upgrades such as recoil reduction, a bigger inventory through which you can carry more ammunition, better armour etc.
