Video Game Review: Deus Ex Human Revolution

Video Game Review: Deus Ex Human Revolution (2011)
Platforms: PS3, PC, Xbox 360
Developer: Square Enix
Official Website
Plot: You play as Adam, an ex cop who now runs security for a medical firm that produces Augments – highly controversial artificial limbs and physical enhancements. Your firm is not well liked, especially by conservative “pro human” groups that think augmentation is a plight on humanity.

One day, your firm is attacked by radical terrorists who kill the entire development team, including your love interest and head researcher. Additionally, your character is mortally wounded and saved by being forced to be augmented (think RoboCop, but you still have a personality and you can move pretty fast).

Upon coming back from recovery prematurely, your mission is to investigate why your organization was attacked, and by whom. Your travels take you around Chicago, breaking into police stations and gang held territory, and parts of China and other locations. Can you solve the mystery and stop another violent attack before it’s too late?

This game is, without a doubt, amazing. I LOVED this game. Because I love exploring, sneaking around people’s offices, taking them out and hiding their bodies, and updating myself with cool special abilities like jumping 9+ feet, turning invisible, seeing through walls, and yes – punching through them to take out baddies!

This game is AWESOME.

Honestly, the story took a back seat for me as I was sneaking around trying to get clues and uncover secrets. Seriously, the plot really just gives you an excuse for breaking into Police Headquarters to 1) find information on a corrupt officer, 2) break into the morgue to get evidence on some of the victims from the attack on your building, 3) find security footage of one of your employees selling parts and drugs, and 4) getting evidence for one of the higher ups being on the take so you can use it against them later.

Yeah, that’s part of one mission.

This game isn’t very large, but if you take the sneaky route then it does take a nice long time. And augmenting yourself and updating your abilities does take a lot of time. There are things you want to update right away, since you know it will lead to more experience (XP) later. Like hacking.

It’s true you get more experience from playing non-lethal and sneaking around (there’s a trophy for each of them, in fact), but you’re able to play by killing people. And you have to kill the bosses. This is one of the complaints from other reviewers, because they say the game is filled with choices – except for killing the bosses. However, I disagree….

There’s a false illusion of choice in this game – although, the only thing your “conversational choices” really do is allow you get more info from someone or get them to confess to things. But honestly, conversation is such a small part of this game. It only happened enough times for it to annoy me, and make me want to get back to the sneaking around.

As you get more and more abilities, and your abilities get more and more power, you really want to go out and just use them. When I got the ability to smash through walls, it was awesome. When I could see through walls to see if there was a bad guy waiting on the other side, it was even sweeter. When I could take out two guys while invisible – it was totally bad ass!

If you like the stealth RPG / action game genre, this game is great. Yes, it is also a FPS (sort of), but it works so well. Now if only the story were a bit more compelling, this game would be near perfect.