Here’s my next Video Game review which I will be ranting about a lot and to just get straight to the point on my thoughts for this. Since first seeing the extended trailer on this game a good year ago I was pretty much hyped for what I believed would be a terrific masterpiece. However, upon playing and completing it several times I have gotten my thoughts together to now say that Deus Ex is anything but perfect.
In the simplest of ways I can describe this, it would be this. Deus Ex Human Revolutions is a predictable, cliché, overrated, unoriginal, repetitive, boring pile of crap that is made out to be something worthwhile when in reality it isn’t. Believe me when I say I did try to enjoy myself. I had a blast playing through the first half of this game but by the time it gets to the second-half the game just repeats itself and the story goes downhill, not delivering on something spectacular and right there is another major compliant that has haunted me for many games I have played this year.
The final and ending never deliver. Every single time I’ve played something that starts of good and delivers on an amazing halfway point it starts to decline nearing the end and this game is no different. However, where those games were still fun to replay this game just felt the same to me.
It is meant to be a game that offers choice on how you progress but the truth is the choices in the game don’t hold too much consequence on later events. A better example would be that the choices you take throughout the game will not effect the ending because once you get to the very end the Player themselves get to pick one of four endings to the game and even then all the endings are the same thing with just different lines of dialogue been said.
The Player can decide whether to play through it using Stealth or go in Guns Blazing or both. However, the way the game has been designed along with whether one chooses the Harder Difficultly setting make it very clear from the beginning that this is a game that is meant to purely be played using Stealth and while that can be fun and challenging it eventually gets boring very quickly. This isn’t like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid but a First Person Shooter with RPG elements thrown into it. One shouldn’t be forced to rely on this aspect of the Gameplay so much.
The RPG elements I speak of basically include the Gameplay chooses along with the Conversation Battles the Player has with other characters along with the main feature of it that involves upgrading the Main Character and Weapons. With the Weapon Upgrades one has to find them for those specific weapons throughout the game or buy them if they are available. Upgrading the Character is also pretty much the same thing along with also how the player plays the game and uses the gathered XP Points to upgrade them further.
However, the upgrades for the Character, the majority of them are just downright pointless and not needed at all. You upgrade a Augment that is meant to make you run faster but you run a second longer where if one upgrades the Lung/Chest Augment including the one for running fast then makes the Player go seconds longer. Then there are upgrades such as checking what a Computer Node contains when hacking it or whether it will make the character detectable but that upgrade is overly pointless because the Player will be hacking away anyway even if they are detected and it won’t matter what the Nodes contain because the aim of the hack is to get them anyway to access the console itself and receive the XP points that come with it. Unless the Player isn’t bothered about collecting Experience Points they won’t be ignoring hacking as it is a big part of the Gameplay and collecting enough points to gain access to the next Upgrade Point is a heavy part of it all.
The visuals and graphics for this game and the amount of detail that has managed to be crammed in is one of the positives aspects of the game. That the obvious colour scheme of black and yellow they have gone with for this give it a simple unique look not any other game of this generation has. The game almost gives off a Blade Runner atmosphere and if Blade Runner was a game then this is what it would closely resemble. It isn’t some of the best graphic seen in a game but for what it is and tries to achieve with it in terms of narrative it works every well.
But the Narrative of the game is a whole different story and the major negativity I have for it. When I said predictable and cliché I meant it. From the moment the game starts the game holds no real surprises and obvious sci-fi clichés are thrown into the mix. None of the characters in this game can be invested into. All of them from the get-go are suspect able of been the major villains or dodgy people who knows things. The only likable characters whom get any sort of development is the annoying Computer Geek everybody hates and supporting female pilot character.
The Main Character himself, Adam Jensen, as cool as his voice is, is just so damn cold. There is no emotion to him whatsoever. He is involved in a accident that forces him to be Augmented but never once do we see him recover from it. The game starts with a tutorial then skips 6 months later. I remember the Trailer showing scenes of him in his home with bandages and drinking a glass of scotch with the glass slightly breaking from the pressure of his metal hand.
Video Game characters that have touched my heart and made me think about my own problems and overlook life, that have somewhat guided my hand and emotionally affected me made me remember them forever as my childhood or teenage heroes.
Adam Jensen is so distant, so cold, ruthless that no matter what he says or does never made me fully emotionally invested in him. All he did was been dark and uncaring about everything. Maybe it was the way the Voice Actor played him because at the points in the game where his meant to be emotionally it just doesn’t come out.
The Story itself while interesting which explores the future of people dealing with robotics and choosing to be Augmented by having body parts replaced with machine to help improve life while having a opposing group that feels it is wrong and dangerous is a interesting narrative to explore but the game’s obvious plot-twists or undeveloped plot-points involving Jensen and his little unknown secret are never touched upon or made a heavy impact of.
The Boss Battles in the game are also an annoyance. Playing a game where much of the main focus is been able to dodge a fight or killing someone, the Boss Battles are your typical Run and Gun. They feel forced and at times too difficult or way too easy. The Final Two Bosses of the game are a joke and can’t even be considered Bosses even on the harder difficulty setting. Add the fact that these enemies have no development whatsoever and it again is another annoyance to this game. One of the characters never even speaks.
Like the Hero I want to be invested in the Villains. I want to know their reasons for doing what they’re doing even if the motives are the typical Hollywood cliché of world domination, controlling the mass public or doing things for their own selfish reasons but here it is never made clear who they are and why are doing what they are doing, their pasts never revealed.
Overall this game fails to deliver on something unique and the Gameplay is something seen many times and is nothing new. Yes the ways its been designed allows the Player to play through a level in many different ways and ending it with slight different outcomes but in the end it does nothing surprising or new.
Seeing the same animation when attacking someone or when jumping down becomes very stale and one stupidity of this is that there is no Melee Attack. In my personal opinion this game should have had the Melee Combat of Mirror’s Edge implanted into it because for a guy who should be able to do amazing feats he just feels like a rock waiting to be moved and that would also be the best way to describe the characters personality. A Rock.
In Conclusion Deus Ex offers nothing in Video Games that we all haven’t seen before with a cast of characters who are as uninspired as the people who made it along with a plot that never manages to achieve anything in the end. It shocks me that this game has gotten a lot of praise but this is one of those games so overrated that people fail to grasp what it means to create something cinematic on a visual and emotional level. Everything the Trailer was, this wasn't and it failed to deliver. In terms of Gameplay one can still enjoy themselves but eventually it will become too repetitive and the game will feel like a chore, going around trying to complete one task after another.
I give this a score of…6/10
Likes:
Setting and visuals
Conversation Battles
Can complete levels in different ways
Playing it on Stealth in Harder Difficulty is somewhat challenging
Hates:
Everything else.
