Rating of
3/5
Your Choices are Stealth, Stealth, or Stealth.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/03/17
The original, excessively-praised ‘Deus Ex’ title was released in the year 2000, while it’s unfairly-maligned sequel, “Deus Ex: Invisible War” was released a mere 3 years later, both by big-time British PC developer, Eidos Interactive. Unfortunately for fans of Eidos’ properties, the company began a death spiral shortly after the release of “Invisible War” in 2004, which saw them ride through turbulent financials before ultimately being bought, consumed, and digested by one-time Japanese RPG giant, Square Enix, in 2009. While rumblings about another entry in the ‘Deus Ex’ franchise had been around since 2007, Eidos’ complete subjugation to a Japanese powerhouse left fans of the company’s IP in limbo, doubting whether they’d see anything new.
In 2011, a whopping 8 years after the release of “Invisible War,” Square Enix surprised the world by allowing Eidos to release “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” (“DXHR”) a prequel in the ‘Deus Ex’ franchise taking place decades before the events of the original game. As a latecomer to ‘Deus Ex,’ I was hoping to see more refined gameplay and better storytelling in this modern prequel than in the horrifically-aged original, yet I was left disappointed. Not only has Square Enix completely changed focus from their own, once-high-quality IPs to focus on Eidos’ IPs, “DXHR” feel like pure pandering to a specific niche within the original “Deus Ex” fanbase.
Presentation
“DXHR” is one of those all-too-common games that tries – and fails – to look photorealistic. As a game that was originally released in 2011, I found that the visuals looked dated in 2017. “DXHR” also, most likely due to the influence of Square Enix, employs separate pre-rendered cutscenes for major story events instead of using the in-game engine. Pre-rendered cutscenes were cool in the 5th Generation when the in-game engines were flickery, jaggy, blurry eyesores, but in a 7th Generation game, it just comes off as a jarring stylistic discrepancy. Overall, though, “DXHR” is a competent-looking game, with much more interesting and complex environmental designs than the original. In general, the visual design of “DXHR” gives a far greater feeling of ‘show, don’t tell,’ when it comes to the game’s cyberpunk, class-warfare-riven world than the first title ever did. Of course, navigating these more complex, more detailed environments is facilitated by an interactive map and optional waypoints, unlike the original. No doubt this caused many ‘Deus Ex’ purists to rend their own flesh in angst and despair. However, we must acknowledge that with complexity come concessions, and gamers who grew up with the simplistic games of the 90s and early 00s need to realize that navigating the big, empty squares that comprised many of the original “Deus Ex’s” maps is a lot easier to do without a map than navigating the cluttered, busy, and complex environments of a modern 3D game.
The audio is fairly bland in “DXHR.” The soundtrack is significantly less memorable than in the first two ‘Deus Ex’ games, as I can’t say I was able to pick out any music even when specifically listening for it. “DXHR” is simply a very, very quiet game. The voiceacting is competent, and performed by a cast of no-name actors, which I always like to hear. Some of the best performances can come from unknowns, plus saving the budget for more important things never hurts when it comes to modern game development.
Technically, “DXHR” is pretty solid, as I never experienced any glitches, crashes or other Western-typical quality control issues. It does, however, have two intentional design choices that annoyed me immensely. First, the DLC mission, “Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link,” takes place between two of the main story missions, but is only inserted in the flow of the main game in the Director’s Cut version (which I do not have, and which Square Enix didn’t offer as a free upgrade for owners of the original version and all its accoutrements). Second, “DXHR” has a nice, friendly controller interface… that is unusable with my Razer Hydra, which emulates keyboard and mouse inputs. Thus, I was stuck with the clunky, awful PC interface, which emulates the horrible interface of the original “Deus Ex” instead of the fantastic interface from “Invisible War.”
Story
“DXHR” takes place 25 years before the events of the original “Deus Ex,” and begins laying some of the groundwork of the Illuminati conspiracy theory material that made-up the bulk of the original game’s narrative. Additionally, “DXHR” takes place during the earliest days of nano-tech research in relation to the game world’s timeline, thus the augmentations used are the large, mechanical kind that were considered ‘obsolete’ in the original game.
“DXHR” follows the exploits of one Adam Jensen, an ex-cop, ex-SWAT who is the current chief of security at Sarif Industries, one of the world leaders in mechanical human augmentation technology. Adam was able to land this job thanks in large part to a strong recommendation by his ex-girlfriend, Megan Reed, who leads one of the research science groups at Sarif. After a short prologue, during which Sarif is attacked by a heavily-augmented, highly organized mercenary force, resulting in the kidnapping and presumed death of Megan’s entire research group, Adam finds himself horrifically injured and on the brink of death.
The game proper picks up a few weeks after the attack at Sarif, with Adam sporting a Billion-Dollar Man physique made almost entirely out of augment replacement parts. His boss, David Sarif, puts Adam on the trail of the mercenaries that attacked the company, while Adam pursues his own agenda of finding out what exactly happened to Megan: Two activities which continually overlap.
Much of the conspiracy theory, tinfoil hat nonsense of the original “Deus Ex” is downplayed. The story in “DXHR” still contains a number of side missions and optional choices, but they do a much worse job of giving the player the illusion of making a difference. Also like the original game, “DXHR” has multiple endings, all of which hinge on one final decision made at the absolute bitter end of the game.
I didn’t find the story in “DXHR” to be particularly interesting, engaging, or unpredictable. I saw all of the ‘big’ plot twists coming from miles away due to ham-handed foreshadowing. The world-building is adequate, and I definitely felt more immersed in the game’s fictional setting, but I never felt amazed or intrigued by the game’s writing. Overall, including the stand-alone DLC, I spent 45 hours with “DXHR,” but it’s one of those games that definitely overstayed its welcome. I was bored by the halfway point.
Gameplay
‘Deus Ex’ fanboys love to gush about how ‘you can play the game however you want.’ However, when it comes down to nuts and bolts, ‘Deus Ex’ fanboys just loved the fact that they could sneak around and do “Pacifist” runs without killing any enemies due to the game’s mechanics. In order to pander to this particular strain of fanboy – indeed, they seem to make up the vast majority of people who wax nostalgic about “Deus Ex” – “DXHR” is a heavy-handed Stealth game most of the time.
See, “DXHR” combines the old with the modern, tacking modern cover-based shooting mechanics onto Stealth gameplay mechanics that have barely changed in 20 years. Unfortunately, for those who don’t care about being a Pacifist in-game (nor care about the specific Achievement/Trophy for being a Pacifist), “DXHR” makes life difficult by making Adam Jensen a complete pansy when it comes to firefights. Early on in the original “Deus Ex,” it was necessary to pick fights judiciously and occasionally use non-lethal elimination options to take out enemies whose cause might actually be more just than the group guiding the player’s actions. In the late-game of the original “Deus Ex,” however, it was just as common to have an augment that made the player nearly indestructible and a sword that could kill any foe with a single slap. Even with all of the augmentation upgrades, Adam is not particularly durable in a firefight in “DXHR.” Therefore, Stealth is the preferred option. And if the player screws up a Stealth segment and alerts a roomful of guards, reloading a previous save is the preferred option. Furthermore, if the player just kills an enemy, the amount of points they gain toward unlocking an additional augment perk are only 1/3 of what they would receive for dealing with said enemy non-lethally. “DXHR” almost completely removes the FPS traits from the series in favor of more Stealth traits. And I guess I just don’t like Stealth games – a genre with which I have little to no experience – as hiding around a corner waiting for several guards’ patrol patterns to align perfectly is incredibly boring.
The augment perk system in “DXHR” is called the Praxis System. As Adam explores environments, completes mission objectives, hacks systems, and eliminates hostiles, he gains experience. Upon gaining enough experience, he gains a Praxis Point, which can be spent on an upgrade to one of his augment systems (it costs 2 Praxis Points to activate a dormant augment system). It’s also possible to just find Praxis Kits lying around (or buy them in stores) that instantly add a Praxis Point outside the experience-based system.
Adam’s sub-par direct-conflict capabilities have an even brighter spotlight pointed directly at them during the game’s handful of compulsory boss battles. Yes, a game that forces stealth and conflict avoidance so damned hard has a number of enclosed arena fights against an enemy that can’t be out-foxed, but must simply be eliminated. During each of these encounters, the arena is littered with a number of lethal weapons, for players whose limited inventory space caused them to stick with the essentials, like the Stun Gun and Tranquilizer Rifle. However, clunkily running through some games of Inventory Tetris while a heavily-augmented mercenary is trying to kill you isn’t particularly well-thought-out.
Other than the odd, out-of-place boss arenas, the remainder of “DXHR” feels like distilled original “Deus Ex,” mostly in negative ways. As mentioned previously, the UI and inventory are incredibly cumbersome and annoying. Even worse than the original game, now bullets take up inventory space, making it nearly impossible to carry more than 3 weapons and a reasonable ammo supply at once. Thankfully, though, my complaint about every augment needing to be activated in order to do anything and each having a different keyboard button has been partially addressed. In “DXHR,” most augments are ‘passive,’ which means they just do their thing without expending any of Adam’s Bionetic Energy. Unfortunately, there are still four augments that need to be activated… but that number conveniently corresponds to the number of free inputs on an Xinput controller.
Adam’s Bionetic Energy and Health both have limited regeneration that works for free. Bionetic Energy now comes in batteries instead of a single meter, and when Adam’s last battery is depleted, it will recharge on its own. But ONLY the last battery will recharge; to refill the rest, Adam needs to munch on candy bars… sometimes whilst in the middle of taking-out a room full of oblivious guards with melee attacks. Adam’s health, on the other hand, starts at 100 and ends at 100. It’s possible to gain D&D-style ‘temporary hit points’ by guzzling painkillers and booze, up to a maximum of 200, but the health regen effect will only ever restore Adam to a maximum of 100.
Melee attacks were severely nerfed in “DXHR” compared to the earlier games in the series. Adam does not, in fact, have access to any melee weapons, but must rely on a Take-Down contextual ability… that consumes a battery of Bionetic Energy for each use. So Adam’s melee attacks essentially require ammo now… in the form of candy bars.
Finally, the original “Deus Ex” relied heavily on hacking, lockpicking, and disabling electronics to give the player options in how to infiltrate a given area. In “DXHR,” all three of these things have been combined together into general ‘hacking’… but now involve playing an annoying mini-game.
Overall
I was really hoping that “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” would be the game that showed me what is so great about ‘Deus Ex’ that keeps a dedicated fan following nearly 2 decades after it debuted. That didn’t happen. Instead, I found “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” to be the most boring game in the series, and have no desire to follow the continuing exploits of Adam Jensen in “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided,” which I guess is just as well, considering the half-assed nature of that particular game has caused Square Enix to put the series on hiatus for the foreseeable future.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
