Video Game Review: Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Pre-January sales ho! I picked this little beauty up at my local GAME store, along with Bulletstorm: Epic Edition for £3.88. (My loyalty card had £1.12p on it.) £3 for Deus, 2 for Bulletstorm.

I cannot argue with that price. My girlfriend also bought Skyrim for ten pounds.

I've always been interested in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, although my only experience of it is from Lyle McDouchebag's: Spoilers Ahead where he refers to it as Gay Ass Sex: TwoMan Revolution.

I can't describe the comedic genius of this man, so go and watch for yourself.

You're welcome.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0zPzhugNBg

So Deus Ex: Human Revolution is game developed by Eidos Montreal published by Square Enix who also did all the games cutscenes and CGI sequences. Because Square Enix has a thing with those and are good at making them. (See: Any Final Fantasy.)
It came out in August 2011. I'm pretty sure I was too busy with Skyrim to give it a good look over.

The game takes place in the year 2027. You play as Adam Jensen, a recently hired security manager at Sarif Industries which is a growing biotech company stationed in Detroit. Obviously, it plays into the whole geopolitical American thang of "Detroit has laid off everyone. Car industry died. Back in 2011."

And that's nice. Everyone loves a cyberpunk-themed fantasy game that takes place in the future but feeds its universe through current events.

Well, I do at least.

At the start of the game, you get messed up royally by a bunch of terrorists and have to have life-saving surgery involving cybernetics, with large areas of his body replaced with prostheses. And shades. Shades save lives, people.

Adam then spends the next couple of chapters whining like a little girl about his robot-surgery.
Or the fact his fiance died.
He never seems to decide.

It's a pretty fun game and you're always presented with options to overcome obstacles using different methods.

Do I augment my dermal armor to have a cloaking effect and sneak into this heavily guarded base to steal the documents?

No. I upgrade my throwing arm and drop vending machines on the bad guys from the roof and just walk in.

Do I find the code for the door or upgrade my hacking skills to enable me to enter the building?

Um. No. Upgrade. Arm. Move those dumpsters about, hop over the locked gate and hope there's a code inside the building that lets me out. (There was. 0002.)

In any other game, I'd cry "glitch" or "gamebreaker" but with this the game isn't penalised because you are entirely supposed to do that.

There are merits of stealthy approaches, shooty approaches and sticking lots of Semtex to a barrel and hurling it into a compound. It's fair game. If the enemy goes down, then you're perfectly within rights to progress through the story.

It's also a game that rewards going off the beaten track in order to solve a puzzle. Pocket recorders often have passcodes for doors on them that can be found on enemies or hidden away on a shelf along with hacking bonus items and ammo. The stealth aspect, combat aspect, hacking aspect and social aspect all feed into each other. Why sneak into a compound when you can plead with the receptionist into letting you roam around down there? Why sneak into a compound when you can hack the cameras off and deactivate the turrets? Why sneak into a compound when you can shoot those fuckers in the face?

As you progress and gain Praxis Kits which offer new augmentations, more of the game opens up and new options become available. Sometimes characters aren't just stronger because they have more bullets or a gun upgrade. (Although it does help, I'm sure.) Sometimes characters are stronger because they've got a wider variety of choices when shit hits the fan.

It's a solid game, and if you get the chance to play it for two quid, do it.