If you were given the choice to replace a limb or an organ with a prosthetic that functioned exactly the same way, perhaps even better, would you? Would you give up your arms to get replacements that could lift incredibly heavy items and punch through concrete? Would you give up your legs to run faster and jump higher? Would you give up your eyes to see through walls and in the dark?
This is the fundamental question that the Deus Ex series, including the latest installment Deus Ex: Human Revolution, asks the player. What happens when humanity is suddenly given the opportunity to become more human than human?
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel to Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War, both of which were originally published by Eidos around the turn of the millennium. The series discusses issues of morality in the context of human augmentation, specifically through mechanical means in Human Revolution, and later through nano-technological means in Deus Ex and Invisible War.
From a technical standpoint, the game looks as good as anything else on the market. I wouldn’t call it a graphical tour de force like Crysis 2, which on maximum settings approaches photo-realistic quality, but it’s certainly good. One thing I found interesting is that the visual style, rather than falling back on the black/brown/grey or blue color palates most shooters use, Human Revolution skews more orange, giving it a more warm feeling than some of the clinical or industrial spaces so often portrayed in video games. The sound quality is quite good, and the score by composer Michael McMann is excellent; it’s almost feature film quality, which is several steps above video game quality. The physics are realistic, although the game does have some issues with clipping, especially during takedown cutscenes.
In terms of game design, Human Revolution covers all the standard shooter bases, while adding some new twists to the formula. Human Revolution will switch between first and third person views depending on the players current action, something I found to be rather helpful. When in a cutscene, climbing a ladder, or taking cover, the game is in 3rd person; when shooting or moving around the game world, it’s 1st person. The weapon variety is good, and gives players a chance to tailor their arsenal to their personal play style. Moreover, the weapon upgrade system allows players to emphasize certain aspects, whether that’s increased ammunition, damage, firing speed, etc. to their play style as well.
Now, you can’t really make a game about human augmentation without allowing you to augment yourself as well. The main character, Adam Jensen, has the ability to upgrade certain elements of his augmented physiology. By the end of the game, Jensen can become invisible, see through walls, has organic armor for skin, can fall from any height unharmed, run as fast as a car, punch through solid concrete, and detonate a cloud of ball bearings that can destroy an entire room. Also, he has swords in his arms. By the end of the game, Jensen is almost ludicrously powerful. Without going out of my way to farm for cash, I accumulated a lot of upgrade kits throughout the game, just by playing. However, if you really want a certain upgrade, you can buy kits from vendors around the game world and upgrade any time.
From a gameplay perspective, one of Human Revolution’s more well-executed concepts is that players have a choice in how they approach missions and characters. With a few exceptions, a player can complete the game from start to finish without killing a single person, something unheard of in most of the blood-soaked first-person shooters released today. Moreover, the conversational system allows players to learn information and influence characters, much the way Mass Effect does. Unlike Mass Effect though, it only appears in certain necessary circumstances.
Before I delve into the story portion of things, I’d like to say that games like Human Revolution are why I continue to play video games well into my late 20s, and will probably continue to do so. When it comes to video games, I am ardently anti-social. I hate playing online, with a passion. Listening to some obnoxious 14 year old screech in my ears and unleash a torrent of profanity and slurs is just not how I like spending my free time. I enjoy playing with my friends in person, mainly because if one of them calls me a cockgobbling homomonster, I can reach over and punch them and we can all move on with our lives.
In Human Revolution, you play as Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT manager of a corporate security team who is critically injured during an assault on his company and has to have the majority of his body replaced with mechanical augmentations which give him superhuman abilities. These abilities include the ability to see through walls, punch through walls, extend swords from your forearms, become invisible, fall from great heights without damage, lift and throw heavy objects, and just generally exceed the limits of the human body by a factor of fifty. The storyline of Human Revolution continues the series’ proud tradition of weaving current and future events in with a grand conspiracy involving the player, and ultimately leading to a final choice where you decide the future of humanity. It is in these choices that everything the player has done and seen comes together, and the player is asked to turn what they have learned and believe into a concrete action. The story is truly globe-spanning, going from Detroit to Shanghai to Montreal and finally to Antarctica, for reasons I will not go in to here. It integrates well, and is an effective tool in continuing to move the action forward.
As I said previously, games like Human Revolution are why after all these years I continue to play video games. It plays like an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure, where you control the story through your actions. More importantly, because of the nature of the choices you make, you can go back and play it again to experience different choices, explore different areas, etc. I’m on my second playthrough now, and I’ve already discovered things I missed my first time around. Be warned: this game can consume vast amounts of time (I completed my first playthrough in probably 30ish hours) if you let it, simply because there’s so much to do and explore. As I stated on my twitter feed, Human Revolution is very much a cyberpunk Assassin’s Creed, where there’s so much to do if you want to explore the universe, but if you choose to only do the main missions you can get through it relatively quickly. Personally, I emphatically recommend the former, as not doing the various side missions and exploring the gameworld really does a disservice to the game itself, and is not an ideal experience.
So, if you have the time, interest, and money, I would wholeheartedly recommend picking this up. It will definitely be a contender for Game of the Year, and is among the better games I’ve played in the last several years.
