Deus Ex: Human Revolution

If I could sum this game up in one sentence, it would be:

Quite simply amazing.

First, some history. Knowing where you’ve been helps you understand where you are. I did try to play the original Deus Ex on the PS2 – I didn’t get on with it. Edge sold this new game to me quite early on with their features on the then-named “Deus Ex 3”. The exquisite juxtaposition of mechanical arms and Renaissance inspired fashion. The luxurious black and gold palette running through every screenshot. Then the lovely melatonin made a Deus Ex: Human Revolution thread on the Random Fury! forum. The videos he posted whet my appetite. Looking back now, a lot of content from those old YouTube videos never actually made it into the game. Anyway, the game came out, and for whatever reason, I never got around to purchasing it.

I was staying round David’s house one weekend, and he had recently been bought it. He put it on, showed me where he could get up to, then he asked if I wanted to try. To be honest, if anyone put it on the hardest setting and played it like a regular first person shooter, they’d struggle to get further than my brother did. This is not Halo. Cover is your friend in DE:HR. There is a subtle art to lining up shots from behind cover, then popping out and plugging an enemies skull in the split second between their clip emptying and them retreating back behind their box. With it being a stealth-based game, I thought David would get on with it – he loves Metal Gear Solid. I have explained to him that it is a semi-sneak-em-up, and that he needs to use cover. Hopefully he gets on better with it when I give it back to him.

Where to start with my experiences with this game? From the start, I guess. Which is odd, because I pretty much started with the downloadable episode, The Missing Link. I did originally start from the start, only to be totally overwhelmed with the Detroit mission hub. Most of the new content added to games nowadays tend to be shorter, standalone experiences, which I figured would be more beneficial in the long run. It didn’t spoil the story at all, and the whole episode warmed me up to what was to come.

There is a curious bug in Deus Ex: Human Revolution that I am amazed hasn’t been patched yet. When hacking any of the (very numerous) devices in the game, instead of hitting X to accept your rewards, if you load up a previous save game, the game still remembers that it owes you those rewards, so the next time you hack anything, you get the rewards for both hacks. Taken to extremes, you could hack the same device (preferably one with a big juicy EXP reward) numerous times and receive a hell of a lot of bonuses. There is one PC, quite near the start of the game, that gives you 500 EXP once hacked. Hack it ten times and you have a Praxis Point to spend on upgrading your augments. Hack it twenty times, and you have two Praxis Points. Do as I did on my first “proper” playthrough and hack it sixty times, and you get yourself a nice little headstart in terms of upgrades. Eager to upgrade everything, I quite often saved before I hacked anything, then hacked them four more times to get a bit more juice. Be warned though – hacking the same thing over and over is a seriously boring exercise.

My first proper playthrough was on normal, and I attempted the Pacifist Achievement. Tooled up with Tranquilizer Rifle, a Stun Gun and a pretty nifty non-lethal shotgun type thing, I was putting people to sleep left, right and centre. Around quarter of the way through though, I stunned a guy and he fell into a sewer stream that was electrified. He died, so I thought I had better reload my last save. Then about half-way through, I went to loot a guy I had just put to sleep with a tranquiliser dart, and noticed he was inexplicably dead. Reload. A bit later on, I was convinced that I had found a secret area that I couldn’t quite jump up to (even with super upgraded jumping legs). In attempting to throw crates onto a stairwell, one accidentally hit a civilian. He died. Reload. Just as the game was ending I pretty much thought I had accidentally killed loads of people and hadn’t realised, but to my total astonishment, the Pacifist Achievement popped. My relief was palpable.

My second playthrough, on Hard (or to give it the proper title “Give Me Deus Ex”) was fully lethal. And even though it was on hard mode, I didn’t feel the need to hack every computer or alarm system five times before moving on. Augmenting yourself to suit your style of play is key, and where I had unlocked everything on my first playthrough thanks to my over-zealous hacking, I knew what was what. I had learnt which upgrades I felt were vital, which were useful but not essential, and which were of no use to me at all. Upgrading my hacking skills was first up, because what’s bad about turning security robots against your enemies, or getting turrets to do all your dirty work? Damage resistance, immunity to gas, EMP and concussion effects, a larger radar – all essential. Convenient upgrades like running faster, running for longer and extending inventory space were low priorities, and things like the silent running and optical camouflage were never even considered.

In both playthroughs I never felt the need to be overly stealthy – I’m not really a fan of the stealth genre – I played it very ruthlessly. Kill or knock out all the guys in the room, then search everything. Really, the amount of useful stuff you find after you have incapacitated all the bad guys comes in very handy. Goodies range from booze and pills that temporarily increase your health to cyberboost bars that recharge your batteries, from credits and ammo to Pocket Secretaries that expand the fiction and often provide you with passwords. Not that I ever used those passwords, hacking was just too good an EXP opportunity to pass up. You never knew where you’d find these bonus items. In fact, the first thing I’d do upon entering someone’s apartment illegally would be pick up their fridge and throw it out into the corridor, so I could check underneath it. I never did find anything under a fridge though.

One thing I admired about the game was the amount of research, thought and planning the developers had put into it. Pretty much everything you see on the in-game televisions, everything you read in in-game e-mails and everything you hear on in-game radios foreshadow future game events, characters or locations, or give the story more depth. Every character had layers, and no two interactive conversations unfolded in the same way. Trying to persuade someone not to kill themselves, or letting you into a secure area, or talking someone out of killing a hostage, all the conversations I had went very differently in my two playthroughs. The overarching story was complex, mature, and full of twists and surprises. By the end I barely knew who was telling the truth. Everyone seemed to be in cahoots, even those I thought couldn’t possibly be in cahoots. It was very entertaining. One aspect I did not admire though, were the skyboxes. They were kind of dull, lifeless and uninspiring. I guess Halo has spoiled me in that respect. The idea of a massive city-like structure hanging above the skyline was impressive, but the visual representation of it in the game was not (see “Hengsha was very imaginative” picture).

Beneath all that lies a solid game which manages to mix satisfying shooting action with confident stealth. It’s easy to work out if you’re trespassing and likely to be shot at or not, and the enemies always let you know how they discovered you with their exclamations. There’s a wide variety of guns in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and most allow you to add upgrades, make them more powerful and versatile. I mentioned the non-lethal shotgun earlier, it basically fires a very wide (but short range), very loud (making it useless for stealth), concussive energy wave that knocks out enemies. It was great fun to use on crowds. The bog-standard pistol, once upgraded with a laser sight and armour piercing power, became my go-to weapon for head-shots. The explosive after effects added to the magnum’s bullets by one upgrade was overpowered to be honest, but that didn’t stop me from carrying it around to deal with the heavier enemies. Adding a target-seeking ability to the Combat Rifle seemed a good idea, but it ate ammo so quickly I never really got to grips with that particular modification.

This neat touch made me smile. The character you play is head of security for a leading augment company. Near the beginning of the game I decided to hack into every office in the companies main headquarters to gain a better knowledge of how the hacking system works, and to build up some EXP. Thinking nothing of it, after I had hacked access to the offices I just strolled in, picked up any items that were lying around, opened up desk drawers and pilfered the contents, and read as many personal emails as I could possibly find. I then left the building, left the area, left the country even, in my quest to uncover the truth and punch lots and lots of guys with my powerful robotic arms. When I returned to my “head of security” office several hours later, I was greeted with an email from a concerned employee regarding some office break-ins, and loss of personal items. My gosh! It was me! I instantly started forming a defense in my head.

“That’s just what you do in games! I’ve been brainwashed! Conditioned! Items are there for me to pick up! They literally serve no other purpose in this simulated environment! They exist for me to collect and consume! Besides, you’re an NPC, you really won’t miss those not-actually-real 80 credits!”. I felt guilty.

Given the chance, after the credits had rolled I would have loved to have waltzed back into headquarters and evenly distributed the excess 30,000 credits I had left over between any NPC’s that I had stolen from. I mean, what use is in-game currency when the game is over?