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.
This game was like an albatross around my neck. I started it in February 2011 after David and Katie got me Bioshock 2 for Christmas 2010. I didn’t fancy diving straight into the sequel, so I picked up the original Bioshock cheap from Gamestation. I didn’t play it for very long, I admit. It just didn’t grab me, and the PC-esque UI put me off.
Thirteen months later, I picked up from where I left off, and within seconds I was hooked. Why? I had my first proper Big Daddy/Little Sister encounter. From there, I completed the first game within a week, and Bioshock 2 (Campaign modes and single player DLC, at least) was finished off a week later. I was actually obsessed with the thing, and Bioshock Infinite seems so far away. I feel sorry for anyone who played these games years ago and have had to wait even longer for Bioshock Infinite.
Caution – there will be spoilers for both games in this non-review. I’ll be focusing on the stories a fair bit as they are the strongest elements. The gameplay itself was great, but the grand stories, deep characters and super-imaginative world is what will make Bioshock stick in my head for a very long time.
Bioshock then. Do I really need to explain the basics? I’m sure that by now, anyone who is even remotely tempted to read my blog would know about Rapture. No? Ok then. Rapture is a city, the dream of one man, the embodiment of conviction himself, Andrew Ryan. Oh yeah, and it’s an underwater city. In Rapture, genetic engineering is prolific. “Splicing” is not confined to simply changing your height, build or skin colour – you could go as far as shooting flames, electricity or ice from your hands, or turning invisible when you stood still. We join the story just after a civil war – one that you can actually play in Bioshock 2’s multiplayer – but we’ll get to that later. Splicing has got out of hand (excuse the pun), and things are generally quite fucked up.
