Title: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Maker: Eidos Montreal
Publisher: Square Enix
System: PS3
Cost: $23 Used
Visceral Yellow Polygons
Perhaps the only thing that really needs to be said is that it feels good.
It’s your play, more than your augmentations, that turn you into a killing machine by the end. Movement is fluid, and sneaking, takedowns, and firing an extension of your hand. The act of killing is visceral to the point that it remains uncomfortable. Murdering someone, even at the end (especially at the end), has a moment of tension before the brutality.
And it does this all without a black and white morality system. So it never feels like your being funneled down one play style or another (i.e. psychopath vs pacifist). You might violently clear out one area and then sneak through the next, all determined by what seems appropriate at that moment. Graphically it’s beautiful. It looks better than every new release I’ve played recently. The world is well fleshed out: augmentations, a detroit renaissance, dysutopic and enviable.
Not everything is perfect however. The voice acting is on the wrong side of distracting. The difficulty can be uneven, which leads to either frustration or disappointment. And while the story is serviceable, it’s mostly because of the journals you find laying around which expand on the original Deus Ex. And yet all that would be fine if the endings were better…
So in the end I’m not sure if having the name Deus Ex in the title makes this game better or worse than it would be otherwise. It’s hard to compare anything to original, but Human Revolution also benefits from the world it exists in. Regardless, it’s up there with the best of this generation.
Review: 4 stars (out of 5)
Memory: The yellow haze in the elevator
