For once, I’m split on whether or not I liked this game. I rented it from Blockbuster Thursday evening and spent majority of my Labor Day weekend plowing away at it. So now, at roughly 1AM after Labor Day is done and over with, I’ve finished the game.
I. The Good
I guess I’ll start what this game does RIGHT. Superb graphics and textures for this futuristic world, but after watching some boss fights on YouTube after defeating them myself, the game looks even BETTER on the PC version.In terms of gameplay, there’s something here for everyone. For your RPG fans, the skill tree (called Augmentations in this game since the protagonist, Adam Jenson, is a cyborg) has plenty of options so that not all players’ experiences will be the same. For combat oriented players, you can invest skill points into armor and aiming upgrades to make Jenson into gun-totting tank. For those who want a stealthy Solid Snake approach, you can invest skill points into cloaking devices and noise cancelers to make your every move invisible and silent to your opponents. There’s also several in-between builds, that even allow you to hack computers with ease and even control cameras and turn enemy robots and turrels against your opponents. This is VERY comparable to the experience found in Mass Effect. Much like Mass Effect, you will encounter “conversation battles” with several key characters in the story. Unlike ME though, you won’t have to charm/intimidate them to get the responses you want. Instead the game encourages you to listen what those characters are saying and persuade them to see things your way. Every encounter is different and unique. That being said, the optional side quests and every bit of text (newspapers, ebooks, emails, etc.) offer a lot more incite and knowledge about this futuristic cyberpunk world. The side quests offer a bit of fresh air to the missions of the main quest, and even allow you to step into Jenson’s shoes as a sleuth since he is an ex-cop (more accurately SWAT officer).
Oh yeah, there’s awesome Easter Eggs to be found in-game, such as this:Of course, since this is a Square Enix game, there’s no surprise at all that this game features a stellar soundtrack. It’s made by Michael McCann, the same composer for the soundtrack found in Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
II. The Bad
Now, mind you this game is without it’s flaws.1) Boss Fights - For a game that offers you so many gameplay choices, the boss fights seem really out of place and almost punish you for your upgrade choices. For a game that seems primarily focused on stealth, it’s odd that you’re given no alternate but to kill each of these bosses whereas you have lethal and non-lethal methods to take out every other adversary in the game. That and the lack of an evasion or dodge button really hurts the gameplay at these core sections. Sure, you can compare these encounters to the MGS series’ own, but I felt no attachment or depth to those characters as just mere obstacles in Jensen’s way. That brings me to the next topic…
2) Controls & Gameplay Mechanics - I’ve chatted with a few friends on PC and have debated this issue but I still stand by my opinion from playing on Xbox 360. For a stealth game, this aspect has to be most flawed. The cover mechanic works like a charm for the most part, but when you try to aim over the top of cover, the targeting cursor jitters uncontrollably (and no this wasn’t remedied with the upgrades as I’ve tested it) and leaves you fully exposed to enemy fire. This flaw in mechanics was painfully pointed out to me during the opening areas of the game. Whoever was the genius who thought it was a stellar gameplay mechanic to make it that you can only do stealth takedowns as long you have “battery” power needs to be slapped. I’ve played at least 7 stealth games in this genre that did just fine without something that retarded to make things “challenging and smart.” The urge to keep playing the game the way you WANT is rather discouraging by the scarce ammo supplies and the lack of items to replenish your battery packs to keep using takedowns. The first half of the game I was blazing through playing the game like a traditional FPS, while only using stealth where a firefight wasn’t worth the hassle. By the point where I reached the 2nd boss, ammo was scarce (in-game stores didn’t keep the ammo I needed in stock) and was literally FORCED to play the remainder of the game in a stealth aspect.
3) Racism - I’m usually used to this after all these years of being born a black man, but really, REALLY? Almost every Black person in this game (save for the two you rescue during one of the first missions) falls into more racial stereotypes than you find Black people in on an episode of WWE programming. The Asian community isn’t well represented either as their voice actors sound like the developers literally paid the nearby China Hut owners or a really bad karate movie to do their voices. That alone deterred me from doing some of the side quests and trying to interact with every character in the game.
If you don’t believe me, here’s two prime examples of the racism:
Letitia the “Trash Lady”:
Really, I don’t see how this game got out with some of this shit in it.
4) Storytelling - As a film studies graduate, it really hurts me to see next-gen gaming still resort to fancy cutscenes to tell a story. If this game would quit trying to hard to be Metal Gear Solid without all of that game’s bells and whistles it would know that you lose your audience’s interest with this cuts from gameplay. MGS4: Guns of the Patriots is proof enough of that with those hour LONG cutscenes in-between gameplay. The more the player encounters while they are in control, the more powerful the impact the story has on the player as a whole. Majority of the story comes off as “meh” and “why do I care?” as at the end of the day, it’s another machines vs. humans plot like The Matrix and Terminator, but with Bionic Commando’s (2009) un-enhanced humans vs. enhanced humans political battle. Maybe I would care more if I was a fan of this series from start, but as a newcomer to this series I found little reason to care about this world other than following orders as part of the main story and solving the mystery that drives Jenson’s actions — which REALLY comes off as predictable as Final Fantasy XIII’s ending IMO. All in all, the story just comes down as a series events, a plot, and little much else. It’s like the game literally made a list of things it wanted to cover and just read them to you during a lecture with a monotone speaker.
5) Questionable AI & Glitches - I’ve been playing stealth games since the PSone era, dating back to the original Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. Mind you, both of those games have more intelligent AI than this game. You open a door and the guard walks right in, only for you to take him down with ease EVERY freakin’ time. The vision areas of the guards on patrol is questionable too. I’ve seen guards looking STRAIGHT at me without a hitch at all, then other times, they would spot me, run around in a circle before giving chase or opening fire. Before anyone asks, I finished the game on “Give Me a Challenge!” difficulty. Now I would say those guys at the end of the game have better hearing and sight than damn Superman.
I’ll let this glitch speak for itself when I ran into this one fighting Yelena:
Really, I can understand that they were rushing this game out before the “big players” come out later this Fall but something like that should have been easily found and remedied during testing.
6) Unappealing Protagonist - I know I’m going to get flamed for saying it but Jenson comes off as someone a random techno-goth art school graduate would cook up out of their imagination. Outside of his stale personality and excellent Solid Snake imitations (or Christian Bale with sore throat when he’s The Dark Knight), Jenson’s character does nothing for me to actually like him. No sense of humor, no kind of character development other than he barely survives the ordeal at the beginning of the game to become one of the augmented people not by his own choice. You would think the game would put more emphasis to stress that he didn’t ask or want to be brought back to life or to be made what he is. No, he just continues doing what he always has without it not affecting him at all. Sure, there’s a few conversation battles that let you stress it yourself, but does he actually say that as part of the main plot? No.
III. The Verdict
To my friends who are proud that they’ve pirated this game on PC and think its the best game “EVAR”, you guys need to be ashamed of yourselves and actually play more diverse games than this. 
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a revolution of sorts — it’s an enjoyable alternative to the usual FPS flair that is to come this Fall in the form of Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Halo: Combat Evolved reboot, but at the end of the day this is a game that suffers from mistaken identity. One moment it seeks to be as diverse and deep as Mass Effect. In another, it wants to be elusive and crafty like 3rd person stealth action gems, such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell. Then finally, it wants to be the typical FPS when combat is concerned. What bothered me the most while I was this was that the game couldn’t make up its mind on which one it wanted to be. Or rather, this case of mistake identity would have been easily remedied if this title was out on the shelves a few years prior. There’s a lot of proof that shows this game was clearly rushed out onto the shelves to meet deadlines.
Regardless, I suggest my fellow gamers to at least give this game a bit of your time. RENT not buy to find whether this is your cup of tea. There’s things you’re going to love about this game, then things you’re going to absolutely hate. All I’m saying that you have the right to say that you have experienced the “revolution” firsthand. Call me a visionary, but I can see several other games in the future using this game as a template for something even greater. Possibly a sign that maybe, just maybe there’s room for the FPS genre to grow outside of the confines of idiots running around a map shooting each other in the same multiplayer mayhem that’s has been copied and pasted for roughly over 10+ years now. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is far from perfect but it’s truly something that every gamer needs to experience at least once in their gaming careers. With a heavy heart, I'm giving this a 7.5 out of 10.
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