Deus Ex : Human Revolution

The first Deus Ex is one of my all time favorites, even though I've never actually finished it.  For some reason I would always burn out or get distracted by something else, usually during the China levels.  I've played it so many times I have the first few levels memorized.  Invisible War came out a few years later, and although I didn't like how they simplified many of the game mechanics I still found it enjoyable.  Thankfully it was also much shorter, so I managed to see the ending.  It still left me cold though; it didn't feel like a Deus Ex game, but more like an action game set in the Deus Ex universe.  Fast forward to 2011 and I was beginning to wonder if we would every see a worthy successor, yet it's finally here.  Thankfully Human Revolution, aka Deus Ex 3, is much closer to the original than it's sequel.  After nearly twenty hours it's still kept me interested, though I've since restarted twice to try different tactics and a higher difficulty level.

Deus Ex 3 begins twenty-five years before the first game and tells the story of Adam Jenson, former Detroit SWAT commander and newly appointed head of security for biotech company Sarif Industries.  He was recommend for the job by Dr. Megan Reed, one of Sarif's lead scientists.  It's implied, though never explicitly stated, that Adam and Megan were once in a relationship.  Sarif Industries is about to announce a major breakthrough in human cybernetic augmentations when the building is suddenly attacked by an unknown group of heavily armed mercenaries, three of which are heavily augmented.  Jenson is immediately thrown on the offensive, with the first level being a short tutorial to introduce the game mechanics.  At the end he's almost killed by a one of the augmented leaders, but is saved at the last second by Megan.  The story picks up six months later as Adam is leaving recovery after having undergone extensive cybernetic augmentation to save his life.  David Sarif, the head of Sarif Industries, has called Adam back early to help deal with a situation at one of his factories.  Not everyone in the 21st century agrees with human augmentation, to the point that terrorist groups have formed to oppose it.  One such group, known as Purity First, assaulted the factory and took hostages.

David briefs Adam in the air, detailing the mission to infiltrate the factory and secure a top secret weapon known as the Typhoon.  He notes that SWAT has surrounded the building, but they are under orders not to move in.  He also tells Adam to rescue the hostages if he can, but the Typhoon is top priority.  It's evident the designers played the first game, just like Paul Denton, Sarif asks how you want to take down the enemy:  lethal, or non-lethal.  Either selection gives two different weapons to choose from, one for close and the other long range.  My initial selection was lethal, which gave me the choice of a pistol or combat rifle.  On the new game I started last night I picked the other option, which gives either a stun gun or tranquilizer rifle.  Of all four I think the stun gun is really the most useful, even if it does make too much noise.

Adam starts the game with virtually every part of his body augmented, but only a few of them turned on.  It's explained that they didn't want to overload his cerebral cortex with too much information, so they will naturally turn on as time passes.  What this means is that as you gain experience you will eventually unlock praxis points, which are then used to activate or upgrade Adam's augmentations.  You can also buy kits from the local L.I.M.B. clinic, plus find them hidden in various places around the world.  At first the aug screen can be pretty daunting, but once you decide on your play style it becomes pretty evident which ones will be most useful.  Most of my initial points when into hacking, of which there are a number of options.  You can invest in controlling turrets or robots, increasing stealth to avoid intrusion detection, or even an analyzer that will tell you what's in that remote data store.

Another thing they brought back from Deus Ex is the ability to mod your weapons.  Silencers, laser sights, damage upgrades, and extended clips are just a few.  Each weapon also has a special modification, like explosive rounds for the revolver or an armor piercing attachment for the pistol.  Since I've been playing more stealth and less combat, my weapon of choice has been the silenced pistol.  There were a number of problems I ran into that were easily solved with a clean head shot.  Gang members in particular I just didn't want to deal with.  There were a couple guarding an apartment that I really wanted to search, but they would start shooting every time I tried.  Eventually I just had enough and shot them both in the head, then looted the place at my leisure.

I made it roughly half way through before deciding to start over.  I wanted a bit more of a challenge, so I bumped the difficulty up to the hardest level.  I'm also trying for a completely non-lethal game for the Pacifist achievement, which means no kills under any circumstances, except boss fights.  As if that wasn't going to be hard enough, I'm also attempting to complete the game without setting off any alarms for another achievement.  Normally I wouldn't try something that would offer such a high probability of inducing gamer rage, but I really like playing stealthily and this will force me to.  I can't get impatient and just start killing everyone to get to the end quickly, it must be slow and methodical.  I'm also much better with the controls now, so hopefully that will cut down on reloads due to user error.  I've already played through the factory and the key so far has been slowly working my way around a level without being detected, taking out each guard one by one.  To accommodate this I've already maxed out stealth and capture for hacking, cloaking, and the typhoon.  It's kind of a waste to spend three points on just for boss fights, but I've read it makes them much easier.

Of course all this praise can't come without some sort of downside, even in a game as good as this one.  For all the freedom and choice you are given during most of the game, as touched on above, the boss fights are little more than run and gun slug fests.  The first two take place in relatively small, enclosed areas, with little room to move around.  All my stealth was thrown out the window, and thus I was reduced to running from cover to cover, trying desperately to get in some damage without getting instantly killed.  The second fight in particular, due to a nasty environmental hazard, took many attempts.  That's one thing I'm not looking forward to on this difficulty setting, but this time I know what to expect so I'll have the right tools to get the job done.