Time to bring on the pain.
Adam Jensen was nearly killed when terrorists attacked an augmentation corporation. Augments kept him alive. Now he's on a mission to figure out who was responsible for the attack and their motivations. Humanity needs an upgrade every once in a while.
1. Gameplay
This game confused me when I first started it. I have weapons, but I’m not supposed to shoot everyone? I’m not usually a fan of stealth games, so I was surprised at how well Deus Ex: Human Revolution turned out. Most of the time it was a lot of fun. The game encourages stealthily moving through levels, eliminating enemies and hiding them in locations where other people won’t find them. The game gives you a good variety of weapons but players who try to stay stealthy will end up almost always relying on two. The tranquilizer rifle and the stun gun are the only non-lethal weapons in the game. I used the tranquilizer rifle the entire time. It was silent, it had decent range, and if I hit an enemy in the head he would go down instantly. Unfortunately that left me a bit disappointed with the weapons. I was trying to stay stealthy and non-violent, so I could never really touch any of the other weapons I obtained and upgraded. There were plenty of times I wanted to whip out my fully upgraded minigun and mow down the enemies, but the game actively discouraged me from doing this. This meant that, aside from boss battles, I never used a weapon other than my tranquilizer rifle. The story is great. It’s a lot like Blade Runner, where people are getting augmentations to become superhuman and there’s a huge uprising against that. Adam Jensen, the main character, ends up being augmented in order to save his life. He has to work his way through the city trying to figure out who attacked the corporation he works for and nearly killed him. This leads on some nonsensical Illuminati-based plot, but most of the characters make it work. There are a lot of conversation-based choices that the player will make, and those choices will be reflected in the mission and in the results. Adam can talk his way through a lot of situations, but only if the player can figure out exactly what to say. There are augments to help this process along, but it’s still not always easy. Unfortunately, this game isn’t without some flaws. The boss battles are completely opposite to the rest of the game. Most of the time the player has a choice between stealth and open violence. That isn’t the case with boss battles. With no stealth option available, stealth-based characters will be quickly outmatched by the unfairly overpowered boss characters. Hacking can have problems as well. The player can unlock many doors, chests, and other objects by hacking them, which gives a small chance-based minigame. While low level hacks are pretty simple, the hacking can sometimes get absurdly difficult. Even when I upgraded my augments to significantly reduce the chances of my hack being detected, there were still a number of times when I failed a hack. It ended up being a system of trial and error, completely devoid of any real skill. This game was a lot better than I expected. I’m not waiting on pins and needles for a sequel, but it was good enough that I would recommend it to fans of stealth-based games.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a long game. It took me around 27 hours to complete the campaign, and even though I was taking my time I know that I missed at least one side quest. I went through the campaign as stealthily as possible, so I ended up not using most of the weapons available. It is definitely worth a second playthrough to test out the weapons, although I’m sure that the game will be much more difficult like that. There is no multiplayer for this game, which is fortunate because it would have felt out of place. However, that significantly lessens the replayability of this game. It’s good to go through the campaign twice, but after that I don’t think I’d play this game much.
This game was designed to be played stealthily, and for the most part it does that pretty well. There are some times when this goes completely out the window though. For example, the game encourages players to upgrade their hacking, stealth, and maneuverability while discouraging upgrades in strength and weapon use. There’s no purpose in spending upgrade points on steadying weapon aim when you’re encouraged to not use your weapons. Unfortunately, the game fails to mention that boss battles are short segments of hardcore combat. My first boss battle was a nightmare. I had no armor, no health, no energy, and few weapons. Fortunately I had a sniper rifle and rocket launcher as “just in case”, so I wasn’t completely unprepared. But if I hadn’t been ready I would have been massacred. There were other boss battles that were near impossible. I am a packrat when it comes to video games. If it can be picked up, I pick it up. I almost always store items unless I either 100% know they’re going to be useless or have an overabundance of them. This requires a lot of storage space. Unfortunately, Deus Ex doesn’t even feature a storage area. You can take items out of drawers and boxes, but you can’t put them back in. Consequently, I tended to just dump items on the floor of my apartment since they wouldn’t despawn. It was an extremely inefficient system that would have easily been rectified by having a box to put everything in. 2. Parental Notices
The level of violence in this game is going to depend on how the player chooses to approach each level. The player can go through a level actively killing everyone, but the game has a number of built-in systems to discourage this. Because of these systems, it is much more likely that the player will quietly subdue enemies without killing them than actively kill them. When the player subdues an enemy, it is usually via one of two methods. The player can use a nonlethal weapon such as a tranquilizer rifle or stun gun. However, ammunition for these weapons can be scarce, so I usually saved those methods for when a target was out of my reach. It was much more common to use hand-to-hand combat to take down my opponent. These takedowns will happen fairly frequently, since it tends to be easier than sneaking around a target and leaving him awake. He might decide to go on patrol and run straight into you as you’re making the next move. Subduing targets will result in some spit from the subdued opponent, but it’s never graphic. There is also never any blood when subduing a target. And this goes for any number of nonlethal takedowns. Even if the player cracks two enemies’ skulls together, there is no blood. But that doesn’t mean the player won’t have to use lethal tactics in the game. Bosses cannot be subdued, so the player will have to actively shoot them in order to take them down. When a player shoots a target, blood can usually be seen, but this depends on how heavily armored the target is. The player can also take down a target violently. There are a variety of these types of attacks, but they are still not particularly graphic. In one, the player takes out two large blades and drives them through the back of the target. There is some blood, but it isn’t nearly as much as one would expect from other similar games. There are times when there is a significant amount of blood in the environment. For example, the player can hack his way into a back-alley augmentation clinic. There is a substantial amount of blood on the tables and walls of this area, suggesting that the operations performed here are performed on desperate people. There is also one section early in the game where the player watches another character commit suicide. The results of that scene are fairly gruesome. Despite all this, the game uses three different, equally effective methods of keeping the player from killing everyone. It uses experience points to reward players for nonviolently subduing targets and remaining undetected. Firing lethal weapons almost always alerts the enemies, which results in a loss of stealth-based XP bonuses for each level. Second, the game has a hit point health system, which means that any health the player loses must be replenished with food or healing packs. These can be difficult to find, especially in the middle of a firefight. Third, the final outcome of the game will be determined based on what choices the player made and how violent he was. The best outcomes can only be obtained by staying as nonviolent as possible throughout the campaign. It is possible to go through the game without killing a single person, and doing so will reward the player with the best endings. As a result, the violence rating is significantly lower than if the game had not included these systems.
Sexuality is pretty sparse in this game and extremely easy to miss. For example, the most obvious depiction of sexuality is a billboard found in a waiting room. There are also a number of prostitutes that can be found in the different cities. They are never seen actually doing anything sexual other than pole dancing with clothes on, but there is a mission where the player will find out a bit more about how augmentations have changed prostitution. It was interesting to find out how social augmentations to help women improve their “customer service” by helping them know what their customers want. There are also a number of women pole dancing in a brothel. It never goes beyond that. There was also one section where one of the female antagonists attempts to seduce Adam. For some reason he falls for it and, as a result, she gets away. But there isn’t anything overtly sexual about it. There’s just the normal tension that can result from that kind of seductive talk. The player can get an augment that allows him to break through walls to discover hidden areas. In one of these hidden areas, I discovered a laptop, some tissue, lubricant, and two dildos. But these were all an extremely small portion of the game and surprisingly easy to miss.
The player can find and use substances throughout the game. Painkillers and alcohol are both commonly found and can be used at any time. I tended not to hold onto these items since I was hardly ever in combat, but they did provide some benefits in the right situation. If the player used any sort of alcoholic substance (there were a number of them), he could become drunk. This was an extremely temporary process that really just made the screen blur and weave slightly. The player can order drinks from one particular bar, but this doesn’t seem to have much purpose. There are also other scenes where the player actually drinks alcohol. A number of characters can be seen smoking throughout the course of the game. There are a few times when poisonous gas and/or dirty bombs will come into play. For the gas, the player can get an augmentation that allows him to breathe in the gas without any problems. If he doesn’t have that, the gas will cause serious damage very quickly. For the dirty bombs, they were used in two optional missions. These are discussed in greater detail in the “Miscellaneous” section.
Gambling is basically nonexistent. I found some guys playing mahjong together in a few areas. But since money was never shown in their play, gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion isn’t really a major factor, which was surprising considering the content. The opposition to augmentation seems to dance around using religion as a specific argument, but they never come out and directly say it. They’ll use arguments like “creating augments is like playing God”, but they never came out and said “this is against God’s will”. It was pretty obvious that those against augmentations would tend to be more religious, especially if they made arguments about “playing God”, but the fact that the game kept that out made things a bit more logical and understandable overall.
Some areas, like Detroit, have very clearly defined law enforcement agents. Since Adam used to be a member of the Detroit Police Department, it’s pretty easy to have him help out the local police. The player can go rogue and attack civilians, but the game seriously discourages this and the police will fight against any violent action with lethal force. But that’s not to say that there aren’t anti-law elements to this game. The player will be constantly battling with and against certain underground criminal organizations. This is especially prominent in Shanghai where he will have to work with some triad organizations and against others. He will also have to break into a major corporation’s main office in order to steal data and find out more information about the main storyline. He will have to either work around or, in many cases, attack the building’s guards. But the exact definition of “law enforcement” is pretty blurry in this game. Outside of Detroit, there aren’t really any set organizations of authority. There is the US government, but that seems to be second to some of the more powerful corporations. Those corporations are constantly working against a sort of Illuminati overlord organization that claims to control all humanity and culture. It’s a pretty confusing process.
There are no multiplayer modes this game.
Extreme sports is practically nonexistent. Adam moves extremely slowly, can’t sprint for very long, and doesn’t jump very high. There are augments to change those, but even the improved versions aren’t particularly stunning. The only exception is the augmentation that allows him to fall from any height without taking damage. It’s pretty awesome actually. Other than this, extreme sports are not a factor in this game.
While some of the abilities and powers may seem magical, they are all explained in great detail to be biological or technological. As a result, magic is not a factor in this game.
Prostitution The player can find prostitutes in a number of places. He can never actually hire their services, but there are some conversations giving vague details as to how prostitution has changed as a result of augmentation. These women are located in both Detroit and Shanghai, but the player can only have conversations with one woman in Shanghai. Weapons of Mass Destruction There are a number of times when the player will have to defuse chemical bombs in order to save civilians. The first of these happens very early in the game. The bomb is located in a locked office with civilians and is being used as a means of holding the hostages for ransom. There is another mission later on where a man is threatening to kill police officers and anyone who helps them. He plants a similar bomb underneath the police headquarters in Detroit, which the player must find and deactivate. Suicide Suicide is mentioned once or twice over the course of the game, but is only ever visible in one section. The player confronts an augmented hacker very early in the game. It turns out that this augmented individual is actually being controlled by someone else via his augments. This other controller forces the hacker to turn a pistol on himself and pull the trigger. Human Disfigurement Human disfigurement comes up twice in the game. One of the enemies has augmentations that are designed to look like exposed human muscle tissue. I’m not sure if they were his actual muscles or just some sort of suit, but they looked real. Another character has a huge birthmark that covers most of his face. This isn’t particularly graphic, but it definitely serves to make this character memorable. Racism
Non-augmented individuals are especially unkind to the augmented. Augmentations are an abomination that goes against the natural progress of mankind. As a result, the player will frequently run into people who are hatefully biased against augments. Since the main character is heavily augmented, he will frequently feel the brunt of a slew of insults from non-augmented individuals.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
Not sure what a term means? Read the definitions!
Not sure what a review section is about? Find out more information!
|