Genre: RPG/Shooter
Developer: Eidos Montreal
Mac Port By: Feral Interactive
System Requirements: OS X 10.7.3, 2 GHz Intel processor, 4 GB RAM, 17 GB disk space, 256 MB VRAM
Review Device: iMac 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 13” Macbook Pro
Price: $50.00
Availability: Out now
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a worthy successor to the original, in part because it copies so many of the elements of the first game verbatim: hard choices, multiple story lines, and cool weapons. But rather than try to untangle the original game, which was sort of a Grand Unification Theory of world consipracies (alien abductions, the New World Order, etc.) DX:HR fashions itself as a prequel, showing the BladeRunner-esque world when human implants are just becoming possible.
What kind of game is DX:HR? It’s a complicated mashup of roleplaying game, shooter, and stealth. As Adam Jensen, head of security for a company that’s making cybernetic limbs, organs, and weapons systems (and the drug that keeps the body from rejecting them), you travel the world, trying to unravel the attack that left your company crippled, your coworkers (and former lover) dead, and you being forced into becoming a walking showroom for your company’s new technology. You’ll talk to people who might help you, based on how successfully you charm them, and spend a lot of time either fighting teams of highly-paid mercenaries or using stealth sklls to avoid confrontations.
It’s a game with a lot of options. When you’re talking to a terrorist who has a gun to a hostage’s head, do you try to take him out as quickly as possible, or try to reason with him, in case he can help you later? Do you want to upgrade your cybernetic system to make you invisible for brief periods, or give yourself a chest-mounted cannon that can kill everyone in a room? Do you need to find the rocket launcher to take out the robot sentry, or is there a way to sneak around him? The way you play the game affects later options. Characters who chose stealth will find scenes where combat is the only option to be a lot harder, and those who always rush in, guns a-blazin’ will find NPCs will regard them as monsters, and refuse to help them.
In terms of controls, for the most part DX:HR plays as a first person shooter. When you talk to another character, you get a dialogue tree showing what responses are possible. Players who upgrade their interaction sklls have a better chance of sucess and more options. At higher levels, cybernetic enhancements will show you what kind of personality the NPC has and artificial pheremones will give you the ability to get information otherwise unavailable. Stealthy players can creep against walls in the third person, peeking around corners and over walls to take out enemies without being seen.
The game is amazingly expansive, with large levels that let you explore as much as you like, finding hidden caches, breaking into apartments and computers as much as you like (using a hacker minigame) and getting involved in a handful of sidequests. A quest screen lets you know where you are in your adventure, and if you need help figuring out where you need to go, a handy HUD reticule will tell you how far you are from the next checkpoint as the crow flies (though you’ll almost always have a detour, or have to figure out a secret path along the way).
The story, while not as whacked-out as the original DX, is still deep. Because in addition to travelling from the slums of Detroit to an advanced oceanic fortress, you’ll have to figure out who wanted to hurt your company so badly that they were wlling to stage an all-out assault to do it. Was it the black market competitors in China? An anti-implant political group? A global conspiracy of powerful business interests? All of them working together to control human evolution?
DX:HR is a ridiculously fun game to play, if only because you can play it at your own speed and in your own style, for the most part. If you want to barrell through and go on a rampage, it lets you do that. If you want to solve every side quest and uncover every inch of the Deroit sewer system, you can do that, too. Personally, I loved playing as a ninja, trying to get from one side of the enemy base to the other without a single guard seeing me. Usually I couldn’t, but even here the game gives you the option of taking a guard out via incapacitation (silent, but leaves open the possibility that another guard might find and revive him) or by killing him (permanent, but makes more noise).
The problem came when I got to the game’s boss batles, which were produced by another company. In the central game, they are all straight-up console battles that require you to run-and-gun quickly. Players who invested in stealth and interaction skills will find themselves at a disadvatage, but not so much that they break the game.
Feral Interactive has also included bonus content that was available on the PC side as DLC: bonus missions (integrated with the main game) and a bonus mission on a secret military base, along with weapons that were only available to those who pre-ordered the game.
Remakes are always a dicey proposition, but the crew behind Deus EX: Human Revolution have managed to revive a great game by taking what worked in the original (a good story, developed interactions, and player customization) and grafting that on to improved graphics and gameplay for a modern audience. It’s an RPG/shooter hybrid that manages to satisfy.
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Buy Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Ultimate Edition