I haven’t played an RPG in a while since Fallout: New Vegas came out. It takes a lot for an RPG to keep my interest long enough to have me playing to the end. Aside from Zelda: Ocarina of Time and select few of the Final Fantasies…excluding anything past FF:IX, I haven’t completely felt the need to replay RPG’s or even finish them in a lot of cases. But I have to admit, for the past week, I have been marathoning the living hell out of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’ve never played a Deus Ex game before this one and it seems I started at the right time. This is the third installment of the series and serves as a prequel to the entire story.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the latest RPG from Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix. The story follows protagonist Adam Jensen, an ex cop who is now head of security for Sarif Industries. Sarif Industries is a human augmentation company, leading the way for people to unlock their full potential with prosthetic limbs and upgrades to their senses. At the beginning of the story, Sarif Industries falls prey to a terrorist attack where their lead team of scientists, including Jensen’s ex girlfriend Megan Reed, are killed. Jensen is horribly injured in the process and is forced to undergo his own augmentation to keep save his life. And this is the start of the conspiracy. The remainder of the game is spent traveling to a handful of different locations and unveiling the truth in order to find out what really happened.

What really has kept me playing this game is the sense of exploration. You’ll come across missions in different areas which are really the only set pieces you’ll encounter. But the way you go about completing missions is all based upon how you want to play the game. For instance, in the first mission your job is to neutralize a hostage situation at a Sarif Industries warehouse. You’re briefed on the situation as you infill to the top of the warehouse where you get your first decision. Do you want to make your presence known with a sniper rifle to kill all the enemies, or would you rather be stealthy and use a tranquilizer rifle? Whatever your decision is, your options don’t stop there. You can choose from here on out to take the obvious route through the front door and blast your way through all the patrolling baddies or you could explore around the area and find an alternate route inside without letting anyone know you’re even there. Regardless of your choices, the end of the mission wraps up with a standoff between you and a one-eyed activist holding a hostage at gunpoint. You can use your dialogue options to talk him out of killing the hostage. Choose carefully or your words can lead him to the breaking point, which ultimately gives you incentive to end him.

The different outcomes of your decisions affect how things will play out later on in the game. For instance, if you were to save the hostage from the first mission, then you will receive a special reward. The husband of the hostage will be gracious for your good deed that he will reward you with a price cut at a specific arms dealer. Every chapter of this game has at least one of the opportune situations where you’ll want to play your cards wisely. On top of the main story line, there are side missions that will uncover different parts of Jensen’s back story or simply reward you with additional xp and money. Some missions will take you to secluded areas of the world that are only accessible during that chapter. Otheres will have you exploring a whole downtown district in oder to achieve your objective.

On top of handling missions in the way you see fit, you also have the ability to unlock augments that will help you along the way. Augments come in a variety of makes and most of them are upgradable. You have the standard health, armor, agility; but the real fun can be found in the special abilities augments such as the parachute or the typhoon. The parachute serves its purpose as a parachute but whats cool is the ability to hold down the fire button to take out any enemies that might be standing around your landing zone. The typhoon augment is more of a weapon. If you get surrounded, bust one of these enveloping waves of destruction and soon your enemies will be left lifeless on the ground. If you tend to leave no stone unturned, you’ll want to upgrade your hacking augments that allow you to tap into high-profile locks which usually hold helpful secrets and equipment including weapons. Your weapons can also be upgraded with packs to improve reload speed, clip size, silencer, rate of fire and even making your ammo explosive. These upgrades and augments are rewarded to you throughout the game as you gain xp through hacking, uncovering alternate routes, and completing side missions. Or you can save up credits and buy augments at a local limb clinic for 5,000 credits a pop and weapons at an arms dealer. You also get bonus xp if you can go through sections of missions without being spotted which can prove to be very challenging at times. With the right augments unlocked, you could potentially hack into security systems and reprogram sentry bots to target enemies. All these abilities allow for multiple ways to play through and explore areas and keep the game re-play ability decently high.

A couple things I have hang ups on. First off, player animations during dialogue sequences seem a bit recycled. NPC’s tend to all bob in the same motion even when it doesn’t seem natural. Not to mention every single person you say more than one sentence to will display these same traits. It’s just a simple thing but it makes me feel like everyone in the Deus Ex universe suffers from a slight case of tourette’s. Another minor hang up I have is the availability of battery recharges. As you progress through the game, one of the main augments you’ll want to upgrade will be your battery cell number and its rechargability. Your battery allows you to use active camo, lift and throw heavy objects, see and punch through walls, and take out enemies using scripted take downs. All these things play a big role in the way you play the game but the only problem is your battery life. Each of these actions tends to eat up at least one battery cell per use resulting in you burning through them relatively quickly. If the battery cell isn’t completely used up, it will recharge and your last cell will recharge regardless of whether it’s completely spent or just half way. The only way to go about refilling these cells is finding protein bars and cyberboost drinks. These items aren’t very plentiful in the world which makes using your augments more of a burden than an ability.

Aside from the hang ups I have enjoyed all the time I’ve spent on this game. It certainly grabs you from the get go and gives you plenty of reasons to validate putting in the hours to play to the end. The one thing I’ve enjoyed most are the boss fights. Of course, once you’ve uncovered another part of the conspiracy, you’ll have to fight a boss who threatens to silence you. Each boss fight is different and requires a specific way to go about beating them. I won’t spoil anything but just know, throwing gallons of bullets into them doesn’t always work. If you’re looking for a new RPG to occupy you for a while, maybe until Skyrim comes out in November, I would highly recommend Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

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