Deus Ex Human Revolution PS3 Review

Deus Ex was a hugely innovative game back in 2000 when Eidos released it using the Unreal Engine on the PC platform. It included multiple player paths and an RPG element in a FPS, which was unheard of at the time. Deus Ex Human Revolution is prequel to Deus Ex and although it mimics many of the RPG and multiple paths of the original, it fails due to poor outsourcing of boss battles and moral choice implications.

Deus Ex Human Revolution follows the exploits of Adam Jensen a security officer for Sarif Industries, which specializes in augmentations for individuals such as prosthetic limbs, neural enhancers, etc. The company is about to reveal a new discovery that lets patients augment themselves freely without having to use anti-rejection drugs ever. The company is attacked and all of the some of the scientists kidnapped by augmented soldiers. Adam is severely injured as a result of the battle and is in need of augmentation surgery to save his life. The game sets the player on a course to discover the reason behind the attacks, the whereabouts of the scientists and ultimately the fate of augmentation
technology and the world.

Deus Ex Human Revolution allows the player to augment Adam Jensen with numerous augs that enhance his abilities, such as landing gear for large falls, increased strength, cloaking, enhanced hacking abilities and many more. The player also has a variety of weapons to choose from, but with limited inventory slots, the player must choose weapons and upgrades wisely. The game allows multiple paths for obtaining mission objectives. The player can choose to reach the goal stealthily or use brute force to barrel through foes. The game tries to influence the player to use non-lethal methods of subduing foes, which leads one to believe the endings are affected by player choices throughout the game. Unfortunately, moral choices and stealth do not affect the 4 possible game
endings. The game endings are actually chosen after defeating the last boss, which defeats the whole purpose of morality and stealth in the game, not to mention the numerous augs associated with stealth. The second problem with Deus Ex Human Revolution is the boss battles. Apparently, the boss battles were outsourced to a company that had never heard of Deus Ex and assumed that because it used the first-person perspective, that boss battles would just be of the run-and-gun variety. As a result, the boss battles force the player into combat that normally would not occur since the player is advised to use stealth throughout the game. Also, any stealth augs are useless as the boss battles require face-to-face combat, which makes battles overly difficult for those who chose hacking or stealth as their augmentation choices prior to the first boss battle not knowing that direct combat would be involved.

Deus Ex HumanRevolution has a wonderful story to tell and the endings hit home considering how technology keeps evolving in our society and the invention of mechanical exo-skeletons in the recent past and the innovations in genetic therapy versus the ethical implications. The hacking mini-game is also very fun, but by the end of the game becomes so tedious and repetitive that I felt I was being tortured. The problem with Deus Ex Human Revolution, is that for a game that stresses stealth and moral choices, they have absolutely no effect on the endings, which makes it a moot point to even try. Not to mention the boss battles that throw out the window all of the conventions built upon throughout the game. This game is a rental due to Square Enix dropping the ball and turning a fantastic series into a mediocre junk pile.