Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut (2013)

Early 2000, Deus Ex debuted on PC, the first installment in a series that skillfully combined action RPG elements and dark cyberpunk realism. The sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War followed three years later and was developed by Ion Storm, a studio led by Warren Spector. After the studio's closure in 2005, Eidos Montreal developed Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the third game in the series, and the series made a big comeback in 2011. Human Revolution introduced a number of modern stealth mechanics and a number of new features that were enriched compared to the previous games.

The story in Deus Ex: Human Revolution was developed by Eidos Montreal, not Ion Storm, although it was written in collaboration with Sheldon Pacotti, the screenwriter of the previous games in the Deus Ex series. The original Deus Ex developers Harvey Smith and Warren Spector were also involved in the production. The game was released on August 23, 2011. On October 25, 2013, the Director's Cut was released.

A few months after the game's release, The Missing Link pack was released, further deepening the game's story. In Human Revolution, Adam Jensen mysteriously disappeared for three days while searching for the truth. Where was Adam? What did he learn? That's what this additional pack explained, filling in some of the missing pieces of the game's main story. After being tortured by Belltower agents and having his augmentations disabled, Adam Jensen must rely solely on his basic abilities to escape from a freighter bound for an unknown destination. As he fights for survival aboard the ship, he uncovers another part of the conspiracy that he would never have suspected.

The game's main story begins in 2027 in the city of Detroit. We take on the role of Adam Jensen, a security chief working at Sarif Industries, a company that researches biomechanical augmentations. In the future, these enhancements will lead to the creation of nano enhancements, known from previous games in the Deus Ex series. One day, the hero's life changes forever when a mercenary group unit sneaks into the Sarif Industries headquarters and organizes an attack. Jensen is severely injured in the attack and falls into a coma. When he wakes up, he discovers that he survived thanks to numerous operations and biomechanical modifications to his body. We take a fully active part in the prologue and the part where we learn the game. After Jensen's recovery, there's a lot of complex intrigue waiting for us to unravel.

The developers have taken care to fix things that Deus Ex fans complained about in previous games. For example, there is no longer a single type of ammunition for all weapons. At the same time, the four hallmarks of the series' games - sneaking, hacking, interacting with people and fighting - have been retained. This means that almost any situation can be approached by the player in a variety of ways; for example, to get into an exclusive nightclub, we can bribe, kill or knock out the bouncer, sneak in or hack the back door. Of course our abilities depend on the power-ups we have, so a character cannot specialize in all areas and the player has to make a choice about which parts of their skill tree to weight.

When stealthily hiding, we can hide behind obstacles with the viewpoint flipped to third person, become completely invisible from enemies using optical camouflage, and knock opponents down and even drag their bodies to hide. Hacking panels and computers is presented as mini-games in simple arcade logic. Conversations with NPCs are similar to Mass Effect in that we are given a series of dialog options that show us the protagonist's facial expression. Also in battle, we benefit from a variety of weapons that can be easily upgraded. One of the important additions is that power-ups now allow Jensen to break through walls and stun opponents standing behind them. The game offers 30 hours of gameplay or more.

This game has some interesting game mechanics, the mix of FPS and third person over the shoulder was neat. It took me a little while to get the hang of the controls, but once you do it isn't too bad.

The story is where this game lost me. I did not feel drawn into the story, it felt like that type of story has been done already. I think what really made it go down hill was too many big players in the story. I had a hard time keeping things straight and staying engaged and interested.

I know may people hold this game in very high regard, but for me I felt meh at the end. If you wanna get this game I would recommend waiting for a deep sale on it.

After Prey and Dishonored, I felt like wanting to play more games like this so I decided to replay DEHR with directors commentary on. With a gamepad, this time. But the controls are all over the place and not configurable. Left stick button for crouch, left shoulder to sprint, right stick button to aim down sight and left trigger to use cover. Even if I configured it using external software, the UI controls are fucked.

The game is still great tho, both in visual and audio. Gameplay is stiff but I got used to it really quickly.