Tuesday, January 17, 2012

My experience with Deus Ex: Human Revolution


Adam Jensen, technologically-advancely-augmentally-augmented

Your Name is Adam Jensen, and your job is to protect a company called Sarif Industries as the director of Security. Fate has turned, now you've become fucking augmented (replacing mostly all of Jensen's Body parts which is head, eyes, torso, arms, back, skin, and legs.) and suddenly things have gotten a little intense with the company's security as your job is to track down the fucks who attempted to sabotage Sarif's Detroit based headquarters. This is where Deus Ex: Human Revolution starts to kick it up a notch from the beginning and leaves You (the player) and Adam Jensen (the lead character of this game) wanting to kick some serious ass while finding answers.

Looks like I just made a shortcut....with my bare fingers *cheesy fist pump!*
Getting to the gameplay of Deus Ex:HR, you have been augmented with mechanical modifications to your body which seriously makes Adam Jensen the Neo (from matrix) of this game. Okay, maybe not JUST like Neo but I believe you get my point. He's able to do many things that an advanced robotic figure could possibly do. Well, that's of course when you upgrade Adam's abilities in the game when you receive enough experience to gaining what they call in this game 'praxis points'. You continue throughout the game gaining experience by completing side quests, finding shortcuts inside buildings during quests, hacking (terminals, locked doors, locked safes, etc.), stealth throughout quests, dialogue choices, and basically anything you do as far as the interacting goes.

"I'll just sit here, and uh.. wait for you to uh...yeah..make it quick"
 Eidos Montreal gave it their all, as far as allowing the player to make unique choices throughout the game for you to enjoy. Since this is more of a Science fiction/RPG/Stealth action type of game, it's approaching FPS outlook can be deceiving. So don't expect to have fun just shooting around like your some kind of Robotic Rambo because it definitely takes the experience out of the game. Well, at least in my personal experience with my personal taste in games which supports stealth. It seems that this game also doesn't have much difficulty or consequence on breaking the laws of stealth (basically getting caught or triggering the alarm.) When or if you're caught, the enemy will either call out to the other guards posting near, in the area, or he'll pull an alarm which will bring out enemy back up so that your ass goes down. When that happens, I usually just find myself shooting my way through them as if I were playing another linear type of game like your average first-person shooter. So Yes, the stealth approach in this game is honestly a lot more fun to go through unless you hate being stealthy and would rather play Rambo instead. In stealth, you have almost the same feel to Metal Gear Solid but MUCH less difficult as enemies won't realize when a guard is missing from their patrol. Nor will they hear you knock an enemy out cold from using the stealth takedown method even if they were 5 ft away. (Yes, it's a stealth takedown but if I punch the CRAP out of someone with my hard iron fists, that isn't so stealthy is it?) That's unless of course you use the "Lethal Takedown" in the game causing them to scream in pain. Of COURSE the enemies will hear you. Point is, there are different choices you can make throughout the course of a quest to keep you trying out different ways of completing the mission(s) so either way its a win-win for the gamer.
 One of the main downsides to this game, everything is paused when you use the Takedown method. I mean, maybe Adam Jensen stops time or something when going against one or two enemies during a takedown sequence. But freezing everyone in the game (next to the takedown victim) is just a little distraction. Another personal issue I had was that you could save literally ANYWHERE in the game. That includes boss fights and important places where you could easily avoid making mistakes by reloading the game's progress so you could cheat your way through it. Sure, it may be an awesome thing for those who don't care about consequence in a game and I guess you could say that I should've ignored the "save during boss fights" part but what can I do?! It's so tempting when something is available. I prefer it the old school way of not being there at all.

This is the future....yes...15 years from now....a pile of SHIT! I keed..
In the game, Graphics isn't the best but the color of the game is visually unique in a sense to the player. It delivers this black & golden honey feel to it and supports the mood of the game. If you watched this game in action from the video review, you'll understand that it's not about the graphics but more about the tone & gameplay. NPCs don't have much to give you as far as the expressions goes. But I don't actually like bringing this up on a Role playing type of game as it can definitely be a hard task with so much other shit going on in the game. I'm not even sure if there ever was a RPG that basicallly mastered this as well as everything else. If so, please recommend it to me on the comments section.

Yeah yeah, I understand..you need me to fix your tewwible accent
As for the sound in the game, I feel like the game's music had it's own pace for the game but didn't really give me any feel to it. Usually music is what creates the emotion involving storyline/action and allowing the viewer to dig into the mood. But, apparently the sound wasn't as intriguing as I wanted it to be. Seemed more like Mellow music mixed in with some light Techno. The theme song of the game has a nice catchy tune to it and is perfect for it but everything doesn't seem so "Epic" to me. Going about the voice acting in this game, the main characters were average. Some of the dialogue came out a bit cheesy for some of the characters and I had no complaints with them. as for the majority of NPCs that weren't related to the game's story (basically the extras), They just had terrible accents and immediately took me out of the game. I hate when I have to hear someone use slang improperly (which is odd because slang is actually the improper language) and basically put it to use in a stereotypical way. Using a black person to basically speak to you as if he's automatically ghetto bothers me so much these days and I'd figured by now not many devs would follow the "Hollywood" treatment. But apparently it still exists in our industry and I hope it goes away because it's not only Black people that fall under the stereotype. It's hispanics and that got damn "hey holmes" accent they give them. Same with Asians speaking as if they can't read for shit. Getting back to my point cause that's a totally different discussion. The accents in this game is really terrible. Other than that, you will most likely not care and move on with the game. As again, the Gameplay and Tone outdoes everything else.

Now, That's one sexy trophy! or well...you know what I mean...


Special review for my Trophy/Achievement hunters out there:
Getting to the trophy section of the game or Achievements on the Xbox 360, the Trophies/Achievements weren't that hard to acquire. It just requires patience (as do all Trophies/Achievements require) and some guts of playing through the game on "Give me Deus Ex" mode which is the hardest mode in the game (also, one of the Trophies/Achievements.) In this game it has 50 Trophies/Achievements to 100% the game (60 overall including DLC ) and the hardest Trophy/Achievement you'll have difficulty is basically beating the game without triggering any alarms. (don't worry, it's not really that difficult as you are able to load to your previous save point in case you did trigger an alarm.)
Overall In my experience I played through the game on hard first and tried not to trigger any alarms. I wanted to get both of those trophies first and get them out of the way so then I could play the game on "give me a story" mode which is the easiest basically, so I could go after the trophy of not killing anyone (which isn't so hard if you're careful.) But what I've learned is that you'll want to obtain ALL three of the gold trophies (as well as the rest of others) as it isn't extremely difficult. You'll be able to grab that platinum in one playthrough instead of two whole playthroughs saving you about 10 hrs depending on your style of play. Took me about 40 hrs I believe in able to grab it. Again, it took long only because I wasted time trying to make it easy for myself. So my advice is to enjoy the game and go for all three of the game completion trophies so you could make it easier for yourself. Plus, the game again isn't so hard once you get the hang of it. Bosses are tough of course but again, with patience you'll man handle them as they are easy targets with a lot of health.

Pros
Augmentation & Weapon upgrades
Stealth
Takedown sequences
Interesting Story
The choices you're able to make (secret passages, hacking, dialogue,etc.)
Visually unique in a sense

Cons
Enemy AI not so smart
Graphics aren't as crisp
Voice acting can suck at times and facial mapping (little to no expressions)
Not as challenging (you're able to save anytime)
HUD isn't as helpful even when upgraded
Boss fights not challenging or fun..

Overall the gameplay itself besides the minor issues of the game is a lot of fun. The feeling you get when you perform the takedowns in the game has takes the "FUCK" and places it next to "YES!". I also enjoyed upgrading Adam's abilities in this game (which I don't want to spoil because finding out what they are and what they do is extremely rewarding for yourself to see at THAT moment) as you are able to make different choices based on what augments you upgrade permanently. It's a fun ride mixing stealth action with rpg'ness  and adding that first-person mixture into it for those who just want to go all out. I'd give this game a rent before buy but if the game is on sale I don't see the problem on purchasing it.



Concept: 8 (Good)
Gameplay: 9 (Fun)
Graphics: 7.5 (Average)
Sound: 8 (Good)

Trophies: 7 (Difficulty scale)

Nemeroth's Final Score: 8.1

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