Ever felt like a game you're playing is literally on the verge of greatness, but ultimately held back by a few completely preventable shortcomings? That feeling was present throughout my playtime with
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a role-play shooter so accomplished in many ways that its flaws seem all the more criminal.
Human Revolution takes place in the 2027, fifteen years from now and a twenty-five year prequel to the original 2001 game for PS2 and Xbox. The setting of a cyberpunk world on the brink of new augmentation technology is perfectly rendered, a masterful graphical blend of yellows and blacks, and a world brimming with life and things to do. Or so it first seems...You see, at first the game's two city hubs, Detroit and Hengsha, appear to herald infinite possibilities in terms of the gameplay choices that can be made on a surprising level and the interaction with their various citizens. However, dig deeper and you'll realise that scripted dialogue quickly repeats itself amongst Earth's finest hobos and rioters, and that no matter what choices you make along the way to finding the truth behind your character Adam Jensen's brutal near-death experience, you'll always end up at the same point accomplishing the same objective in the same way. Especially on the first play of
Deus Ex, this won't be very apparent, and that the storyline alone spans a good twenty hours of playtime makes it unlikely you'll return to the whole game again in a hurry and thus you may not notice this drawback. Yet part of what makes any Game of the Year contender (something Eidos and Square Enix strive so hard for this to be, but inevitably fail to acheive because of the genre's trappings) so special is its effortless replay value and memorable setpieces, and innovative as this one is there's very little in the way of either of these. The gameplay itself is easily the strongest part of
Human Revolution, refined to the point that you can use Stealth, Combat or Social approaches in every situation, bar four (I'll come to those instances in a minute). To have such options on offer at such regular intervals would usually be unheard of in a game, so that
Deus Ex manages to do so with such ease is all the more testamony to the work the developers clearly put into making the experience seamless no matter your style of play. It's tragic, then, that the aforementioned points where choice doesn't factor, the major four boss battles, are so terribly juxtaposed with the sense of variety that they threaten to ruin one's enjoyment of the rest of the experience. Truly, to be forced into combat with these predictable AI megamoths is a task of endurance, nothing less, especially if you chose to play the stealthy route and are left with little ammo to tackle said baddies, resorting to trial-and-error tactics to fool the antagonists. I'd love to say that the word 'fool' here means to cleverly outwit an intelligent AI system, but nothing could be further from the truth. On too many occassions was I able to back away from an all-out firefight, hide in an obvious piece of cover and simply wait it out until the enemies moved back to their regular patrols rather than attempt to track where I ran off to. It's a common shortcoming in game design nowadays, even affecting the best of 'em like
Batman: Arkham Asylum and
Red Dead Redemption, but at least their developers had the sense to ensure that the awkward battle scenarios were mixed up with innovative setpieces like detective work and tense draw-first Wild West shootouts rather than pitting us up against the dumb AI at every corner.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution does the latter, so can't come close to matching the high precedent set recently by those gaming legends. As I've said before this year, the titles which make it onto the Game of the Year nominee list have to boast a killer storyline, a rich and memorable world and above all the incentive, be it through the quality of the first playthrough or additional missions and challenge modes, to replay them time and time again.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution succeeds and struggles on each of these fronts: the story apes that of a summer blockbuster sci-fi, with all the pros and cons that come with them, its world is undoubtedly packed with detail and heart yet can't help showing cracks in its near-perfection, and while the first playthrough does undoubtedly make an impact uncommon to most of the year's gaming releases so far, even with the multiple endings (that can be accessed simply by loading a save game) there's nothing compelling enough to bring you back to this one unless you're a hardcore
Deus Ex fans, and as far as I understand it it's got more of a 'cult following' rather than a fanbase of
Star Wars or
Doctor Who's magnitude
. Portal 2 easily earned its place on the GotY nominees list, but
Human Revolution is likely to be long remembered as a game which strived for such an accolade, yet made elementary errors along the way and as such didn't meet the top rivals of the pack. By all means go out and buy it if you've been dismayed at the lack of hardcore releases since January, but don't let the hype created by fans of the allegedly superb original game- this is a very solid foundation for future prequels rather than a groundbreaking game-changer.
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