Setting aside for the moment the fact that the original Deus Ex somehow keeps finding its way onto Top 10 Games of All Time lists (If not the #1 Game of All Time), it was still a game plagued with issues. These issues have become popular to ignore by gaming journalists, who have been seeking for years to turn the "Best Game Ever" debate into something more complex than just "It was Half-Life. Alternatively? Half-Life 2."
Playing the original Deus Ex would lead one to notice some glaring problems. Namely, horrendous voice acting, casual if unintended racism, retarded sound effects, abominable AI and convoluted plotline.
Now, this is a '90's action game so I'm going to let all those problems slide. I'm going to do this namely because Deus Ex was the most hilarious game I've ever played. A game that took itself so seriously and attempted to bring up so much deep commentary on government, religion, power and the future of humanity, one that allowed you never before seen freedom to complete missions in any way you wanted...none of that mattered when you were tasing the homeless in the streets, gathering up as many '40's of malt liquor as possible and downing them at once, breaking into someone's apartment and stealing their couch, beaning cops in the head with basketballs, and generally being a cyborg criminal nuisance.
My experience with Deus Ex can be summed up into my first impression gathered during the game's training mission. As JC Denton you're set through a variety of simple trials to get you used to the controls, augmentations and inventory screens. At the very end of the training mission, however, you encounter a GIANT ROBOT FIRING LIVE AMMO. Evidently UNATCO is pretty serious about putting you through the ropes before sending you into the world. In trying to escape this mechanical monstrosity I was introduced to the damage system that was able to calculate injuries down to individual limbs, even going so far as to immobilize them until you've received adequate medical attention. I got my legs shot off and had to crawl across the finish line.
I continued to scrape along in agony as my superior congratulated me over the radio on my achievement and subsequently expounded at GREAT length on the happenings of the world, UNATCO, terrorism, the "gray death, etc. etc." All the while I'm crying with laughter, screaming at my monitor for a medic and oh god why is no one helping me.
I'm happy to announce that, while the outright silliness of the things you could do in the game world have been toned down a bit in Human Revolution, most of what gave Deus Ex its flavor have returned. Homeless people lie in the streets waiting to be shot with taser guns and brutalized with your augmented steel fists. Apartments with easily-hackable door locks range far and wide. The AI is still laughably bad, voice acting ranges from decent to horrendous (Eidos has a very specific stereotype in their minds on how blacks and Chinese people talk and act.) You get to go to China for no real reason and check out people living in pods. Poverty is everywhere, people whine constantly about the nature of humanity and augmentation and governments.
While there's no GEP gun to be found, the main difference in augmentations in this round is that they are all useful and pretty cool to boot. They are also extremely expensive, so you really have to take some time to choose what to upgrade. Do you up your hacking skills to be better at breaking and entering, or do you boost your battery system so you can punch more whores in the face before having to find a Cliff bar?
Sadly, alcohol is not nearly as prevalent in Human Revolution as it was in Deus Ex, leading to far fewer instances of wanton drunkenness on the job. This is due to the fact that liquor gives a legitimate boost to your stats, temporarily pushing your health up past 100% like you were Bender or something. The only way to replenish your battery power (after performing multiple lethal takedowns on Chinese civilians) is to eat powerbars, supposedly to "replenish nutrients." So you can run out of powerbars pretty easily and be wandering through a Shanghai market where street cooks are frying up meat in woks left and right and there's shops full of snacks everywhere you look, but you go hungry because all Adam Jensen eats is a specific brand of candy.
I am about halfway through the game and enjoying breaking as many laws as humanly possible, surpassing what he term "humanly possible" even means as I see through walls, jump from 5-story buildings and land without a scratch, punch through walls and immobilize transients with a sonic cannon.
Final Verdict: I never asked for this.
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