Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review - Comparing The Original

PROS

• Great Environments
• Fun Gameplay
• Good Sound
• Enough Gameplay to Justify the Price
• Multiple Playstyles

CONS

• Forced Into Boss Fights
• Augmentations Are Cluttered and Need Improvement
• Lack of Moral Choices
• Subpar Story
• You Feel "Too Human"
• Zombies

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the prequel as a sequel!  Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the long awaited sequel to the original Deus Ex, not including Invisible War since that shredded everything Deus Ex.  Human Revolution promised to stay true to the roots of the original, and did it?  Pretty much, but backing up a bit, Human Revolution is set as a prequel back in 2027 when augmentations were still very controversial, but also very noticeable, instead of simple implants there were fully robotic limbs and even sunglasses implanted into your skull.

That atmosphere itself is essentially the Tron Legacy world, except replace any color, except for black, with gold.  And even with the slightly limited color pallet, the game still looks pretty good.  The atmosphere is very well shown, and the side missions and factions help as well.  The only problem I found was when looking at cityscapes or large views; they look very bad, and can lag the game which doesn’t help show the scope of the game world.

May look good on PC, Consoles are another story

Now in the game you play as Adam Jenson, which reminds me of JC and Denton (The name of the character from the original game) smushed together into a last name.  The game plays from your well known first person shooter perspective, though what differs it from the original Deus Ex, is that there is a 3^rd person cover system.  This is where it branches away from how the original Deus Ex played.  In the original, it was completely first person, instead of cover, you would instead lean left and right.  I believe that the developers probably did this to fit consoles, but in my opinion it hindered the game in that it makes it less realistic and less human of a story.

They also got rid of health packs in favor of the infamously hated “Wait to wipe blood off face” health system.  As much as I hate games that use this, I believe it was again an improvement made for console gamers, and it actually works, more or less.  You can also takes stimulants to temporarily increase your health, so I’m surprised to say this isn’t bad, but leads back to a much bigger problem I will talk about a bit later.

Augmentations, a staple of Deus Ex are also back, with a much more RPG-esque system, while also replacing skills (which means no swimming).  The biggest problem with this is that especially at the beginning of the game, the augmentation screen is very intimidating.  It essentially just throws 20 icons in your face, each representing a different set of augmentations which at the beginning can be very confusing, because you don’t know what to get, what will help you, and you also have a fear of not wanting to waste your limited XP, since over the course of the game, you won’t get all the augmentations.  The system itself is pretty expansive, and covers inventory space, social upgrades, jumping and speed increased, less damage, seeing through walls, etc.  One thing I like about these is they aren’t all directly related to a stat, such as there aren’t ones that specifically upgrade damage, but they are more focused around serving purposes, and that’s exactly what they do.

Wanna kill 2 people at once? There's an Aug for that

Now, the second fault is that they essentially combined the skills and augmentations from the original into one system.  Now, I believe they probably did this to dumb it down a bit, now this is exactly what happened with Invisible War, they dumbed it down to the point where it was just a First Person Shooter, which isn’t what Deus Ex is.  Now, this didn’t dumb it down THAT much, but it still took away some of the core aspects of Deus Ex.  Experience was used to upgrade your actual person, just like how having experience in real life makes you better at things.  While upgrades were limited to how many you could get while still catering to gameplay; you could explore and find them in hidden places, hack your way into safes, or you could simply buy them.  This also combated what I mentioned before, which is feeling overloaded with options, each augmentation canister you found gave you a simple “this or that” choice, which is a much better way to do it.

Now, onto what Deus Ex is famous for, the story!  The game has an average plot set in a vivid world, but I never really thought there was a climax, which is important to most games, I also didn’t feel the same sense of conspiracy and betrayal I felt in the original.  So overall, to sum it up, the story is meh.  It’ll be enough to keep some people playing, but not for others.  But what will keep people playing is how despite everything I’ve said, the gameplay is still fun, and there is still the famous Deus Ex blend of stealth, action, and exploration.

Now, onto that one problem which I have been relating to this whole review; the game makes you feel more than human.  One thing which I personally enjoyed about the original, above all else, was how the main character felt human.  He died from a headshot, a shotgun blast pointblank would destroy him, and without regenerating health, a bad injury would affect gameplay, such as a leg being broken and etc.  The health packs in the game helped make it a much more human game.  You also couldn’t easily kill 5 people unless you had a rocket launcher and they were huddling in one point having an orgy on the job or something, you had to use strategy and stealth to take enemies out one at a time, threats felt more…threatening.  I personally went through Human Revolution killing everyone, in the original there is no way I’d be able to survive some things I did in this game because you are more than human, regenerating health, deadly and abusive weapons, and some abusive upgrades simply made you seem more than human, which throws out everything the original did well.  Especially without actual skills, this is the game’s biggest fault, and it’s that it fell into the trap set by modern day games, and that’s making the player feel more than human.  Yes, I know there is the hardest difficulty, but all that means is you’ll be camping and waiting for health to heal more instead of crawling in vents.  Now I’m not saying there were augmentations in the original such as one that allowed you to take 30 bullets, but it was not only implemented much better than augmentations in Human Revolution, the upgrading took time, and you still took damage which could only heal by itself with a special augmentation, which you couldn’t have active all the time.

You'll probably live...

Which reminds me, another fault I found was limiting the player to one bar of energy without food, it made the energy upgrades more useless and it doesn’t help the feel of the game, only being able to look through walls for 10 seconds, over being able to use it in combat is a big difference and may have made combat a bit more enjoyable.  Now that isn’t the only problem of the game mind you, the AI is less than stellar, which I guess is one of the things that does live up to the original.  Now, moral choices were a pretty big deal in the original, but another problem in Human Revolution is that a lethal or non-lethal path doesn’t really change anything.  I went through the game killing everyone; I swore that when I killed over half of the Detroit police force I would get my ass handed to me…but not a word.  In this game the moral choice is simply limited to the player, or more importantly, what guns you have ammo for.  There isn’t an army general to scream at you for killing people, the game doesn’t question your morals for killing civilians, which is a missed opportunity if nothing else.  Now the last thing I’m going to rage on is how they brag about how you can talk to people and find alternate paths, when in reality the game forces you to try conversations and if you fail you then have to take an alternate path, it honestly isn’t an option which again doesn’t help the game live up to the original, because you are supposed to have to look for easier paths, not have them handed to you on a silver platter while having someone ask you if you’d like some melted butter with that.

This dude WILL piss you off by the end of the game

Now is a great time to point out that I lied, I have one more big problem about the game to address.  The game at times forces you into boss fights which are frankly unnecessary.  Having boss fights breaks the flow of the game for someone who focuses on stealth or hacking, because it forces you into unavoidable combat situations, not only that, but they are simply unfair, and one person who can take 10 bullets to the head without a drop of blood doesn’t belong in Deus Ex because that’s “Too Human” which I guess would make sense knowing that your character is also an abusive badass.  Now, I know the original Deus Ex forced you into a few boss fights, but they at least allowed you to use your surrounding somewhat, while some other were avoidable, or had ways to cheat them.  In the original I kept dying from one augmented boss, so I looked around before confronting her again, found a rocket launcher, and shot her into 1000 pieces.  This game may have had a bit of that, but not as much since the boss fights themselves take place in compact areas without people to talk to for help and what not.  And lastly, the boss fights take place in tight places with no open world-ness to them, at least in the original I could run my pussy ass away, in this one; you are getting spammed by so many bullets you’d be lucky to move from one side of the room to the other while still staying alive.

Now, to recap since this review got much longer than I initially expected; the game tries its best to live up to the original, and is better than Invisible War.  It has good level design as well as good music and is great at enriching you with atmosphere.  But, the story itself is subpar and moral choices of killing people have no impact on the game.  The gameplay makes you feel more than human, which doesn’t live up to the original, and the “Choose your path” gameplay is there, but it could be much better, specifically where dialog is concerned.  If you are new to the Deus Ex series, you definitely should check this out, but if you are looking for a true Deus Ex sequel, play the Deus Ex mod “The Nameless Mod” instead.

T.E.C. 3001 - Xbox Indie Game Review

PROS

• Games looks great
• Has good sound
• Varying Levels
• Not your average indie game

CONS

• Many, many bugs
• Limited - No replay value
• Main character doesn't fit within the atmosphere
• Collection of batteries hinders game

TEC 3001 is a robot parkour game.  Your goal is to go through all the levels and collect a minimum amount of batteries before being able to advance to the next level.  The fun lies in overcoming all the obstacles in front of you by jumping, charging, and sliding your way past them to each checkpoint.

The game plays from a 3^rd Person perspectiveve as you control a metallic, terminator-esque robot through the 21 game levels.  The controls are pretty simple, A to jump, B to slide, Right Trigger to charge, and the analog stick to move him left and right.  The controls themselves work pretty well and are pretty responsive within game as you overcome the massive amount of obstacles including hurdles, buildings, ramps, and the lot of it.  Though they do mix things up a bit by giving you multiple paths to choose from, as well as adding in a Sky Diving section every so often, which it fun but has a major flaw, which is if you aren’t going a very specific speed, you can’t gather any of the batteries, and sometimes can’t even land without exploding.  Though while surviving is important, your main goal is to collect batteries scattered along the levels, and this is that part of the game I didn’t like. 

To advance to the next level, you need to complete the level, as well as gather a minimum number of batteries, I believe this really hinders the game because it forces you to focus on not just finishing the level, but making sure you gather batteries, if they took the batteries out and made your only focus getting to the end they really could’ve focused on level design more.  The reason games such as Mirror’s Edge work so well, is because they focus on the parkour aspect of the game, which is choosing your path through the environment, which allows for much more interesting level design.  The batteries hinder the game because not only does it simply make it not as fun, it hinders the amount of paths the developers can add because they need to make sure the player can gather enough batteries before reaching the end no matter what path they take.  Having the player focus on simply getting to the end would not only make the experience more fun, it also would allow them to focus on the environments and level design more.

Now the environments are something that really makes this game shine, because they are awesome.  The game has a very Tron like atmosphere, because everything glows, is based on geometry and just plain looks cool.  I found the environments and levels never get too repetitive since through-out the levels you can run through “RGB Gates” which change the whole color-scheme of the level, which adds variety, and looks cool.  Though you also have the option of choosing whatever color you prefer from the options menu.  The actual items that populate the levels range from streams of circuits and binary, to tech looking palm trees, to animated “tubes” to colored lightning.  For an Indie Game, this really sets the bar for graphics, because this Indie Game has the best graphics out of all Xbox Indie Games I have played.

The audio is also great; I’m not sure if there is a track for each level, but if there isn’t they are at least varied enough so that it won’t feel repetitive.  All the tracks have a techno feel to them and one thing I personally like is how they are high quality loops that actually have bass, a lot of Indie Games that I’ve played have next to no bass, which makes my sound system sad, this on the other hand, has bass.  The actual sound effects in the game sound fine but are nothing special.  But even with the good audio, I still played most of the time with my own music; the game goes well with dubstep, FYI.

The games difficulty will remind you of Super Meat Boy but isn’t as painful as an experience due to Check Points, but the later stages will still take you many, many deaths before you complete them.  I think the difficulty would be fine, if, like I said earlier, the gameplay wasn’t cut back by the batteries.  But the difficulty isn’t helped by the third person view, which can really limit your ability to see ahead of you, as well as having some problems telling just how far away an obstacle really is.

Now on to the bugs….there are a lot of them, I’m not gonna lie.  I believe the developers thought “Well, since we have a deadline and need to be out for the Summer Uprising, people will forgive us for having bugs!” which is complete, utter bullshit; I don’t care if you have a deadline, bugs are bugs.  Essentially the game just need 2-3 weeks of extra polish, there are many occasions of me falling through the floor, hitting something I didn’t actually hit, not hitting something I should have, having Check Points which always lead me straight to death, and etc. I’m not going to list them all, but just know that there are a lot of bugs, and you will die from bugs many times as you play through.

So overall the game is a good looking bug nest, littered with bad design choices and problems, the concept is good, and if you can get past all the bugs you will still have a great time in an awesome atmosphere, but the lack of polish stops me from recommending this game to everyone, if you haven’t played Mirror’s Edge yet, just go play that, it’s much better.

Hack This Game - Indie Game Review

Pros

• Interesting Idea
• 2 Gameplay Modes
• Menu Design

Cons

• When you're stuck, you're stuck
• When you get stuck, you will get frustrated/tired of the game very quickly
• Menus take time to appear

This game is a game which tries to simulate hacking into a simple puzzle game form.  It works, but not nearly quite as well as it could have.  The way the game does this is giving you a progressive set of puzzles which require answers of 5 letters "A, B, X, or Y", so the 4 Xbox controller buttons.  The game presents these puzzle in ways such as telling you which letters are right or wrong, or in a small game of hangman.  

The problem that arises from this, is that if you're stuck on a puzzle....well that's that.  Because the only gameplay is figuring out the puzzle, if you get stuck you can either figure it out....or quit the game.  So if you don't have a large attention span or are bad at puzzles (both of which apply to me) this game probably isn't for you.

The game does have a second mode which is hidden at the bottom of the menu (which I didn't even find until 10 minutes ago) which makes you push a sequence of buttons within the time given, it starts off slow but quickly speeds up until you're overwhelmed, it is a nice addition but doesn't save the game from its faults.  The game is running an...interesting marketing campaign which is whoever completes the game first gets their avatar on the box art.  I honestly do like the idea and think it is a good way to try and get people to complete the game.

The game does have a nice retro computer menu feel, but that's all you see, the same menu with some different text most of the time.  Though for the menu and puzzles the text loads one character at a time so at times it can get very annoying waiting for the whole menu to pop up (specifically in the instructions) and a way to skip it would have been much appreciated.  As far as audio goes, there are a few different clicks and a buzzer and correct sound, they could have atleast added some background music.

Overall it's a not so well executed concept with annoying menus and barely any gameplay, you can easily find some better puzzle games for your money, so I would advise you to skip this one.