I tried to play the first Deus Ex when it came out. Quite honestly, I never got what all the praise was about. It's consistently hailed as the greatest PC game ever made, and it seems to be that it only has that distinction because of the element of varying choice the game provided. While that's all well and good, that alone really doesn't complete the picture for me.
Part of the problem for me, I think, is that I played the game after it was a few years old, and thus pretty dated. The game didn't look all that great to begin with when it was released, and a few years time certainly didn't help matters any. And for the record, yes, graphics do matter to me in certain ways. Games like Minecraft don't have to have great graphics because that's not why you're playing. But for something like Deus Ex, where you're supposed to be immersed in a fictional, science fiction heavy world, yes, it matters quite a bit.
All that being said, we come around now to DXHR. It's natural to make comparisons to the original, so let's do it this way: Eidos took it, and updated it to 2011. This is important, because a lot of times this isn't really done all that great. When id Software did it with Doom 3, they basically made a technological showcase for their new graphics engine. Nothing wrong with that, of course -- I quite enjoyed Doom 3 and still enjoy playing it today. But, something like Doom 3 isn't game of the year material.
DXHR is different in that regard. A lot of the common mistakes that are made today were not made here. When they looked at what needed to be trimmed out from the original game, they didn't cut out what made the game so great in the first place. (Because despite what I may think, yes, it was a great game.) You still have that unique inventory system, the upgradeable weapons, and naturally, the massive amounts of choice in anything that you do. Additionally, in adding in the things that have become commonplace in games of today, they didn't make the game clunky. They knew what wouldn't work for their game. And the things they did add in, they did correctly. The cover system is probably one of the greatest I've ever seen in a game. It's so easy to use, and you actually get so used to it that eventually you don't even realize you're in cover. And the regenerating health is bar-none the best I've ever seen, mostly because of how very fragile Adam Jensen is. It works, and it works very well.
So, I suppose it's quite obvious by my gushing praise here that I loved this game, and you're right. I did. It's game of the year material, and it's one of the greatest games I've ever played. Everyone knows that I consider the stories of Half-Life and Max Payne to be some of the best written in the gaming industry, and this story is right up there with those. The mystery and conspiracy that the game pushes you through really makes me reminisce about the original Max Payne. A lot. I loved it.
For these YDCBITYA articles that I write, I needed a way to summarize my thoughts without relying on a percentage or numbering system. I don't like those. So, I developed a way of telling you what I thought about a game in a simple way:
1. Everyone should play this game: It's one of the best, and anyone who has ever played any kind of video game should play it.
2. Fans of the genre should play this game: It's one of the best of the genre, and anyone who enjoys the genre will enjoy this game.
3. OH MY GOD MY EYES ARE BURNING: I didn't like it.
So, of course, my final verdict of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is that everyone should play this game. Get to it.
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