Viva La Human!

This is the day I have waited a very long time for (Well honestly the day I played the game was the day I waited for but still!)...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

It is only fair that I compare it to the original Deus Ex and point out the good and bad points.

First off the tutorial/prologue shows you the basic mechanics of the game while also introducing you to the story. It is quite nice as you don't feel like you are doing a tutorial. This is different from the original in that there is no ACTUAL tutorial assault course.

A big change from the original game is the removal of the skills/experience system. You still gain experience for completing quests and exploring etc. But now instead of putting your experience into certain skills you use that experience to level up your augmentations. This, while not keeping exactly with the original, was a slight enough difference that it didn't take away from the "levelling" feel of the game.

Human Revolution gave you several ways to approach scenarios in keeping with the series. However it has limited those choices to quite a large extent. This was rather disappointing but to be fair it is rather difficult to script the freedom you had in Deus Ex as the freedom was only there pretty much as a glitch or a non-scripted sequence. It still felt lacking in a lot of areas however when you could only go certain ways and not be as creative as in the original.

As in the gameplay, the conversations were slightly more restricted too. There was a nice new feature added however that I quite enjoyed that allowed you to influence people. I was very glad that this was added as it did free up conversations somewhat.

One thing that really disappointed me about the game however was the intro music. It wasn't the classic Deus Ex theme, a crucial part of any Deus Ex game (even Invisible War had it!)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is in my opinion a very worthy sequel to the classic Deus Ex. It is not exactly the same in all aspects but the bits that have changed have, for the most part, changed for the better.

And let's face it... Your character is a bad-ass!

No Machinima In Sight...

A game that I have played several (hundred) times is Deus Ex. It is one of my favourite games and in my opinion an absolute pinnacle of good game creation. (Developers take note!)

First of all there is an option to do a tutorial, but it is not forced upon you. The "starter area" is easy enough that you can pick up how to play as you go along as well as get to grips with the different weapon types without it being "spoon-fed" to you.

Deus Ex is called an RPG-FPS as it has a level-up system with skills and your performance can sometimes depend on how trained you are in certain skills, but it also does not hamper your performance, just enhances it.

There are several ways to approach each challenge in the game. You can fight everything that moves, you can talk down all your enemies, you can sneak through air vents or you can use a mix of all of the above. It is completely down to you how you handle each situation. There are even some areas where you can do something that would normally be completely game breaking and the game just continues on!

The overall story of the game is that the world has developed to the stage of "Nano-Augmentation" and they are in wide use. Your character is in the top tier of augmentation and is an anti-terrorist agent in UNATCO. He later uncovers a disturbing plot and the game progresses from there.

The most impressive thing about the game is that it allows you so many options in all aspects of the game even down to conversation. There are so many hidden items and secrets in the game as well, even I have not found them all, in my many playthroughs.

Overall I believe this game to be a foundation block in gaming history and I really hope that new developers will look back and start to take a leaf out of Ion Storm's book...

Im the God Damn Batman!!

Batman. Where to begin? Batman is badass. He has the perfect mix of self-righteousness, pompousness, wimpy back story and kick-assery to just be the perfect badass good guy.
However having said that i prefer a bunch of the bad guys to him (as i tend to do).

Now onto the game. Arkham Asylum is the perfect setting for the game, it provides plenty of opportunities for Batman's main enemies to be around.

The gameplay is great, despite having a massive amount of backtracking, it works this in quite well. The combat isnt clunky or boring, the stealth isnt black and white and if you mess it up it immediately moves into the combat, a perfect combination.

The gadgets are great fun and more useful than you first think (i spent the majority of the game not upgrading to certain ones and then once i did regretted not having done so earlier) but unfortunately it takes forever to get them all, which creates even more backtracking if your trying to 100% it.

Theres not really much about this game that annoyed or disappointed me. I found the odd time the controls were bothersome (but that may be more down to me than the game) and some events repeated that probably shouldnt have repeated but all in all the game felt balanced, entertaining and changed enough between sequences that it all was very enjoyable.

I would definately recommend this game to Everyone! I will end this by saying this is the only game (other than the Baldur's Gate *EDIT and Deus Ex* series) that i have fully completed and played the life out of.



Im the God Damn Batman!