A reboot of a gaming classic, ten years later.
I will try to review this both objectively as a stand alone game, as well as comparing it to the original.
Setting
DX: Human Revolution takes place some time before the original game, in a world not quite as far along into the downward slide of chaos as we see in the original. Biological augmentations, rather than nanites, are the form of human enhancement dealt with in this game, which forms a pretty nice circle of storyline continuity, as the original Deus Ex features the end of that era, marked by the introduction of micro-implants, i.e. progress.
However, while going through this game you can't help but to notice that, while supposedly set quite a few decades before the original game, the technology of the world is more advanced. That's a big problem. Probably the most noticeable instances of this is the vehicle you spend most of the game being ferried around on, which makes the plain-old helicopter that Jock drives in the original look quite a bit antiquated, and the Super-Island you spend some time on in China during this newest installment.
Game Mechanics
DX: HR presents the player with a semi-sandbox "do it your own way" sort of system, but often times this is in name only. There are quite a few paths to solving most problems: stealth, combat, and "adaptive" being the biggest three, but there are some gaping flaws in this system.
First of all, you should be aware that almost every action in the game that accomplishes something (killing or incapacitating an enemy, hacking a computer, finding a hidden area) awards experience points, which you can then turn around and upgrade your augmentations.
However, both these actions, and the very nature of the augmentations themselves pretty much lead you to one, inevitable conclusion: a stealthy, non-lethal approach. Why? The extent of the combat-oriented augmentations are FAR less useful and expansive than those that allow you to incapacitate without killing, move without being seen, etc. You pretty much have aim assistance in the form of reductions in recoil and reticule expansion while moving. There is also passive damage reduction mods, but that's not really a fair assessment because they don't directly affect your ability to kill people, just their ability to kill you.
There is also the typhoon augmentation, which is basically a instant "kill everything within X meters from you" grenade system.
The other augmentations include: ability to carry more gear, ability to jump higher, ability to run faster, ability to turn invisible, ability to sense enemies through walls, ability to see enemies line of sight, ability to track enemies on your radar, ability to know what to say to people to get them to do what you want, recharge your energy faster, have more energy for actions, hack with a lower chance of detection, ability to analyze hacking nodes, etc.
A far longer, and more inclusive list.
Secondly, the game rewards FAR more experience points for NOT killing people. Basically, the experience points for downing an enemy goes something like this:
-Kill an enemy from afar, get 10 points.
-Do it with a head shot, and get an extra 10 points.
-Kill an enemy with a take down, get 30 points total.
-Incapacitate an enemy with a take down, get 50 points.
Ok, so if you walk into a room with five enemies, get into a fire fight and kill them all without head shots, you walk away with 50 points. Sneak around the room and knock them all out, and you walk away with 250. That's huge. That's FIVE TIMES the amount of points. Not to mention that most "alternative paths" already give you big points boosts.
Oh, and I should also mention that the non-lethal take down is about three times more quiet than the lethal take down... That's not suggestive at all...
I'm glad they went the experience route, because the lack of experience in the sequel, Invisible War, was a huge let down after having already experienced the great system of the first game. However, they made some huge mistakes with the system.
Not only do they lead you by the collar into following the way they REALLY intended you to play it via unbalanced rewards, they also give you huge incentives to do a lot of arbitrary actions. For instance, succesfully hacking a computer nets you some experience, so even if you don't need anything off them, you have a moderate incentive to hack every computer, alarm panel, etc. that you come across. The difference between doing this and not, from start to finish, is definitely a few thousand experience points. And in turn, you have a lot of incentive to then invest in hacking skills, even if you're going for a more straight forward approach.
Another big problem is that, like Invisible War, they made augmentations into skills. I'm not sure why they insisted on repeating this mistake, seeing as how A. The original Deus Ex's system of seperating augmentations (which, by the way, were still upgradeable...) from skills worked so well and B. IW's system worked so poorly.
Basically, in the original, you had skills such as weapons use (divided into rifles, pistols, melee, and heavy weapons), armor use, medical use, hacking, lockpicking, and a few others. And THEN you had augments, which served a lot of the same purposes as the DX:HR aug's do. But they were acquired SEPERATELY and therefore the customization of the original was actually far greater than the third installment/prequel, TEN YEARS LATER. That's a little sad if you think about it.
All of that just compounds and leads towards a general truth that the system itself has been dumbed down. To further enforce that analogy, they did away with a lot of things, like lockpicking, medical items, etc.
My next observation is the energy/skills system, which is downright annoying. In the original game, skills had nothing to do with energy. You could fire a gun, etc. anything that had to do with skills was totally separate from energy use. Yet another reason that it was, and should have remained, separate. However, there was a very similar form of energy to the one seen in DX:HR, and you had to recharge it using items, and items only. In that way, the original and DX:HR are alike. However, there are some key differences, which make the new system far, far worse. First of all, as already discussed, the takedown move (lethal or non-lethal) is the best, and most exp point effective way to go about taking out enemies. However, it requires 1 energy bar to use. Here's where the system's flaws start to show through. First of all, you can upgrade to have up to 5 bars of energy, however no matter how many points you invest in this upgrade line, only the FIRST bar regenerates passively.
Ok, you might be thinking "well that's fair, the original didn't have any passive regneration". That's true. HOWEVER, the original had many, many actions that didn't require energy at all. Only augmentations required energy. Take-downs are not an augmentation, they're simply an action. They can be modified to be more effective but in essence, they're just a melee move that requires an energy bar to use.
Next, when you boil a player's action bar down to 5 blips rather than a more useful 0-100 scale, you run into some problems. First of all, the augmentations in the original Deus Ex had different costs, depending on their use and usefulness. For instance, the invisibility cloak cost a truck load, and could be upgraded to cost less per second. On the other hand, the flash light aug cost very very little to use. In DX: HR however, all aug's are treated equally. You can't tell me that every augmentation is just as useful... therefore they should not cost the same. Unfortunately they decided to go with a simpler (Dare I say watered down?) system, so those decisions became impossible to make.
The added cover system I don't care for, but to be fair I think cover systems are cheap, poor decisions, and overused in games nowadays. Switching third to first person in and out of cover is extremely awkward and messes with your aim while you're doing it. And you really can't get around the fact that the AI was specifically programmed to interact with a cover system: walking right by you while you're "in cover" but clearly visible, etc.
Another problem with the flawed system arrives with the appearance of each boss. A non-violent approach to the game can easily leave you very unprepared for a boss fight, which force you to confront them physically. For instance, the upgraded typhoon aug can down every boss in a couple hits, but is completely worthless for the rest of the game if you're going for the "Kill no one but bosses in the game" achievement. Strange decisions.
Graphics
The graphics are a sort of mixed bag in this game. There are indeed a lot of beautiful things going on here, particularly in the cut scenes. However, like a lot of other games, you tend to see some really nice High Quality textures mixed in with some hideously rendered ones. Always a bit unsettling.
My biggest complaint here is the facial animations and body language which are a joke. A joke, no kidding. This looks about as well animated as the original, which should NOT be something to aspire to.
Overall the game is very graphically appealing, particularly the color palette. It's dark, it has a dark, techno feel to it, and you feel pretty at home in it.
Character Customization
Despite my earlier comments, augs do at least have the appearance of giving good options. You can indeed play through the game in many different ways, just don't expect to be treated fairly each way.
Guns are decently interesting, but there are definitely some strange choices here. For instance, the pistol, once upgraded with it's armor piercing custom part (basically ignores all body armor...) and a silencer, becomes potentially the best gun in the game, able to down any human (bosses not included) in a single head shot. While on the other hand, the heavy machine gun found late in the game has an annoying spin up time and pretty low damage given its caliber and the scarcity of available ammo.
Overview
The game is good, worth-playing for sure. It's solid, but I wouldn't go much beyond that. There's nothing here you can't see anywhere else. It does the original credit and effectively brings the spirit of it into a new era of gaming, but does not live up to its standards in many ways. Whether playing it as a stand alone shooter, or a fan of the series, it's worth picking up. But don't expect to be blown away. (Except by the enemies that can two shot you on Deus Ex difficulty)