Deus Ex Human Revolution is my GOTY, I hope it is yours! Forget Skyrim, give this game a try and become a fan!
It's been a long while since I've written a game review but you know - it's been a long while since a game has touched me in a way that really makes me think about things. I glance over my life as I played games like Final Fantasy with it's elaborate stories with it's endings touching me the most. Ironically, Deus Ex Human Revolution is published by the very makers of Final Fantasy. Which stands for the fact that the Eidos acquisition was a smart one. These people who developed this game did a fantastic job with the story and to make things even sweeter, the game looks good, sound great, plays fantastically. Now if this review could be summed up and ended here, the last sentence would have wrapped this baby up but Deus Ex Human Revolution needs to be dug deeper for a better understanding of why I honestly believe that despite the Skyrim hype, I believe Deus Ex Human Revolution solely deserves Game of the Year across many genres and categories.
Graphics
Now I do apologize before hand to PC enthusiasts but I played this game on my PS3. While I could have played on my 360, my own preferences and doing research on Lens of Truth and Digital Foundry's articles of the Faceoffs of these games made my buying decision of which version of the game was pleasing to my eyes. What impresses me the most of this game is how well this game looks on consoles period. 5 - 6 year old hardware of the PS3 and 360 still show that developers have ways to squeezing how you say the lemonade out of lemons. The gold and black tone of the game really works for itself in ways you have to see for yourself to understand that phrase that I and many other reviewers have mentioned. It's overall style and design work out in a way to making every area seem very believable and attached to one another. The variety of the environments does help things although rehashing three areas in the game seem to be a bit off putting but understandable because of the story (Sariff building, Detroit, and Hengsha). Now on the technical front, SSAO is used practically on everything - heavily in fact to being a bit distracting at times ( SSAO by the way is a form of shadowing on practically any object to give it some form of it being actually there in the environment instead being pasted there.) While lighting is great as well as the textures being very sharp in alot of areas and items, shading is helpful in making things look rather well also. My only gripe with the graphics are the low res textures particularly with some of the writings but if they aren't too important to the games story or mechanics I guess I can shrug it off as this isn't a pc but a console that has to make some sacrifices to make this run well. Also, while every looks great and every looks alive like the cities and their people - the character models faces looks a bit dated but maybe they are alright with my notion coming from playing LA Noire and their mo-cap facial expressions spoiling me.
Either way the game looks great on any platform of your choice and while graphics make a game, it's not the only part, thus we will go into sound.
Sound
Now i'm a person who can judge games and how they feel through the sound design they try to go for and Human Revolution literally struck me of something mysterious through the very first musical notes the game introduces you at the very beginning title screen. While alot of people confuse the music as being something maybe ripped out of Mass Effect, I find that hard to believe. Mass Effect has this "space" Techno type of tone while Deus Ex immediately made me think of Perfect Dark for some reason. My thoughts were a great match more than others as Perfect Dark has very similar playing style in regard to how you play the game (shooter, stealth, or both). While I'm one of the very few who game with surround sound headphones (personal taste), I was able to discern where things were coming from - explosions though often scared me, don't know if that is chalked to good sound quality or me being a sissy. Besides that the voice acting is top notch, with each character sounding very believable of who they portrayed. My gripe here is that the generic people walking around the game not really interacting with you in your mission or sub-missions are often recycled alot. While the main protagonist you play as in the game has this great gruff voice about him, he does sound a bit mono tone but with his circumstances I guess it's understandable. Overall top-notch sound design, I enjoyed it more with headphones just like I enjoyed how the game played.
Gameplay
This game is maybe the best game so far to give the user choice in how they play the game. While this is a first person shooter, the game really give you the choice of not shooting a single person in the game, going all out leaving no one leaking blood, or just knocking people out, or a combo of different things. While treating this as an all out shooter, it functions but gives you the least points for upgrades. The game kinda would like to prefer stealth as it rewards you more points. I choose a combo deal of stealth and knocking people out as it gives you the most points for your upgrades. I would try my hardest sneaking though the area and finding hidden paths and later going back knocking people out through melee attacks, stun gun, or tranq sniper gun. Often though I had to revert knocking people along my way through sneaking through a building. Often times though you would hit a snag of turrets or shooting robots along the way, heck even a lock door or laser trip wires. This is where hacking terminals come in and dependant on how you upgrade yourself - hacking terminals can be either really hard or tricky. In regards to upgrades, the upgrade system deals with experience points earned through your actions and completed quest, with each "finished level up" you get a praxis point which updates your augmented body to newer "powers" like invisibility, hacking better, and being able to see through walls for examples. Taking pages from the classic Deus Ex, besting better stealth and tactics than metal gear solid imo, and grabbing story weaving from mass effect, I'd say this is a wonderful fun package wouldn't you agree. Would I call this an action adventure rpg... maybe but once you start playing, the story unfolds in a way very few games do.
Story
This story requires a bit of thought and really taking care of you reading almost every ebook, computer email, peoples conversations inside the game, and following the story as close as possible to appreciate it. It primarily deals with robot augmentations being the "next evolution" for humans. Governments sorta seem to be not that important anymore but corporations that are advancing this Augmentation race against one another. This is where you Adam Jensen come in to play where you are a hired to be head security of one of the these corporate entities, Sariff Industries, that seems to be on a new break through of augmentations to bring it to the next level. When things look up, someone usually comes to bring it down and things go bad fast when a terrorist groups comes and kills the main group in charge of this break through, almost killing you. You are then augmented to the point of becoming a super weapon and are brought back to find out what happened. Twists and turns happen along the way that affect how the story flows and it is all dependant on the choices you made along the way. Even that has it's reward or consequence to the very final moments in the end of the game - Four choice will be give to you. Four choices that literally made me pause a moment and walk away away before I made my decision. I have not done this before in any game in a long time. Not many games cause this to happen, choice and the consequences thereof,whether good or bad depends on how you decide for it to happen. With this in mind, no matter what choice I made at the end, it caused my jaw to drop instantly, a tear in my eye, was from what I was reading, hearing, and seeing of the message being portrayed to me. A message very few games tamper with and that is the very question about humanity. A question of where it is going and where it will go depending on the decisions we make. The very decisions I hope we are ready for? Are you ready for this type of game?
I hope so, because this game is like a total roller coaster ride in how games should be. A game so thrilling and so much fun to the point you are upset that it eventually comes to an end.
While Skyrim may have taken the crown as GOTY from many sites, please, give Deus Ex Human Revolution a go, and you will be surprised in how great the game is to the point that like myself and others in why this didn't get GOTY.