E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
June 16th, 2010 | Written by Anthony Perez | Topic: E3 2010, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360
One liner: Deus Ex is a classic series that’s looking a bit behind the times.
Deus Ex is making a comeback this year with Human Revolution, the latest in the famed series that raised the bar for the first-person action adventure genre early last decade. In our time checking out a behind-closed-doors demonstration of the game, it’s apparent that in the past few years those standards have changed and Deus Ex is starting to feel dated.
On paper, Deus Ex: Human Revolution should be great. The franchise has a great heritage. There are four different ways to play the game: using stealth, talking your way past obstacles with a little social engineering, fighting the enemy forces head-on, or hacking your way past security and locked doors. You can use any of these methods at any time and there is no set path through any given level or situation.
Then reality hits and you realize the game has problems. Now, to be fair, the game is still fairly early in development and has a way to go until its March 2011 release date. With that in mind, there are some positives to the game that we’ll address later.
As mentioned, you can play the game by talking to various characters around the game world, making connections, and getting access through various such means. In the demonstration we saw, Adam Jensen, the lead protagonist, approaches a club called The Hive, in the shady Shanghai underground. The bouncer won’t let Adam in, so Adam chooses to bribe his way in by flashing a little cash. This was just one of many potential ways to get in, but we weren’t told what those were.
After making his way deeper into the club, Adam approaches a character and asks where to find the club’s boss, Tong, and is told to head upstairs. Once there, Adam talks to the bartender who gives him the runaround and says he can’t meet Tong. With no other leads, Adam wanders the club a bit until he overhears a conversation two NPC’s are having about a lost security card in an area of the club. Using this lead, Adam searches the area, finds the card, and eventually reaches Tong.
The problem with all of it is in the execution. In the conversations with both the bouncer and bartender, Adam goes into autopilot, responding to the other character. As the player, you sit passively and watch the exchange, and it’s only halfway through the conversation when you can finally influence the conversation by choosing one of three generic conversation styles, such as bribery or confrontation, for Adam to use in order to get the answers he wants. With so little direct influence on the conversation, the whole experience is less engaging than games like Mass Effect in which players have complete control of the conversation at several points.
Another issue we found was with stealth play. Security cameras and doors can apparently be hacked with a single button. Stealth kills are also just a button press away, kickstarting an animation (albeit pretty cool animations) of Adam slicing and dicing his enemies with ease. While cool, these single button actions mixed with the automated dialogue put almost too much of the game into autopilot.
Still, there were a few promising notes. In one situation, Adam used his x-ray vision upgrade in order to spot an enemy inside a building. Rather than going through the front door and attacking head on, Adam used his strength upgrade to punch through the wall and break the guard’s neck from behind.
The x-ray vision also came in handy during a hectic gun fight. Overwhelmed by enemies, Adam wisely hid behind cover and quickly flipped to his x-ray vision in order to spot oncoming enemies hidden behind crates. This gave him a hell of a jump on the opponent.
There are also some great weapon upgrades. In a fight with a giant robot boss in the same warehouse, Adam used a heat-seeking upgrade on his rocket launcher to tag the bot and arc a rocket over crates for a direct hit.
We’ll be more sure of our opinions on Deus Ex: Humun Revolution as it nears its March 2011 release date.
Related posts:
- E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Red Faction: Armageddon
- E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Vanquish
- E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
- E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Halo Reach
- E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Rock Band 3
Comment by Justin on the June 16th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
dude, you either really didnt pay attention, or you're very very dumb.
Comment by TonyP on the June 17th, 2010 at 4:23 am
And why is that exactly?