Considering the trend nowadays for games, as well as movies, to be remade or sequels to be released that are shadows of their former selves, it’s no wonder why anyone would be skeptical of the new Deus Ex game. Considering the 15+ year wait for Duke Nukem just for it to land flat on it’s balls of steel due to a lack of updating to the gameplay, one has to wonder what could possibly be wrong with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. We can first look at the graphics, and say that overall, they were fairly decent. The bump mapping and texture detail of the characters and other AI are quite good, however the detail of the environments almost appears to be a bit lacking. This isn’t to say that the environment graphics are poor, because they are not; simply that some more scenery porn could have been added (a fine example of wonderful scenery is The Witcher 2 which came out prior to the latest Deus Ex).

Now as far as story line is concerned, fans of the first two games will not be dissapointed. We have character interactions, conspiracies, hidden information, and some decent voice acting to go along with it, minus the Keanu Reeves-ish soundsing main character (who also looks remarkably like him as well). The gameplay is also very familiar to the first two games in that many approaches can be taken to solve the same problem. You can go in guns blazing and hope to survive; you can throw out augmentations like a madman and hurl heavy objects at your enemies; you can opt for the more tactful Splinter Cell approach and stealth your way around, killing (or incapacitating) your foes and earning bonus “mercy” points… you get the idea. Even the mini-games associated with hacking and the sort are entertaining, and at times, quite challenging if you are going for all of the bonus XP and credit nodes.

With all of this positive banter it would be almost a crime for something to be terribly wrong with the game at this point, but unfortunately there is. No it’s not a lack of “sandbox” play (although there are limited numbers of side-quests) or inherent bugs/glitches, instead there is a MAJOR pitfall that occurred during development. For whatever reason, EIDOS (and Square-Enix considering they tagged along for this game) decided that of all the things to outsource for development in the game, the would choose the boss fights. That’s right, just the boss fights. Not only that, but they outsourced them to a company which even proclaims that they know little to nothing of the series, but are “shooter” fans. I can only assume they haven’t played a shooter in 15 years because the boss fights tend to play out like something out of Doom 2, Quake, or Hexen. Let’s take the first boss fight for example. In my case, I was opting for the stealthy route, so other than tranq. guns, stun guns, and some EMP grenades, the only true weapon I had was the sniper rifle I got for pre-ordering and my trusty 9mm. I walk into a room that resembles the shoot-out scene room from the first Matrix movie (filled with columns for cover), a cutscene plays, and I’m at the boss. The boss is armed with a chaingun (Doom-ish) as well as an unlimited supply of grenades. There’s no real cover other than the columns and assorted crates around, and the boss always knows where you are unless you can incapacitate him long enough to slip away. The room however is not large at all, so there are no “alternative” strategies. There’s no chance of sneaking off and popping out to snipe. There’s no opportunity to find cover and hide while you recover, there’s just the warehouse and a few crates and columns. A standard old-school shooter boss fight. Keep in mind that the boss will kill you if he can get a 2-3 bead on you. Oh, and if you make the mistake of getting too close, he picks you up by the throat and falcon punches 50% of your health away. That is unless you’re below 50% health, then he instantly kills you. The second you do some damage, he has a seizure and hurls grenades everywhere, which can be a problem considering the room is small to begin with, but leaving cover means he’ll know where you are and ruin your chance for a followup attack.

Speaking of attacks, lets look into those. First off, it is physically impossible to subdue him with your pistol. Secondly, due to the lack of real cover and sniping positions, even if you can get a good head shot on him with the sniper rifle, 3+ hits still doesn’t kill him. So unless you picked up your Doom-rocket-launcher from the other room, you have to play a frustrating game of huck-a-barrel. You run and hide taking hits, find a exploding or poison barrel, pick it up, wait, and then throw it at him and hope you don’t miss. You can’t run while carrying the barrel and you can’t hide with it either, so you have to be pretty crafty. Once you nail him with your barrel-o-fun, you have to hide/run frantically while he hurls 5-10 grenades every which way while yelling at you. Still alive? Good! Now you can do the same stupid procedure all over again about 5-7 times. Keeping in mind this is on the medium difficulty. Listen, if you haven’t played Deus Ex, and you don’t have a clue about the series, you probably shouldn’t be working on its development. It would be like Nintendo outsourcing certain levels of Mario to Team Sonic. What works for Sonic doesn’t work for our favorite plumber. If I wanted to fight a ridiculous boss in a big square empty room who is equipped with a gun 10-times better than any of mine, I’d dig out by 3.5″ floppy of DOOM and install the game. However, to end this review, do not for a minute think that Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a bad game. It is in fact, a wonderful game, with good storylines, good gameplay, and overall is a good sequel. However, the boss fights are something to prepare yourself for. Preferably with liquor because you might break a few mice or keyboards unless you’re slightly sedated. With that, I’ll leave you with an interview of the outsourced developer:

Outsourced

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