Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Worth the wait"

Gameplay: 4.5/5
+ Deus Ex is one of the most respected and revered games ever. The sequel Invisible War unfortunately left a bad taste in the mouth of gamers, straying far from what made the original so good. With this third installment, the game finally returns and this time feels like a proper Deus Ex game.
The big appeal of the original Deus Ex game was the fact that you decided how you wanted the game to play. It blended FPS and RPG elements but ultimately gave you the option of whether you wanted to be entirely stealthy, a quiet assassin, or a heavy weapon wielding monster. While Deus Ex: Human Revolution doesn't quite give you the entire freedom that the original game did, it still does provide you with plenty of options.
For starters, you gain experience points by doing various things in the game. Each time you level up you are awarded a praxis point which can be used to upgrade your augmentations. There are a number of augmentations and you are free to choose which ones you update, which will determine how you play. Some augmentations favor a stealthy approach (running silently, enabling a cloak, etc); some favor more of a combat approach (better armor, a powerful typhoon attack); while others are just useful either way (a larger inventory, an option that lets you unlock special conversation choices, the ability to break down some walls). I'm not sure if it's possible to completely upgraded every augmentation, but by the end of the game I had pretty much all the ones I found useful and then I just started spending points on random stuff just because I could. But upgrading certain augmentations early on will definitely prove more useful than others.
There are four active augmentations that you specifically have to press a button to use. These include silent walking/running, cloaking, seeing enemies through walls, and the heavy typhoon attack. Each of these require that you have enough energy in your power meter to use. You have a default two cells of power and can recharge only one cell (but can use items to refill others). So you have to be strategic when using these and make sure you have enough energy or else you might find yourself in a bad situation. Other augmentations and abilities use this power meter, too, such as punching through walls and silently knocking out an enemy (both of which require 1 cell).
The game uses the same style of inventory that the original game had. You are given a backpack with a maximum number of squares. Each item you pick up takes up a certain amount of squares. Naturally, the more powerful an item is the more squares it takes up. This really forces you to decide which items are necessary and which ones you really don't need. You won't be able to carry all the weapons, so pick one or two that you think will be best and keep those. Since ammunition is also part of your inventory you will have to make sure you have enough space for not only the guns but also the bullets.
Even though you have the freedom to choose how you play the game, it does seem to lean more towards a stealthy approach. And along those lines there is a cover system that the game uses. It actually works well and isn't very cumbersome at all. You can flatten yourself against any surface by holding right click, which will take you out of a first person camera and put you into a third person camera. This transition is useful, smooth, and seems very appropriate. Then when you are in cover you can hold the space bar to turn a corner, or press the space bar to quickly jump to another nearby cover. If you time it right you can sneak by an entire room of guards without them seeing you. Or, of course, you can use the cover to headshot any guards walking by. The choice is yours.
While the game doesn't use lockpicking, it does see a return of hacking. The hacking mini-game is kind of confusing to learn at first so you might want to pay extra attention when it is explained. It can be exploited to a certain degree, though, because I found that if you just keep clicking nodes as fast as you can then most of the time you'll be able to beat the mini game with plenty of time to spare. Though you do have to be aware of more difficult ones, and make use of your hacking stop and hacking nuke items. Hacking also proves to be very useful later in the game so you definitely don't want to overlook leveling it up.
The levels are very well constructed and while they are linear in the big picture, they offer quite a number of choices of how you get there. Everyone will have to make it from point A to point B, but you can either decide to sneak through vents, use the cover system to sneak around guards right under their noses, or you can just walk right in and deal with the consequences. You are rewarded with extra XP for exploring, though, so don't be afraid to look around and take your time.
The bosses have received some criticism but I didn't think they were too much of a problem. A few of them can be pretty challenging, but I thought it offered a good source of variety from the regular progression of levels. The way I leveled up my augmentations was a mix between stealthy and strong, though. So while I tried to avoid enemies during the level, I still knew I had weapons and augmentations that would give me the upper hand in a face-to-face battle. If you throw all your augmentation points into stealth then you may find it a little harder (but I couldn't say for sure from experience).
Overall the game really has a lot going for it. I'm not sure if I could say that it is better than the original, but it definitely comes close and it absolutely lives up to the expectations that the first game created. The mix of FPS, RPG, and stealth elements combined with the freedom of how you want to level up your augmentations and explore the environments really make this game hard to put down.

Story/Presentation: 4/5
+ The story has its moments when it is interesting and engaging. In fact it does a good job at keeping the game moving forward and urging you not to put it down. Still, at times things start to get pretty confusing and it's hard to really understand everything that is happening when you play through the first time. There are lots of different characters and you are trying to unravel conspiracies and subplots, so it's pretty clear that you can get lost in the plot here or there. But after moments like these, it does eventually get back into common territory and you're able to follow along again.
It does share similar threads to the original Deus Ex plot. Not entirely in content, but in the way it is laid out. You are flown across the world and meet with rival factions in your mission to uncover the truth. And there is a constant struggle with the new augmentation technology and whether or not humans should exist entirely without cybernetics, or whether the human race could prosper from the discoveries. Also, at the end of the game you are given a set of choices and you must make the ultimate decision, similar to the final moments in the original Deus Ex.
The one thing that I was a little disappointed with happens just like the way the original Deus Ex ended. Everything is building up to the final moment, you are given these important choices, and you must decide which to choose. But after you do decide, you are just given a brief cutscene with a voice over narration and then the game ends and the credits scroll. To me this kind of takes away from the impact of the final decision because you don't have to live with any in-game consequences afterwards. I think if they would have moved the decision a little earlier from where they did and then let you play the game after you've chosen then it would have felt more meaningful.

Graphics: 4/5
+ If you're asking about graphics in a strictly technical standpoint then no the graphics aren't really remarkable. But they rarely distract you from the experience. It does include a unique color palette and makes heavy use of black and gold. While it can be a little overbearing at times, at least it's unique and not the typical dusty dirty brown that is prevalent in a lot of games.
The other bad thing is that the character animations feel really awkward at times. Especially during long conversations. The characters never seem to stand still, and are always swaying, or jittering, or making weird hand motions. I think they could have pulled back on how animated characters were and it would have done wonders with how believable they would have been.
What I did enjoy about the graphics were the attention to detail. There are a lot of little objects scattered here and there that make the environments feel authentic. You'll most likely encounter some post-it notes that will make you laugh. There is some clever graffiti in the city. Little things along those lines make the world feel more alive and occupied, which is definitely an enjoyable feeling.

Value: 5/5
+ The game took me about 26 hours to play through. And while I thought that I took my time and explored a lot, it turns out that I still missed a handful of side quests. So if you really take the time and don't leave an area until you are thoroughly complete with it, you can definitely put more hours into this game.
But the other thing is that this game has great replay value and is pretty much begging that you try it again in a different way. I definitely want to go through again and this time play really stealthy, not killing anyone, and not triggering any alarms. You may see the same environments but suddenly that wall where you shot from the first time is now just a stepping stone as you sneak through a warehouse. Your choice in augmentations will really determine how you experience the game, so playing again with different ones should be interesting.

This is definitely a game that I was comfortable buying on day one. It has a lot of great stuff in it and the entire presentation as a whole was outstanding. If you were waiting for a proper Deus Ex sequel then this game really comes close to attaining what the original set out to do. I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is interested.