Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

While just about everything in deus ex: human revolution is everything I love(cyberpunk,renaissance, good music, intelligent premise.)I felt a sense of lacking in some areas in the game that keep it from being the masterpiece it could have been. There's not much to say about the gameplay, it's damn good, the stealth in particular, this is probably THE hardest stealth game I've ever played, even though it's not actually a stealth game. The bosses are bizarrely out of place, particularly if you're stealthy like me and leveling up is frustratingly slow. Other than that I have no real complaints. The visuals are a stand out feature for both good and bad reasons, the art design is absolutely amazing, the cross between cyberpunk and renaissance fashion is a sight to behold and the environments are extremely detailed and the coloured lighting is a welcome change to the greys and browns of modern gaming. the graphics used to convey this art direction are just not all that good. it was almost like they were trying to make a cell-shaded game but stopped a quarter of the way through so it has this weird, unappealing blocky look that just doesn't do the art justice. a better solution would have been to try and create half detailed, half cell shaded graphics like the ones in the under rated prince of persia reboot. The story, while sound in it's foundation, is just a horrid mess. The set up is great and the concepts they had in place were fantastic but the execution was just awful. The reasons why are as such; the writing is just bad, they resort to cliches and offensive stereotypes to simulate characterization, the moment you walk into the china level you'll know what I'm talking about, it doesn't help that the voice acting for the majority of the characters in the game are also pretty freaking bad, although there were a few that were mildly convincing mostly the voice of adam jensen(the protagonist). The plot just doesn't know how to pace it's self, unlike the gameplay, it just doesn't give you any time to settle into it's world. it meanders around from shocking reveal to shocking reveal without any sort of build up so it often feels like the twists just kind of pop up out of left-field. That added with the complete lack of character development on the part of the support characters it often feels like there isn't really any story happening at all, just a series of twists with no connected purpose. it doesn't even have the decency to explain it's self. now unlike in games like, say, flower, or shadow of the colossus, in which the exposition comes from the imagery, this is meant to be a film noir/detective story, and in that genre, the exposition for the most part comes from the characters, either through narration or dialogue, but, that just doesn't happen. What I did enjoy about the game however, was the world it's self, again, it looks amazing and just walking around the city hubs is incredibly immersive.I literally spent hours just running around the city hubs before I did any missions, though this does lead to another problem, the world just seems to be more well thought out than the characters, I don't remember caring about any of them to be perfectly honest. the sound track on the other hand, is mind-blowingly awesome......I honestly can't think of any other way of describing it, seriously, this is probably the best sci-fi themed soundtrack I've ever heard, it's right up there with daft punk's tron:legacy soundtrack. I do realize it might seem like i'm bashing the game, but I'm really not, I enjoyed it thoroughly and I highly recommend it for it's gameplay and immersive world but ultimately, fans of cyberpunk fiction will be disappointed by the plot.