People have been singing the praises of of Eidos Montreal’s latest release, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and there have been legions upon legions of fanboys gushing and squealing their delight until the point of mass hysteria and the caniptions. There is much to be said for the game indeed both gameplay wise and graphically; however what really impressed me was the sheer dedication that the Eidos Montreal team had to the original installment’s legacy.

Let’s rewind things a little. I remember playing the first Deus Ex a little after everyone else; I was around 14 and I had the PS2 port. It is a fine enough port in it’s own right, though some will no doubt scream heathen and claim that the true experience is the original PC version. However to me I think this matters little as the PS2 port follows the PC version perfectly and has little alterations, except in means of interface.

I remember being enraptured with the vivid Cyberpunk universe that Deus Ex created; a world where, to paraphrase Human Revolution, it wasn’t the end of the world, but you could see it from there.

The developers had taken their plot from all the best conspiracies, albeit with a pinch of salt. The world is decaying in the 2050s, people are dying by the score of the Grey Death, which (SPOILERS) turns out to be a laboratory virus used to trim down the world populationby a shadowy cabal who run the earth. Your character JC is part of the UN’s anti terrorist task force, itself the muscle unit of this cabal.

It didn’t just deal with men in the shadows out to get you and find what sort of brand of glue you like the best though. The game also brought up questions of the advance of technology, with people ‘augmenting’ themselves with nanotechnology and also the concept of the ‘singularity’ – an AI so intelligent it would outstrip its own creators in intelligence. In the end, in the bowls of Area 51 (with those horrid Grey aliens I’m still scared of which try to probe you) you are given three choices; do you let humanity free of its shackles, enslave them, or transcend beyond your human form?

Gameplay wise, I was a noob when this first came out and I would just shoot at everything in sight like an ADD kid doing paintball. Had no patience for the stealth approach, but it was perfectly acceptable to complete the game in such a way, and deserves praise for allowing you to do so. The graphics have not aged well, though. People look hopelessly robotic. And the less said of the voice acting the better. Anyone who remembers the accents of chinese and french characters in the first game, knows exactly of the sheer audio purgatory of which I am talking about. This doesn’t detract from the fact that Deus Ex was and remains one of the best PC ever released.

Now onto the new game. (I’ll skip Invisible War; never played it, by all accounts a let down and it lost the cyberpunk edge that the original had)  Suffice to say, this prequel lives up to it’s predecessors. In fact, it homages them. It’s so amazing as it was made by an entirely different team of people, and even more so since Eidos is now owned by Square Enix, who are more famous for making rigid japanese RPGs. There is not a hinting of dumbing down for the console audience whatsoever; the plot is a puzzle that takes a long time to decipher, and there is plenty of background reading in game, if you’re that way inclined.

The plot is now in 2027, 25 years or so before the first Deus Ex, where mechanical augmentations are the rage and there are forces out to put an end to it if possible.  It’s a prequel, so there isn’t just nods from to the original – it ties perfectly to it, especially with a great post credits scene of the big bad from the first game. The main character, Adam Jensen is a brilliantly conflicted hero. The developers clearly loved their material and resisted the urge to bastardise it.

The genius of Human Revolution is in it’s gameplay. The closest thing I can liken it too is Star Wars. Ok, not in setting and plot, but in creation – Star Wars took so many influences (Samurai movies, Flash Gordon, Westerns, Fantasy) jumbled them all up, and added a new twist on it that resonated with people. HR does the same thing with it’s gameplay. It can be played as an FPS. Or you could go for a Gears of War style third person cover combat system. Or you can sneak about like Solid Snake. The Item screen is even like Resident Evil!

Human Revolution is a tour de force, and is so close to the original games that it bodes well for Thief 4. You’re missing out if you don’t have it.