Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Although it's a prequel to the game that's often held up as the quintessential immersive sim, Human Revolution is in fact an entirely different beast. Sure, it looks like a Deus Ex game, but when I peer deeply into its mechanics, I see two major influences, neither of which was produced by Ion Storm.

Those influences are none other than Metal Gear Solid and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

The radar, the tranquilizer rifle, the shifts between first- and third-person POV ... maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like these devs wanted to emulate Kojima. And it's not just Metal Gear -- they were clearly fans of Japanese games in general. These are guys who grew up playing Final Fantasy VII [ファイナルファンタジーVII] and they aren't shy about it.

The quest design, on the other hand, follows more of a Western approach. Quests are doled out just as they would be in a Bethesda game, with clear goals recorded in a journal and juicy rewards upon completion. While the side quests take a back seat later in the game, the early areas of Detroit and Hengsha play as like miniature open-world RPGs.

MGS gameplay plus Western RPG elements, then? It's a perfect combination, and for the most part Human Revolution makes good use of it. Outside of the boss battles, which are universally lame, the game plays smoothly and maintaining stealth is fun. I think I had more fun with the stealth here than I did in any of Arkane's games, if I'm being honest.

What drags the game down, then, is the big-picture stuff. The story makes sense, but there are too many characters who each get too little screentime, and because of this nothing resonates like it should. You can tell the developers wanted to make this game absolutely epic -- a globe-trotting Oblivion, if you will -- but ultimately they ran out of time. The end product is still great but it feels oddly incomplete. Hengsha really suffers in this regard -- it's essentially a copy/paste dystopia of ma-and-pop convenience stores and butcher stalls with a few key locations added for good measure.

Before I sign off, I just want to say that I do really admire the game's visual design. Like I said in my review of Bulletstorm, games from this era feel huge in a way that modern games often don't. It turns out massive dams and endlessly sprawling cities are more impressive when you can only gaze at them from afar -- once you can visit and explore them, the spell is broken.