Let me presage the title by saying it is the best Sci-Fi themed shooter I’ve played in the past decade. Were there better shooters?…a few. Better Sci-Fi games?….perhaps but a better combination of running and gunning combined with cinematic big ideas and thought provoking futurism not really. It turns out Human Revolution is an almost perfect blend of a great sci-fi story, a great game, and an interesting World.
Human Revolution features a complex story centered on Adam Jensen a security agent working for Sarif industries a company which specializes in human augmentation. During your very first mission the home industry is raided leading to the abduction of Adam’s girlfriend and causing him to undergo dramatic augmentation surgery. What follows is a narrative that borrows elements from detective fiction, cyberpunk literature, and noir, and involves a globe spanning effort to find out who was behind the raid on Sarif and what their end goals were. This will require you to gun it out with an assortment of augmented super-soldiers, armored mechs, turrets, ninjas, and typical bad guys. Additionally you will interrogate rogue AI’s, hack networks, stock up on grenades, and stay caught up on the latest news.
Still, playing Deus Ex with it’s Italian Renaissance inspired art design and it’s allusions to Greek mythology and the Illuminati is less about the one man army feel, or even being super stealthy and more about the hurdling of potential. By the end your character will likely be so strong and well stocked every fight will be a breeze. This won’t make the scenery and locales any less interesting or immersive though, nor the plot twists any more unforeseen as you get nearer to the answers and learn to suspect betrayal even from those closest to you.
I’m gonna go ahead and add that I found all three endings genuinely epic and interesting.