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After being burned by the sexed-up sequel to Deus Ex, one of the greatest games in history, I was skeptical about the much-hyped prequel—but this game really hooked me; quite subversively, in that before anything else I found myself actually caring about my character, Adam Jensen, and found it easy to relate to him and his situation. The way his past seems to be mirrored in the situations he’s put into from the start really defines him and the other characters, which grounded the tech-infused world into something more human. Which, in turn helped me digest the plot: faceless, (unbelievably) evil corporate entities and the people running them have attacked and stolen highly valuable research of a rival corporation—Sarif industries, where Adam Jensen works. I guess they wanted the global nanotech augmentation market to be sans-Sarif…
This game borrows heavily from Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell: Conviction, L.A. Noire, and of course Deus Ex, but it manages to form its own distinct style. The sneaking is the best part of the game, and the expansive level designs are designed for those most eager to do so and explore—in fact you’re rewarded for it! And then there’s the hacking: I’ve never had this much fun with one of these minigames! It actually seems like you are doing something useful, and perhaps even learning a thing or two along the way about how internal security systems function. Which is how I felt about the persuasion conversations, too. Once you get the social augment, some helpful UI overlays display interesting information about the character’s behavior, types, and how certain types generally respond to your given reactions. All of this combined makes for a very rich story development and fun, fluid gameplay.
And then there are the boss fights. There are four of them, and unlike in the original game, you cannot avoid them. These fights contrast so heavily with every other part of this game that I couldn’t help but wonder when they were implemented and who on Earth thought they would be fun. Your augments are basically useless, since you are trapped in a small room for every one of them, and most of my augs were to help me be sneaky—which is the main function of the game. And alright, I can handle a boss being more difficult to kill than other, regular guards, but come on… I can’t knock them out, I can’t take them down with one, two or three headshots, I can’t stay hidden… and they all have infinite grenades. These situations basically force the player to do the run-and-gun playthrough, and it is not fun. Have I said that enough? After two of these boss fights, they started to take me out of the universe and made me more of a critic. I’m a fan of convoluted plots when they are done right (MGS2) but this one just didn’t make the vast conspiracy behind it all believable enough, when it came to the final boss.
All in all, I had an enjoyable time with the game, being satisfied with three of the four endings. I can’t undersell how fun the majority of the game was—the sneaking mechanics work so fluidly and the huge (and gorgeous—I haven’t even mentioned how beautiful this engine is) and wonderfully interactive gameworld is a joy to explore. And yet, the boss fights remain.
**** 1/2
