Community Spotlight Dues Ex: Human Revloution PS3 Review

What's up nerds? Behold, our first community spotlight is here for your reading pleasure. What is the community spotlight you ask? Well it's a place to highlight the fantastic listeners and followers of Who Burned My Toast who wish to share their thoughts with the group. If it's interesting, we'll post it up, maybe make fun of you or possibly shower you with praise.

Our first member who stepped up to the plate is Eric Geer. He was gracious enough to send us his review of Dues Ex: Human Revolution for the PS3. We think it's awesome if you want to join in on the blog and take part in the conversation. So if you have something interesting or anything your passionate about, let us know by shooting us an email at whoburnedmytoast@gmail.com.  

Thanks again Eric.

Dues Ex: Human Revolution PS3 Review
Reviewer: EBGeer

“The game is set in 2027, 25 years before the first title, where corporations have extended their influence past the reach of global governments. The game follows Adam Jensen, the security chief for one of the world's most powerful human augmentation corporations, Sarif Industries. After a devastating attack on Sarif's headquarters, Adam is forced to undergo radical surgeries that fuse his body with mechanical augmentations, and he is embroiled in the search for those responsible for the attack.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Human_Revolution)

Disclaimer: As a lazy gamer, I ganked the above abstract from Wikipedia to save both time, and provide a plot description.

Prior to truly stepping into the game you get a taste of what’s going on with some synopsis and background of the story as well as a bit of training to learn out to maneuver your character Adam Jensen. I will first touch upon the things I enjoyed about the game because my negative viewpoint far outweighs the positive.



Have no doubts, there are some good and even great aspects of this game. The story and atmosphere are incredible. When you first enter the world of Deus Ex you want to stay and it really draws you in. The world is beautiful and it has its own character—which is nice for a change since most games have a hard time doing this. The game is fairly open world when you are in what seems like the hub world of Detroit 2027 but when you end up on main missions the gameplay becomes very linear.

It’s obvious when you enter, that choice is going to be a key part of your gaming experience--and it is—most obviously through your actions. The first of these major actions you much choose in one of your first missions is whether you are going to play Stealth or Combat—which has an effect throughout the entire mission and game—But your other choices are going to be through conversation---and this really grabbed hold of me as a very well done aspect of this game. Very reminiscent of Mass Effect or Fallout series’ you generally end up with a Good, Bad, and Ugly response or conversation piece, which I loved. But beware; each of these options will hold you accountable. You will lock up other options if you opt to be a badass straight off the bat. Throughout you go through missions based upon your main plot and side missions based on those people you meet or information you find out from various means (hacking computers, talking to random NPCs, etc.) This is all very interesting and carries you further to your final goal of finding out who is responsible for the attack at Sarif Headquarters.

For each mission you complete and experience you gain you end up getting praxis points, which are points you use to upgrade your character—there are plenty of options though some are useful and others not so useful. These can be upgrade to augment and enhance your mind, skills, and body (Is your body ready?) These points can be found throughout levels, purchase them, or through experience. This is extremely intriguing and would have continued to do so if I made it through the game—though I didn’t and probably never will.

Outside of these good points mentioned above there are some bad things that have to do with both gameplay mechanics and game design.

The first issue I had as this is first and foremost was that as a FPS, the shooting kind of sucks and your character feels far from augmented and is fairly weak from the standpoint of a “hero”, only a few shots and you’re a dead man(wait for the reload..just keep waiting). Also, the POV depending on what you are doing will switch between 1st and 3rd person. While walking around you will be in first person, but if you move in for cover you character will then be moved into 3rd person—which in some ways can be disorienting especially if you are in a firefight and want to get your bearings on your next landing for cover. To complicate this, the control are out of the ordinary/non-traditional FPS controls and because of this are not reactionary—for the first couple hours it’s like a guessing game on what your character will do next because you end up button mashing to find the right one. Though once you get the hang of them they aren’t bad—then your run into the second issue of item grabbing—this isn’t terribly important, but when you come up to the unconventional/unsuspecting boss battles(to be described further) not being able to pick up an item(exploding barrels, fire extinguishers to blow up) it becomes quite frustrating—it could best be described as fickle. In fact, the controls just feel out of date.

The boss battles were the real make or break for me in this game. Throughout most of the game you are sneaking/running/hiding and occasionally shooting when the necessary because your character is a weak PoS—then you get into the boss battles, which then turns the game into a traditional FPS(think Doom/Quake bosses)and (spoilers) the first boss basically continually walks at you with a chain gun and explosives—meanwhile you are weak, and your fickle/limited inventory(which prevent you from carrying to much at once—more often less than you need—though this can be expanded through praxis points) you end up running around in circles or sneaking behind walls while he continually knows where you are and continues to shoot and throw grenades at you. From what I have seen and heard about the other bosses, it only get harder—UNLESS—you search online (google) for what their weaknesses are and pick up those items or make those upgrades prior to reaching the bosses. If you are ill prepared, which likely you will be, you will most likely be in a ride for some trouble—If I had continued on
from where I left off the likelihood is that I would have to restart the game because I failed to pick up the “appropriate” inventory(wait what happened to “choice”?!?!?!)—therefore wasting my life so I could get back to that point with a shit ton of grenades and blow Robocop up.

Continuing along the lines of other game issues/game design choices that I found completely frustrating and NOT fun are the following:

Load times:
For a game that will definitely come down to trial and error the load times(on PS3) are obnoxiously long especially when it may take you 5-10 tries to get past a particularly difficult part.

Inventory/Management thereof: Where’s the ammo? FPS should give you the ability to shoot—I found myself looking for ammo more often than shooting because there wasn’t enough space in my inventory to hold onto a decent store of bullets. Also, managing your items in your inventory is a game in itself—many times I found myself dropping precious guns because I had no ammo and had to pick up other shitty guns because I had ammo—even if it was only 5 bullets.

Hacking: 
This game is hacktastic! And it definitely is not fun—especially when it sets off an alarm. Whether entering doors or computers(which are a great portion of the game) you will find yourself hacking—outside of missions it’s not bad because there aren’t really alarms—in missions well if you mess up—you will be hunted down by the NPCs that seem to know exactly where you were hacking from. Just know you will be hacking and it is not intuitive and it is not fun—from the start it seems to be a guessing game—after you do it a few times it gets better but they get progressively more complex.

Enemy AI:
They seem either too stupid or too smart, meaning they will know exactly where you are even if you disappeared out of sight into a vent. And if you sound an alarm forget fighting because all the enemies in a given location or area entire level will come for you and will know exactly where you are(And remember Adam is a weak PoS). On the flipside they will know where you are and if you wait long enough just suddenly forget about you—everything about you, and you can walk right up behind them and take them out with your augmented blade arms.

This game is old: Lots of things seemed old in this game—whether it was gameplay or mechanics, it just seemed out-of-date (Left a bad taste in my mouth)

Cardboard Boxes: In the future there are only cardboard boxes. Although they do nothing for you and there is a low chance you will find anything underneath or in them, there are cardboard boxes fucking EVERYWHERE!!!

Good:

• The atmosphere, story, moral choice and conversation hold a dear place in my heart because it was the only thing keeping me going.
• Augmentable body and skills.

Bad:

• Controls
• Load times
• Inventory or lack thereof
• 1st/3rd Person perspective switch
• Hacking
• Old game mechanics/game design
• Enemy AI

Ugly:

• Boss Battles
• Hacking
• Cardboard boxes
• Adam Jensen’s voice