Deus Ex: Human Revolution

It also means it's that much more affecting when, five minutes later, things go wrong. The bright, clean and optimistic lab? Doesn't end well. Jensen's the Johnny on the spot, sent back downstairs by a shocked Sarif to deal with this brutal incursion. He's given a gun, and it's not long before he's crawling through a vent: two of Deus Ex's mainstays, present and correct.

Outside, beyond huge glass windows, the city looms, vast and golden. Inside Sarif Industries, it's cramped, gloomy and murderous. Jensen is easily felled by the roaming goons, which means stealth is a necessity for now.

With a button press, he can dart from cover to cover: timing his moment to match where the mercs are looking, and whether they're close enough to hear. It's a pleasingly organic system, based around common sense rather than UI elements. Much more is yet to be seen - and sadly the villainous Doctor Embargo prevents me from telling you exactly what until 24th February - but already my fears that this new-generation Deus Ex would forgo thoughtful tactics and quasi-pacifistic paths in favour of sustained superheroic gunplay are assuaged.

I can't blast through this. Even in the tutorial, timing and strategy seems vital. These renta-mercs are tricky enough on their own, so who knows how Jensen will possibly cope against the faintly ridiculous cyber-mohawk lady who briefly appears on the other side of a reinforced window. She's an alarmingly skinny creature of steel, flesh and evident violence, who mercifully elects to vanish into thin air in front of his startled eyes.

Not that Jensen's reprieve lasts long. A few corners later, a scowling hulk of man catches him with a teeth-rattling sucker punch. This isn't some bullyboy beating, though. This has done damage. As the shaven-headed brute leans in, eerily neat scars on his face provide telltale signs of augmentation. Ah. No wonder. But who does he work for? What does he want with Jensen?

Apparently, to kill him. That's when the slippery Dr Megan Reed shows up again, silently returning from wherever she ran to when this emergency broke out to gamely bash this hulk over the back of the head with a nearby piece of furniture. It doesn't achieve much. As Jensen slumps to the ground, Megan is overwhelmed by another clutch of mercs. There's a lot of screaming. Is it Megan? Is it Jensen? Both, maybe.

Fade to black.

Fade to... oh God. Noises of metal and flesh. Brief images of metal and flesh. Metal cleaving flesh. Deus Ex: Human Revolution has at least one award in the bank: Most Gruesome Credits Sequence of 2011. Jensen is alive, but only just - and that means he's going under someone's techo-augmentation knife. "Where's that cyber-arm prosthesis?" panics one disembodied voice. "His body can't take any more!" worries another. "Miraculous..." mutters someone else.

"I love you," whispers another, familiar voice. Megan Reed. Is she alive too, or are these ghostly memories of Jensen's time with her? "Sorry." There is strength and believability here, despite Jensen himself having seemed something of a growly cipher thus far. This sort of emotional punch is unfamiliar in most games, let alone Deus Ex's cyberpunk posturing and philosophising.

Deus Ex achieved and innovated many things, but one thing it didn't manage to be was a personal tale. Perhaps, this time, it will be. Scenes that appear to be part CGI and part live action alternate between images of the two of them together and images of Jensen's brutalised flesh and vital organs, ripped apart and replaced with... what?

Fade to black. Goddamn that evil Dr Embargo. Much, much more on the 24th, promise.