Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Ten hours played. Your questions answered.
"How often does the sneaky option equate to crawling through air-vents?" - Marmaduke
Eat your heart out, Arkham Asylum. Deus Ex: Human Revolution has an almost obscene number of vents – possibly the most since days of the original Deus Ex and Half-Life.
Detroit's police station has them running behind offices and between floors. It really is quite a delight to sneak out of one, stab a tireless detective through the torso multiple times and return to the timeless safety of the ventilation system.
Vents are vital for sneaksome types, then, but it's a system pretty much directly imported from the original game. An early mission sees you infiltrating a factory over-run by an anti-augmentation terror group to rescue essential research (and rescue some hostages if you're an airy-fairy type). Vents, some hidden, will lead you to most points of interest.
But so will beams up in the Gods you can sneak over and snipe from and various seemingly inaccessible walkways. Every building has a multitude of thoroughfares and entry points, so it constantly feels like you're making up your own path through the map.
"Can we have a bit more info on the non-stealth options?" - fragglerocks
Full frontal assaults are fun but tactically unsound. No matter how you're building your character you'll be encouraged to at least begin stealthily, because ammo is almost universally thin on the ground.
Ultimately though, especially if you're not spending your Praxis points on stealth and hacking augs, the nano-s*** will hit the cyberpunk fan. Even on the medium difficulty, this is a tricky game – so you'll likely be mixing up your play-style to avoid needless bullet exchanges.
Enemy AI seems fine but just stupid enough to corral into traps – much as, perhaps, it was in the original Deus Ex. Carry an explosive barrel into an enemy-packed warehouse and cause a ruckus, for example, and all the bad guys in the vicinity will come running. This means one bullet explosively added to the room will take out a bunch of your foes and provide an instant hit of precious ammo to stock up on.
During the opening hours, at least, Jensen truly is the least equipped hero of recent years. He's often put in situations where he must incapacitate more men than he has bullets.
This is brilliant. It means you plan your assaults and grenade-chucks according to their patrol patterns, you value your arsenal and you really value your head shots. The instant hit take-downs are actually perfectly pitched – and something that you use with true tactical intent rather than for spinny slo-mo eye-candy violence.
"Is hacking actually any fun?" - Maler23
Yes. Strongly based on Introversion's excellent Uplink, Deus Ex's hacking is far and away the best electronic access mini-game yet devised (or borrowed).
In its simplest form you must choose a sequence of nodes to take over to reach a distant goal while, once alerted, a red line of fear pulses through the system looking for your point of incursion.
Watching your progress while the countdown timer speeds downwards to your potential doom is genuinely nerve-shredding. The action starts off easy so as not to bemuse, but as it develops it knocks the likes of Mass Effect 2's text recognition game and BioShock's PipeMania offshoot into a cocked mechanical hat. It perhaps even beats magisterial Sandra Bullock thriller 'The Net' for sheer electronics-based tension.
"Is there anyone as cool and awesome as Walton Simons?" - charming fox
Unlike so many other games, Human Revolution features a cast which deliberately spans nations, sexes and ages. Everyone looks and sounds individual, although quite whether they're both as 'cool' and 'awesome' as the game's original characters I can't firmly underline after only a day of play.
What I will say, however, is that if you are at all familiar with the Deus Ex universe, within this prequel you will spot a multitude of nods to the game's intricacies (the toilets, 0451) and its most prominent people (no spoilers).
So no, there isn't anyone as cool as Walton Simons just yet. But there's no reason why you might not meet a younger version of the man himself. Or at least rummage through his drawers and steal a candy bar.
"Do you not think that your pilot Faridah Malik is the spitting image of Jolene Blalock, who played the sexy Vulcan in the sadly shortlived Enterprise? Who is lovely and has a nice face?" - Batsphinx
I actually made this last question up myself. But yes, Faridah looks just like Jolene Blalock out of the sadly shortlived Enterprise. On top of the many other reasons expressed above (tramp murder, vents etc.), this is the primary reason Deus Ex: Human Revolution looks set to sit alongside Portal 2 as one of the gaming events of the year.