Is Deus Ex: Human Revolution on your new games radar yet? If it isn’t, then let me do you a favor and give you a heads up about it.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a first person role playing game being developed by Eidos Montreal for the Xbox 360, PC, and Playstation 3. Human Revolution is a prequel to the popular PC game Deus Ex and the less popular Deus Ex: Invisible War. Set in a cyberpunk future and featuring a globe hopping campaign, Deus Ex looks to be what Alpha Protocol should have been. Like Alpha Protocol this game promises options. Specifically, Deus Ex is promising that any Mahatma Gandhis out there can get through the game with a minimum of violence using stealth, social skills, and hacking.
Beyond all the boring talking, sneaking, and keyboard twiddling Deus Ex is a first person shooter. It is promising a wide range of weapons and weapon upgrades. Of course, upgrading weapons is nothing new but it looks like Eidos is making an effort to make the upgrades more interesting than hum drum damage and accuracy boosts. The only upgrade that has been specifically mentioned is an upgrade that transforms a boring dumb fire rocket launcher into a heat seeking missile firing murder machine. But the weapons are not the biggest draw for Deus Ex. If you just want a bunch of weapons and AI targets the newest Call of Honor Zone game will scratch that itch. The story Deus Ex promises to tell is the reason to check it out.
The story is promising to be a complex epic that involves evil mega corporations, conspiracies, and everything else you would expect from a cyberpunk world. It centers around Alex Jensen, Mr. Too Sexy For His Shirt up there, and the nifty new mechanical arms he is kitted out with after an epic beat down. Big Sexy’s involuntary upgrade to stainless steel dick beaters adds a side story that focuses on trans humanist ideals and ethics. This plays out in a sepia toned, near future dystopia in which Jensen is some kind of cross between Solid Snake and Dick Tracy that works for a, presumably evil, mega corporation that makes vibrating prosthetic hands for the ladies. Well, presumably they make more than prosthetics with naughty features but a cyberpunk conspiracy story about the near future porn industry is something that I find oddly appealing.
Time to wrap this up before I get into theories about how porn will drive the cyberpunk technology of tomorrow. Deus Ex: Human revolution looks like a promising first person shooter that will mix stealth, action, and smooth talking into an epic story that actually attempts to tackle trans humanist issues and ethics. It does not have a release date beyond some time in 2011 but the news makes it sound like it will be out this summer. If it waits too long to be released it will be up against the powerhouse noob stompin’ duo of Gears of War 3 and Mass Effect 3 that is slated to come out just in time for Christmas.
