I’m a big fan of the first Deus Ex… it was one of the first games to feature “emergent behavior” as part of the design. You had the feeling that all the problems had different solutions, and you could tackle them in a variety of ways, much like pen-and-paper role playing games.
Then I watched “Deus Ex: Invisible War” turn a beloved game into a mockery of his former self, with huge amounts of bugs, silly AI, and a dumbing down of the overall concept (to appeal to more people, I guess).
So I was kind of divided about “Human Revolution”… on one hand, I hoped they would go with the legacy of the first one, on the other hand, I was fearful they would turn it into a cover based shooter like so many others…
Thankfully, they went with the better choice: Human Revolution follows in the footsteps of the first one, which is great news for everyone that loved it!
The game has plenty of faults (which I don’t remember the first having, but that might be the age-goggles speaking):
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Although this game is a prequel to the first Deus Ex, the game feels more modern that the first one, not just because of the graphics, but because of the general tech level of things… The augments seem more primitive than the first Deus Ex, but the overall environment seems more futuristic
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Loading times are huge (on the XBox, at least)… that might be mitigated by installing the game in the HD, but since I have one of those old XBoxes, I don’t have the HD for it and I’m not buying a new one anytime soon… This is very noticeable since you tend to reload a previous savegame to try to get through an area without being detected, which implies some trial-and-error…
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The voice of Adam Jensen is terrible… well, overall the voice acting is terrible… all characters seem to be stuck in just one emotion (whatever that one is) and it doesn’t match up to the graphics – for example, there was one woman crying and very disturbed by something, but her model was smiling! It didn’t seem the least bit distraught, and that kind of spoils the emotional bond… In the case of the main character, he seems to be pissed off at something, even when he’s trying to be empathic or nice to someone… It reminds me of someone that took lessons in the “Christian Bale School for Actors”… It was trying too much to be dark and gritty.
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The game world is too empty… You have great cities, loads of space for wandering, even a kind of sandbox groove to it, but nothing happens there… there’s just some side-quests (that are extremely linked to the game plot anyway)… I’d like to see more stuff happening; sometimes I’d wander around town and think to myself: “I wish there was some “clear the gang activity” quest here.”. I understand that the main character is probably too important for that (it would be kind of silly to have someone as important running errands), but if that’s a problem, maybe they should have built the game the other way around: start with an insignificant character that grows in importance.
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The main character was too dumb… There’s nothing worse than you having connected the dots for ages now and the main character still acts completely oblivious to the situation… Five or six hours into the game, you’d already have a good idea on who the bad guy was, but Adam would happily run errands for him anyway…
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Story was too convoluted… I know the idea is to build a good “conspiracy theory”, but it reaches a point where you can think of at least 10 different ways the “bad guys” could win without getting so complicated at it… Most of the game just seems like a prelude to the inevitable (and totally predictable) backstabbing…
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Worse of the worse: the boss fights were stupid… This is a game mainly aimed at stealth (at least for me), but the only way to defeat the bosses was by shooting… no smart thinking, no stealth, not intelligent use of the environment… Nope, plain old “shoot-the-bastard-until-he-dies”… This is particularly nasty if you (like me) haven’t invested in combat skills, preferring to spend your upgrades in hacking and stealth. This is a stupid design decision; it breaks the entire core of the game and just frustrates the player – it’s not a challenge if the game is actually cheating by design!
But… even with all these faults, it is a great game… It took me about 16-18 hours to finish (which is good value for money in this day and age of 8 hour games), without me ever thinking “Will this never end?!”… Good area design, with plenty of options and choices to go around, depending on how you like to play (could have some more stuff for the hacker-ish)
If I notice all those problems in the game is because I feel the game could have been much more, but what it is is enough… Hopefully this will not be the end of the saga, and I wish in the future someone does a kind of cross between Deus Ex and the sandboxing of GTA (that would be totally sweet!).
Special mention to the music of the game… although it’s a complete rip-off of Blade Runner’s OST, it’s very good at establishing the mood…
After playing this one, I just feel like making a cyberpunk game and listen to some Billy Idol’s “Cyberpunk” album, while reading some William Gibson… 
Overall, it’s a 9/10 game, for those that like scores!