Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Choose Your Own Gameplay

Do you like those classic “Choose Your Own Adventure” books? Yeah? Well then you’ll probably get a kick out of this new feature on 1UP that presents us with multiple choices as we read through two editors’ accounts of going through Deus Ex: Human Revolution in two very different manners – the stealthy approach and the “shoot people in the face” approach. I’ll take the non-lethal route, please:

The peaceful approach to resolving an armed dispute is always a little risky, of course. So I decided to hedge my bets and use the ranged non-lethal attack: a compact sniper rifle with a respectable zoom function and a nearly silent report when fired. With only half a dozen rounds, I knew I’d have to make my shots count, but in a standoff like this there’s no room for sloppy shooting in any case.

I decided to complement my weapon selection by going the stealth route with my personal augmentations. No sense in having all that sweet gear if the enemy could spot me and put a bullet between my eyes before I could even take aim, right?

My stealth cloak option rendered me invisible, and my sonic dampers muffled my footsteps. The net result was that I made myself into a very quiet, very deadly secret agent. Unfortunately, that sort of stealth comes at a price: namely, it’s murder on my gear’s batteries. So, I augmented my energy reserves with an extra notch of battery capacity… which, it turned out, was kind of pointless. My built-in battery automatically recharges over time, but the reserve capacity has to be refilled with energy pick-ups… pick-ups that proved to be maddeningly elusive on-site. I’d have been much better advised to have invested in a faster recharge cycle for the battery. Hindsight, man. She’s a bitch.