Deus Ex: Human Revolution Previews

Yet another small pile of hands-on previews for Deus Ex: Human Revolution are online and ready for your perusal, including this brief article on IGN:

About six to 10 hours into the game, you’ll have filled out enough of your skill tree to see a significant impact on gameplay. Taking the stealth approach can be an effective way to navigate dangerous areas, but costly. Remaining cloaked consumes Jensen’s energy, which doesn’t automatically recharge to full capacity, meaning the cloak ability can’t be spammed. Instead, it’ll need to be mixed in with careful movement around stages swarming with enemies. You’ll need to keep an eye on the directions enemies are facing as they patrol, as their ability to detect your presence is based on line of sight and sound.

Keeping quiet gets easier with the right augmentations. Purchasing certain upgrades for your legs allows you to not only jump higher but also to do so without making any noise. This can be especially effective to hop out of a high-walled courtyard without being seen. My concern about avoiding conflict would be that I’d miss out on valuable equipment and opportunities for upgrade points that could have been collected if I’d used bullets to bypass enemies. Eidos Montreal assures me all paths through the game will be appropriately rewarded, which I hope is true. I’ve seen evidence that discovering alternate pathways through buildings, like crawling through ventilation shafts instead of walking through the front door, leads to rewards, so I’d tend to believe what’s being said.

Then we move to GameFront for some more:

Through most of the demo, Jensen chooses a non-lethal, stealth approach, although in Deus Ex, the player has full reign to approach every situation however he or she chooses. Unlike other more open, non-linear games like Fallout 3, for example, I’m told Human Revolution’s options for approaching a situation are more about access players can sneak into off-limits areas and hack their way through doors, as long as they aren’t seen. That sort of world gives the player a lot of options but it also requires strategy and tactics. The more you do, the more rewards you receive for Jensen, like the ability to add further augmentations to his body and make him stronger, or items to use to upgrade weapons.

As Jensen sneaks into the warehouse by carefully combining an aug that allows him to use active camouflage and basically become invisible for a short period, and the game’s cover system. Staying behind cover (which switches the player out of the default first-person view mode into a third-person camera setup) and breaking lines of sight is key to staying hidden when using stealth; Jensen waits for enemies to turn their backs as he moves around the outside of the compound, diving from spot to spot and turning invisible when the gaps are too big between trucks and concrete walls. He also uses an aug called (mark and track) that allows him to paint different enemies with a tracking marker, which he can see on his heads-up display through walls, and which displays the enemy’s distance from Jensen.

Joystiq takes us a bit further:

Surveying the room, Jensen spies a group of soldiers patrolling the perimeter around the mech, itself also in patrol mode. High above on a catwalk, there are two soldiers looking down at the room below — the perfect place to initiate the attack. Sneaking upstairs is a snap, thanks to the camouflage augmentation, and once up top Jensen opens fire on the two and sets his sights on the enemies below.

Thankfully, the mech itself can’t fit up a flight of stairs, nor can it seem to target Jensen for the time being. Using a new mod (one very similar to a Chimera weapon in the Resistance series, the Bullseye), Jensen makes quick work of the infantry below. When targeting via the scope, Jensen can use this mod to highlight enemies, marking them for bullets to home in on. He can then shoot away from the target and watch the bullet trajectory change in real time, homing in on their target. It’s useful in a variety of situations: from behind cover; when dealing with mobile targets; and simply when Jensen’s aim isn’t the best.

And then G4 tidies things up:

At the end of the level, after taking out countless guards and maneuvering our way through the factory, we encountered a boss: a huge mech that fired rockets out of its cannon-like arms flanked by a bunch of guards. Lucky for us, we had a rocket launcher too. After ducking behind convenient cover and waiting for the opportune moments when the boss was recharging his rockets, we got a few choice shots off ourselves and were able to take him and his guards out with relative ease.

This brought our demo to an end, and as the developer suggested, this was just one way that we could have defeated this boss. And that pretty much sums up our experience with Human Revolution. It’s a game that’s meant to be played adaptively and differently by everyone. Players won’t be able to achieve all of the augment and weapon upgrades or achievements through only one playthrough. You’ll have to try different tactics and conversation scenarios to unlock all the game has to offer.