GB Feature: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director’s Cut Review

We penned reviews of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and The Missing Link when the respective titles were released back in 2011, so it only seems fitting to give the recently released Director’s Cut its own critique two years later. A sampling:

Human Revolution was much-criticized for its boss fights, and rightly so. Contracted out to another studio to save on development time, a lack of communication between teams led to some battles which were stereotypical of big, dumb videogame boss fights. Aside from just being rather bland and poor in quality, what was most damning was that these fights effectively made all your choices in play-style and character building that Deus Ex is known for completely irrelevant, by forcing you to effectively shoot a big hulking super-soldier in the face about two hundred times.

Thankfully, this has been alleviated in the Director’s Cut version of the game. Although the bosses are still something you can’t avoid, now you are no longer forced to go toe-to-toe if you don’t want to. Many of the boss battle arenas have been expanded in size and new options have been added for stealthy and savvy players who like to stick to the shadows. For example, take the early fight against Barret. In the original, you were effectively forced to grab an assault rifle and go to town on him while he yelled obnoxious insults at you; now, you can sneak around the much-expanded arena and hack security cameras and turrets to fight him indirectly.