Deus Ex: Human Revolution (part 1)

Some general impressions from the first few hours of the game with possible, but very minor, spoilers.


First off, some technical dislikes:

I really don't like having to use Steam. Sure, it gives a means of copy protection, but I figure there are people out there who crack such measures whatever they are. And there are benefits, such as "invisible" patches and easy access to DLC. But online connections are not quite as ubiquitous and fast as developers/publishers are assuming these days. I have local friends who don't have internet connections at home still, and not only can I not lend such games (which might be tricky with Steam accounts anyway), but they can't play their own.

Right off the bat, I noticed two issues with the game. Loading times were long (but not as frequent as DX: Invisible War) - often over a minute - and the mouse sensitivity felt odd. The mouse issue is somewhat hard to quantify but it felt overly sensitive in first person view and sluggish in menus. A little research led to the recommendation to turn off the V-sync, but... I understand they pushed a patch out for both issues yesterday, so I'm not actually sure which remedy helped.
Either way, the mouse feels more consistent and level loading dropped for me down to the ballpark of 10 seconds. So I consider these problems pretty well resolved.

What I don't like about the game itself:

It's unforgiving and often not helpful.
In the prologue, I opened a door and didn't immediately dive for cover. I took 2-3 seconds, perhaps, of automatic fire and died.
During the first mission, I was exploring around a bit, missed a ladder (the first one there) and died from the fall.
After reloading, I progressed maybe 30 feet, rounded a corner, and came face-to-face with the first enemy of the zone. After initial surprise, I took him down, but ended up in a losing firefight with at least three others who saw me and came running.
While there are video tutorials of several important things early on, nothing seems to have told me what to do about mines. So far, I've detonated them from far enough away to avoid major damage, but there's probably a way to disable them.
I was trying to get into a building and didn't yet have the hacking augmentation high enough to hack the front gate. So, looking for alternatives, I found a ramp from a neighboring building across an alley. "Hmm. Can I make that jump?" I wondered, having not had much reason to try to jump anything in the game thusfar. Answer: No. Falling death. Reload...
The first boss fight is the culmination of this. If you've spent the game up to that point running around in gunfights, maybe it's not so bad. Since I've been stealthing around, slowly isolating and picking off targets, getting stuck in a room with limited speed against a heavily-armored guy who sprays bullets (or throws grenades) while walking straight up to and around any cover you're using was a brutal change. Seriously, nothing in the game up to that point prepared me for that fight. I eventually cleared it with the difficulty turned down to low and even then it was a clumsy, awkward affair.

Good points:

The atmosphere is sound. Visuals and audio paint a good, coherent picture of a cyberpunk future so far. People have commented on the gold/monotone look of everything, but the colors haven't bothered me a bit. People are not photo-realistic, generally speaking, but they're consistent.

Just as in Deus Ex, you get choices. And just as in that game, they often converge at points. But I've fought my way into a couple places only to then find a way I could have snuck in. And there are often two or three routes - one for fighting and a couple more stealthy ways which might differ in requiring hacking versus augmented strength to move objects or ways to nullify electrical fields or toxins.
In conversations, you usually have three ways to respond and they're not "good, neutral, and evil." I wish I could say how much they actually affect things down the line, but I liked the feel of it the first time Jensen was asked how he was handling his return to work. Is your character bitter about being augmented, trying to take it in stride, or actually enjoying his new abilities? That seems to be up to the player.

Hacking is... good? Seriously, it seems there have been many, many versions of "hacking" minigames over the years, and this is the best I can think of. The bizarre thing is it looks so simple and reminds me of the hacking systems in cyberpunk RPGs. You have nodes, some of which have additional functions. You have to get from the starting point to the ending point. Each function you do has a chance (based on difficulty and augs) of triggering a security response that will try to trace back from its starting point to yours and kick you off. It's relatively quick with some dependence on both user reflexes/thinking and character traits.
Warning: The game does not freeze time while you're hacking. You can potentially be spotted and/or shot at.

Vendors are a nice change. In the original DX, you occasionally found someone selling up to three items for credits. But now... you can actually sell stuff! It's a little silly maybe, but I relish that ability, sometimes going to far as to ferry shotguns halfway across the Detroit zone to sell. Buying, on the other hand, is pretty limited. I have found myself often low on tranquilizer darts (just can't have enough of the things), but the big thing to be able to buy are praxis kits for additional augmentation points.

I'm hesitant to comment too much on the story thusfar. There's obviously a lot going on that hasn't been revealed so far, but I will say it's good enough to have me interested and wanting to see more.

Verdict so far: Good. Better than Invisible War and possibly living up to the original.