Deus Ex: Human Revolution (video game)

Platform: Playstation 3
Developer: Eidos Montreal
Genre: Action, Role-Playing, First Person Shooter, Stealth
Release Date: August 23rd, 2011

I'm often surprised at how little cyberpunk is used in video games. With current struggles and the power corporations wield in current US politics, the genre is more relevant than ever. Yet somehow it remains something of a niche genre. Sure, you can name some really good ones - including this games forebearer - but how many big budget games focus on it, or even partially utilize it*?

Here comes Deus Ex: Human Revolution to help fill the gap. It has one hell of a legacy to live up to. Does it?

You are Adam Jensen, chief of security for a top biotech firm. You have a... complicated relationship with your ex, who got you the job, and are set to escort her to Washington to reveal her revolutionary findings that could change everything in the field of human augmentation. That's when everything goes to hell. The building is attacked and after fighting valiantly, you end up mutilated. You may as well change your status from "it's complicated" as well, since she apparently died in the attack despite your best efforts.

Six months later, you return to work, newly augmented and struggling to understand what happened and why. Your quest to find the truth will bring you neck deep into a conspiracy that spans the globe. Welcome to 2027 Detroit. It's only going to get worse from here.

If you're familiar with the original Deus Ex, you can already tell this one is a prequel. We're twenty five years into that games past, on the cusp of a technological revolution. At first glance, that sounds like a bad idea, but the change in time period allows the game to carve out a look and identity of it's own. It's a different period, with problems both new and as old as time.

It allows the developers to explore what it might look like to live in a time period where such things might be a reality. It starts to resemble the racial issues we as a species have always struggled with; the fear of the unknown and those different from ourselves. The politics, the discussions, all of it feels realistic, as though it were a natural progression from the conflicts of today. E-Books scattered around the maps also help to add detail. The effect is a world that feels as though it's fully realized and lived-in.

Sound is a bit more mixed a bag. Not so much the soundtrack, mind you - which is excellent - but the voice acting. It can and will range from very good to just okay. Since he's the protagonist, Adam Jensens voice acting sticks out the most; there are some great moments of subtle emotion in the voice - an argument early in the game where he slowly loses his cool, depending on which responses you go with, is a nice example - but other times monotone is the default. Sadly, the age old video game problem of "characters with accents they should not have" is also present.

Gameplay is always important and Human Revolution hasn't strayed too far from its predecessor. Choice is again the word of the day, with your decisions on how to proceed seeming to change the world around you. At times, this will affect even the most minor of things, such as NPC dialogue; your actions in the first mission, for example, will alter the reaction and dialogue you receive from the SWAT members at the end, as well as the civilians working at Sarif Headquarters. The little touches add to the experience.

That choice also extends to how you deal with enemies. You can play it like John Rambo if you want, shooting up everything in sight, or you could do like Solid Snake and deal with problems silently. That said, it's pretty clear there's a "right" way to play the game; you'll find you gain more experience in the long run through stealth takedowns and bonuses for remaining undetected. Same goes for non-lethal weapons. You can do what you want, but it ends up making a hell of a lot more sense to deal with problems in the most efficient way possible.

There's so much about Human Revolution that I love. But - and you had to know a but was coming - it's not perfect. There are two issues in particular that nag at me and must be addressed.

The first issue is the boss battles. Simply put, they do not play fair with the player. You may recall that Deus Ex allowed you to play a pacifist throughout the entire game, including boss battles. If you didn't want to kill anyone, you weren't forced to. Almost all of Human Revolution is structured the same way; if anything, non-lethal action is practically encouraged as noted earlier.

All except the boss battles. You are left with no non-lethal options here. You must kill the bosses. From a story perspective, it makes sense; the bosses are all members of the team that seemingly killed your kinda-sorta-not-really girlfriend and mutilated you in the opening - the latter of which leaving Jensen with no choice but to be augmented or die - so Jensen has a pretty legit reason to want to shoot them in the face. From a gameplay perspective, it's a nightmare on your first playthrough unless someone warned you it was coming.

If you're anything like me, you realized early that stealth and takedowns are the methods with the most reward. This is even worse if you played Deus Ex and the rest of Human Revolution tricked you into thinking you could do the whole "mercy" thing for the the entirety of this game too. Which means, ten to one, you dumped most of your early praxis points into stealth and hacking upgrades, eschewing the ones pertaining to gunplay. You probably sold any lethal weapons and upgrades you may have picked up as well. Bad move.

The first boss is a wake-up call you just don't see coming. It's likely you have no armor upgrades at that point - if you're playing a proper stealth run you likely figured you wouldn't need it - meaning he'll shred you in seconds. Worse still, he's essentially a walking tank that will no-sell your weapons. Then, the capper; if you had no intention of killing anyone, you probably sold all your lethal weapons for cash and space. The boss room anticipates this possibility and does provide you with weapons, but you're still walking in unprepared.

In this situation, abuse of the cover system is necessary to get past him. Even that's not a guarantee; he's frequently moving toward you and moving around your cover, because it's not like he needs to duck behind something to avoid gunfire or anything.

The second problem I had pertained to the endings. Put bluntly, they're a complete letdown. You have four options, but no matter which one you choose you get a voiceover narration of Adam musing on what he's done, his choices and whether humanity will move in the right direction. It wraps nothing but the main plot thread. Anything pertaining to Jensen, his friends, unfinished business and where the characters would go from here receives exactly zero closure. While I realize it leaves quite a bit to be dealt with should a sequel be made in this time period - and the fact that it bothers me at all can be seen as a triumph, since it means I care about the characters - it makes for an unsatisfactory conclusion to the twenty to thirty hour game you just finished.

Niether problem is enough to sink it, but they are a pair of black marks on an otherwise great game.

The Score: 8.5 out of 10

It isn't perfect and isn't quite on the level of the original Deus Ex, but Human Revolution is a worthy successor to the franchise. I'm kind of hoping for a sequel set in this time period, but I'll be there for a sequel regardless of when it takes place. Well worth your time and money.

* Final Fantasy VII - one of my favorite RPG's - is guilty of this. The first quarter of the game is heavy on the cyberpunk influence. The dystopic cityscape, the corporation that rules over everything and does what it wants, the conspiracies, the cover-ups for the ill deeds of said corporation; right up until the last few scenes in Midgar, where the game shifts to a bit more typical "save the world" plot, the game is dripping in it. There's still strands of it in the games DNA, but once you leave Midgar in the dust it's mostly abandoned. It's interesting to think about what could have been had the game stuck to it. It likely would have made for a tighter story; as great as Final Fantasy VII is and as much as I love it, the game was all over the map at times.

Mega Man 10 (video game)

Platform: PSN, X-Box Live Arcade, Wiiware
Developer: Inti Creates
Genre: Action, Platformer
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Release Date: March 1, 2010

I think I came down on Mega Man 9 harder than I intended to. It was a very good game, but it was not perfect. I had issues with it, to put it plainly, but I did not hate it.

I still have some of those same reservations - yet again, Mega Man has nothing past the basic controls of Mega Man 2 - but this time the game is just too damn good to care.

Story is simple, as it always is. This time, a virus is going around. The kicker? It only effects robots. It's their version of the flu, basically. Dr. Wily shows up saying none of it is on him - I'd say spoiler alert, but come on, I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I say he's full of shit - and that the crazed robots have taken the device he had used to develop a cure. Mega Man takes Wily at his word - I guess he forgot the last time Wily pulled the "fetch my stolen crap" trick with the Peace Keeping Robot from 3 - and goes to smash some robot heads together.

While the things that annoyed me with 9 carry over, everything else has improved. It's clear Inti Creates took all the lessons they learned from making Mega Man 9 and applied them to 10, because everything is just that much better. Mega Man 10 has what is easily my favorite group of levels since Mega Man 2, with a wonderful amount of variety, great gimmicks, interesting looks and killer design. The music is even better this time around - I thought 9 had a great soundtrack, but I wasn't fond of a couple themes - with an eclectic group of Robot Masters and subsequent power-ups. Some of the power-ups were even worth using outside of the boss battles for me, which is a far rarer occurrence than you'd think*.

Even the endgame is improved. Dr. Wily's Super Death Trap Castle is as frustratingly crazy as ever and the bosses are just as bad. The "Yellow Devil" version of this game is the Block Devil, which is almost fiendish, even once you get the pattern down, since it's made up of the blocks from the floor and wall. Meaning that being knocked off the ledge to your death is a concern. Then, after Wily has thrown everything he can at you and the game seems over, it has one last trick up its sleeve.

There are even some advancements to be found in the gameplay if you're willing to venture outside of Mega Man. Proto Man is available in the stock game - shield and all - and he has the slide move that used to be a staple of Mega Man's moveset. Meanwhile, Bass is available as DLC - complete with his ability to fire in eight directions from Mega Man and Bass - and he can combine with his robodog Treble, an ability that's been unavailable to us since the Rush Adapter in 7.

Oh, speaking of the DLC, I didn't bother with 9, but I got it this time. It was worth the money. Bass is, of course, fun to play as. But also on offer is the "Endless Stage" mode, a marathon session where your only objective is to stay alive for as many screens as you possibly can. Unfortunately, only Mega Man is on offer for this mode, but that does not make it any less addictive. I've dropped cash on worse DLC, for certain.

All told, 10 may just be one of the best entries in the Classic Mega Man series.

The Score: 9 out of 10

Mega Man 10 is pretty close to perfect. Well worth your cash. Tenth time's the charm.

* This might just be me, but for the classic series, I tend to find the different powers impractical for use outside of the designated boss they're strong against. The first a second game had some fairly practical powers, but as the series wore on it seemed like they ran out of interesting things to give you. This is all not to say that 10 doesn't have it's duds; Thunder Wool is completely useless and the Water Shield - which works the same way as the Leaf Shield from 2 - isn't a hell of a lot better.

Mega Man 9 (video game)

Platform: PSN, X-Box Live Arcade, WiiWare
Developer: Inti Create
Genre: Action, Platformer
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Release Date: September 22, 2008

There's been a bit of a "retro" revival lately. Sonic the Hedgehog attempted a middle ground between the modern day and the past with Sonic 4. But before the other blue hero decided to get back to his roots to win back his fans, Mega Man had the same idea. The main difference is that he went all the way, regressing back to his 8-bit heydey for this latest adventure.

Plot was never a focus in the Mega Man games and this one doesn't break the mold. Dr. Wily frames Dr. Light and Mega Man has to smack around some robots to clear his name. As expected, it's not much more than an excuse for our pixelated hero to fight eight more master robots - even including a female for the first time in series history - and traverse Wily's Super Deathtrap Castle to shoot him in the face.

Mega Man 9 is fanservice of the highest order. A lot of time and effort has clearly gone into recreating the classic Mega Man experience, right down to making an intentionally bad box cover* just to complete the illusion. The graphics, the controls, the music, the effects; everything has recieved painstaking attention to detail, to the point where the only evidence that 7 and 8 ever existed is maybe Auto and the item shop. That's the problem.

A lot of people more articulate than I have gone into detail about why nostalgia - and attempting to recreate things based around it - is a doomed effort. The Iceberg Lounge has a pretty good piece about this, so I'll just say "go read what he has to say" and I won't go into too much detail about that particular subject. But that's the gist of what we're looking at here; they've tried so hard to hit those nostalgia centers that they've taken the series ten steps backwards, to the point where the controls have regressed back to what we had in Mega Man 2.

That's not good for a game series and in fact it actually leads to stagnation. Quick, how many of you ever think of 4, 5 and 6 whenever Mega Man is brought up? Exactly. They were pretty good games, overall, but that was the period in which the series had begun to stall. Rather than jump to the Super Nintendo, the franchise stuck with the then-outdated NES and any improvements made were incremental at best.

See, video games have to keep moving and keep improving. Otherwise, they may as well be the equivalent of a mission pack extension of the older games. What would Final Fantasy have looked like if it never progressed past the first game? We'd have lost a lot of things, such as the job class to start. Why has the Katamari series begun to lose some of its cult fanbase? Because the series refuses to move forward in any meaningful way. Say what you want about 7 and 8 - and they had dumb ideas, like the soccer ball mechanic from 8 - but they were attempts to finally move forward instead of lingering in the past.

Which brings me back to Mega Man 9. It's about as perfect a piece of 8-bit gaming as you can find. It's fun, it's challenging and engaging. But it's so deeply rooted in the past that I wonder it maybe they've gone too far. They're shooting for one demographic here - the people who grew up with NES Mega Man games - and in that regard I wonder if they've forgotten other demographics exist. I've heard more than one story of a parent seeing Mega Man 9 as their own personal nirvana while their kid just didn't get what the big deal was.

If the series is to continue past Mega Man 10, I'm hoping they get back to moving forward again. If you must, keep the pixelated graphics. But man, at least evolve the gameplay a bit, even if you just end up bringing things back from the later games in the series.

The Score: 8 out of 10

A well polished game that is arguably too much of a blast to the past. It's a great game, but I can't help but feel like it's a step back for the franchise instead of a step forward. But if old school Mega Man is your thing, have at it. Just don't be too surprised that the game is basically Mega Man 2 with a fresh coat of paint**.

* This is an amusing thing to go ahead and replicate. Sure, everyone remembers the insanely bad cover for the first Mega Man, but that was the only one that was flat out wrong. Mega Man 2's had a lot of inaccuracies, but was far closer. Past that the cover art nailed the look of the characters.

** This is not necessarily a bad thing. Mega Man 2 is easily my favorite in the classic series, maybe even in the entire franchise. I'm not sure I wanted a remix of it, though.

Saints Row the Third: The Trouble With Clones (video game DLC)

Parent Game: Saints Row the Third

With everything Saints Row the Third did right, one of the few things about it that didn't sit well with me is the fact that it offed the best recurring cast member in the first fifteen minutes of the game. Apparently, it didn't sit well with most of the folks at Volition either; it's been said that many of them did not want to kill off Gat at all.

So how do you rectify this? With clones, of course! This is Saints Row the Third we're talking about.

Storywise, it's kind of a fitting coda to the main game. After all, Saints Row the Third kicked off with Johnny going down, so ending on a mission pack that kind of brings him back takes the game full circle. Who knows where the next Saints Row game will go, but it'll be nice to have Johnny Gat - or at least a musclebound clone - along for the ride.

The new weapons are fun to dick around with. I mean, shooting people with a bee gun? Good times. The games third and final mission also gives you superpowers through an irradiated can of Saints Flow. You'll be running through cars, tossing fireballs at helicopters and turning bodies into a spray of blood in one punch.

Unfortunately, it's not all roses. This mission pack costs seven dollars and gives you all of three missions. You'll clear it in under an hour. Seriously bad value for the money. The content we get here is worth three dollars at the most and unless you have the PC version and get the DLC through Steam or something you'll never see them at that price. Add the short length on to the fact that the weapons - including the Saints Flow superpowers - do not carry over to the main game after you're done.

When people gripe about the evils of DLC, this is the kind of thing they're talking about; this would be great if it were something that had been included in the main game, but at seven dollars TTWC is seriously overpriced and - sadly - not worth what they're charging.

The Score: 6 out of 10

Like the main game, it's short and sweet; unlike the main game, it's way too short and not sweet enough. This is the only DLC add on that is an actual addition to the games story, so if you absolutely have to have more Saints Row 3 this is the one to get, but be forewarned that it's over before you know it.

I feel like I should have given it a lower score because of all this, but there's technically nothing wrong with the content itself. It's just kind of a rip off. I settled for the middle ground of a six.

Saints Row: The Third (video game)

Platform: Playstation 3, X-Box 360
Developer: Volition, Inc.
Genre: Action Adventure, Sandbox
ESRB Rating: Mature
Release Date: November 15th, 2011

You are the boss of the Third Street Saints. Once a gang stuggling to gain control of a single city, the Saints have become a powerful multi-media empire. They have it all; comics, TV shows, an upcoming film and even their own crappy energy drink. But all good things come to an end.

On a fairly routine bank robbery, you're ambushed by suspiciously well armed bank tellers. From there, the heist goes bad, the cops show up and everything spirals out of control. You end up captured and threatened by a crime syndicate. Escape comes at the cost of a friends life*. Now you're stranded in a new city.

What the hell, you might as well take over, right?

Prior to this game, I had completely written off the Saints Row games. While I now know they came about by sheer coincidence, at the time the similarities to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - one of my all time favorite games - left me dismissing the franchise as a copycat. My initial assessment wasn't exactly wrong, but Saints Row the Third caught my attention with an intelligent reversal in the dynamic between it and its competition.

I've played Grand Theft Auto since the first one and part of the fun is that as time went on, they ended up throwing any and everything at the wall. The height of that was San Andreas, where you could do almost anything from taking over territory to flying a jetpack straight out of a James Bond flick. Grand Theft Auto IV featured a complete reversal, eschewing the silly or campy in favor of a serious take on an illegal immigrant attempting to make it in America. As a story it was an achievement, but as a game it was nowhere near as fun as any installment of the PS2 trilogy save III.

Saints Row, on the other hand, started as a fairly serious attempt at showing gang warfare. Arguably, they dropped that pretense with II, any remaining attempt to ground Saints Row in realism is out the window here. Grand Theft Auto has shunned its former bombast, leaving an opening Saints Row is now all too happy to fill. This game is over the top in every respect, surpassing even GTA's most outrageous moments in a varied experience that is never once dull.

Seriously, this game starts out with a bank heist turning into a massive shootout, with a helicopter forcibly pulling the safe from the building, while you're still on it. Eventually you are forced to leap out a plane, smash through the windshield of another plane and go out the back before catching a team member - dodging debris all the way down - so you can both parachute to safety. This is the tutorial level. It is not even the craziest thing to happen in this game.

Every time you think it cannot take you by surprise, it will introduce a plot twist or throw in a cameo that can only leave you smiling. Saints Row the Third is not concerned with telling a mature, serious story. Rather, it's content to toss luchadors, cyberpunk hackers, zombies, tigers and hoverbikes at you in a wild attempt to be the coolest game ever. It comes pretty damn close, too.

They even manage to throw something new in the side missions. While I realize that it's not a first for the series, the Insurance Fraud activities are still a pretty unique, fun diversion no other game has attempted. Others will see you driving around with a pissed off tiger in the backseat, hang with a luchador voiced by Hulk Hogan and participate in a murder based game show that I assume was inspired by The Running Man.

A gang territory dynamic is also in place, which is something I wish more sandbox games did more often, since it helps give a sense of reward to each activity you embark on when it has a tangible benefit, even if it's just a piece of territory.

One other thing in this games favor; the developers were clearly thinking of ways to alleviate player frustration and give them more options. Do you know how long I've wanted one of these sandbox games to let me to choose songs I like from the soundtrack and make a custom "station"**? The option's here with the "mixtape" function. Do you want to disable stations that cater to genres you hate? You can. Hate falling in water and wasting a good five minutes trying to get to shore? You're covered; a simple button press will warp you back.

Hell, cars don't even spontaneously explode upon hitting a tank! The car will be crushed in the area hit by the treads. It's the little things that count. Or kill, if you ask Bush.

I spoke of the soundtrack and this game has a pretty decent one. I suppose you could argue that the selection quality is not exactly on par with the distinguished competition, but there are several smart choices. Hell, there are at least three different rock stations, catering to different audiences. I can't say anything bad about a game that won't force me to listen to soft rock as I wait for something harder to come up.

Even better, money actually has its uses here. Rather than just give you a bunch of static weapons, you can upgrade just about anything you pick up. You can also buy property, another feature a certain other series saw fit to drop. All come with tangible benefits that will aid you in gameplay. There are in-game reasons to complete tasks in this game; as opposed to only getting a trophy for your trouble.

There is very little here to criticize. If I had to point to anything, it would be that the game feels a little short for one of its type. Even with generous amounts of dicking around I finished the main story in under twenty hours. Granted, that's twenty hours of the most fun I've had with a video game, but it still felt like it was over too soon.

The Score: 9 out of 10

Buy it now. There is nothing else that need be said. It is well, well worth the money.

* This kind of annoyed me a bit. He's easily one of the coolest characters in the game and he's dropped within the first twenty minutes. He's also the only asian I can think of in the game, which is pretty glaring in a game that includes a bunch of characters of different ethnicity. I guess they chose him for the role because he was a long standing member of the series cast - he was in both of this games predecessors - but geez, that's a cheap attempt to garner player involvement in the fight against the enemies. Especially when you've killed his murderer at the end of the first act.

** I'm pretty sure that this was an advertised feature for Grand Theft Auto IV at one point. Obviously, it didn't make the cut.