Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director’s Cut

I love a good Immersive Sim (what the current top review calls 0451), and I enjoyed this one more than most. There are a few derpy bugs* that, alas, will never be fixed - the source code to this game was lost - but if you can look past those, what you'll find is a game truly worthy of the Deus Ex title. Clearly not as ground-breaking for its time as the original, Human Revolution still represents a return to form for the series after the very underwhelming second game. More about the journey than the destination (the last act is a bit meh), I really enjoyed my time with this stylized (and stylish) look into the near future. IIRC, I've actually bought this game three times - for Xbox, for MacOS when that was my only computer, and finally on Steam - and while I wouldn't do that again, I still think I got my money's worth. At less than three bucks (on sale at time of writing) you'd be hard-pressed to find more sneaky immersive sim goodness for your dollar. *One bug that stands out to me has to do with alignment of sights on some weapons, most notably the sniper rifle. IIRC adding a silencer does something to break the weapon.

It happened that Director’s Cut edition is stuttering a lot no matter that PC you have, especially in the city areas. Overall the game is great, you can make decisions on how you wish to traverse the environment and complete your objective, game is huge. Intriguing story, ethical conundrum and conspiracy. Great characters and top tier music.

You can't compare this to the first Deus Ex title. It's really a completely different thing altogether. The first encourages you to explore, and gives you new parts of the world to go back to when you have new abilities -- this one is more focused on FPS elements instead of environment exploration. The parts where it fails is where the first succeeded, and vice versa. The color palette will make you sick after a while. I'm trying to force myself to beat this before I play the next one in the series, but every time I come back to it I get tired pretty quick. Whereas with the first, I tend to get sucked back in and can't put it down again.

I was extremely dubious when I saw the trailers for this. The original Deus Ex was something special, and ever since the Star Wars prequels I've had a chronic lack of trust for people who go back and revisit old classic worlds in entertainment. It looks like a few people would agree that my prejudice was unwarranted, because after I gave the game a belated playthrough I was convinced to the contrary. This game felt like it was developed around the question "what would Deus Ex 1 be if we made it from scratch today?" The gameplay is very satisfying and retains a lot of the original Deus Ex feel while refreshing the look and some of the things the player character (Adam, rather than J.C. :) can do. A few people have griped about the game switching to third-person when wall-hugging. I thought that would annoy me but I actually prefer it. Line of sight seems to be critical in stealth play, so seeing whether Adam's shoulder or foot is poking around an edge in view of an enemy is important. On the topic of hidden telemetry in this edition, I can't comment. I played the game on Steam (via Proton) and it worked flawlessly with one exception. Every time I exit, the game hangs either for a long time or indefinitely, so either it sits in the background "trying" to close or I have to terminate the process manually. That's my only gripe. This is classic Deus Ex storytelling and gameplay with an original story and a far more sophisticated visual engine. If you liked the original, you'll likely get a kick out of this one too.

I just played this game for 8 hours straight. I wasn't sold on this game before, but I can definitely see why this title is such a classic. Please note that the Director's Cut version does actually have a couple of issues with it as other have mentioned, such as in-built telemetry/tracking and performance, but there are easy workarounds for most of them. (Check PCGamingWiki for more.) Thanks to the Gold Filter Restoration mod, I was also able to play the game with its iconic "gold filter" like in the original version. Despite its flaws, this is a ton of fun and this version also includes revamped boss fights which were a bit of a letdown before. Now, I haven't ever really played the original release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution or the first Deus Ex, so I can't really say much about it. However, my own experience of this game has been a ton of fun and I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of this genre.