Ross's Game Dungeon: Deus Ex - Human Revolution

Changed thumbnail for some reason

On the topic of the graphics rant about a yellow filter, I think I have bad news. Instead of going with piss-filtering everything developers went with making everything too reflective.
I'm serious, every new game is reflective as heck, it's like everything is made of plastic. It feels like playing cheap early-alpha copies where the reflectivity hasn't been optimized yet.

I can't get over it, once I noticed it... it was there forever.
Old games at least got lighting right.

In terms of revisiting this review, there are some things that did get to me though. Leaving aside the poorly executed filter of tinting the whole world based on Alex Jensen's shades, as well as the more valid criticisms like the writing, there are some things that I wish could've been avoided, such as criticizing the "anime" gestures, which doesn't surprise me as being cheap shots.

Now I am all for making reviews humorous to watch and rather innovating, but what needs to be taken into account, is that it can get in the way of what is a genuine critique, as opposed to what should not be taken to heart. The hand behind head/neck gesture can mean anything, such as confusion, or even when the character has an itchy scalp/neck to give more in depth animation variety, or something else similar. Another flaw, is that this reviewing style can never play fair if the whole traction is to have a serious review.

If I am to do a review like this, I need to make sure humor doesn't get in the way of criticism in general, otherwise it will be a genuine risk if I want to make sure the review is genuine. It is about getting the balance right as opposed to not having humor at all, versus being 100% funny to the point the review doesn't get taken seriously. It can also be a cynical approach by malignant reviewers who would lie and make up flaws to which something doesn't have.

Overall, my subjective rating for this video, is Love & Hate. While the video touches on very valid flaws and issues that permeate Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the review has its own flaws too, even though I am doing my best to be fair-minded within the prism of how this video came about.

What I want to happen with this review, while I would argue against deleting the entire script and video, I would make it less sensationalistic and throw out the cheap shot critiques. That’s how I would improve the video.

Fun fact: lizards have four types of cones (red, green, blue, ultraviolet) and can thus see far more colours than us.
Also human retinae maybe be able to see four types of colours too, but the lenses can only see three, so uhhh...

Think you underestimated how crazy our poltics could get in a few years. Dont blame you. Who could imagine people nearly rioting over vaccines and such? Playing God with augmentations I could definitely see causing the more religous to go to extremes. Its not even 2027 lol.

This is one of the best reviews of this game ever.

EDIT: Actually I can only remember seeing one other review of this game, so let me amend that. This is a really great breakdown about the game and how it compared to previous iterations.

“It’s harder in all the right places..”
Ok Russ 😂

So, have we run out of oil yet? It's maddening to see how much Ross picked up on the original Deus Ex, regarding the Military Industrial Complex, but completely misses it when it comes to environmental alarmists vilifying the use of crude oil and claiming scarcity.

I hate morality systems in games like these. Dishonored 1 is also pretty bad. It’s wild how the more fun and engaging options during gameplay are frowned upon and give you bad endings. It’s also super unrealistic. People don’t mind killing each other. Idk why game devs have trouble figuring that one out.

Am I hearing "This Love"?!

In retrospect this game is brilliant. The devs were just extremely focused on delivering their bucketlist of things to have on a game, delivered them, and then fucking dipped lol.

They whipped out the game mechanics first, developed them, then built a game and narrative around it. Does it fit neatly within the Deus Ex universe? Nope. Do I care? I don't.

Also, in retrospect the devs were wrong to aim their narrative 110% towards augmentation as the crux of the next human conflict, when in fact it was automation. Maybe it would've been extremely cliche for a game to be about "man fights AI... BUT YELLOW" when that's what the precursors of the genre did. Man writing is so ASS in this game but IT'S SUCH A DAMN GOOD GAME.

I checked the credits and I can't seem to figure out where the music that plays during the credits is from. Any ideas?

Yeah, lemon blast mode should be an option.

I found this on TV Tropes about the stupid "Jensen is a murderer" BS it kinda long sorry!
Artistic License – Law:

Played with in the very first mission. If you kill the Purity First terrorists in the Milwaukee Factory, the SWAT officers label you "a goddamn murderer" and tell you to get out of their sight, saying that it's only Sarif's influence that prevents them from arresting you. Even ignoring how completely absurd it is for hardened cops in a city as crime-ridden as Detroit to be so sympathetic to armed criminals, their statements would be objectively wrong if Adam were a cop, but as he is a private security guard, he's not allowed to use lethal force. Every single one of the terrorists was armed with a pistol or submachine gun, every single one either pointed their guns at you or fired on you, and by the time you arrived they'd already killed at least one hostage and opened fire on law enforcement. Every potential shoot in that mission would be completely clean, further amplified by the fact that none of the terrorists so much as contemplate surrendering. However, they are not entirely wrong: first, Adam is a former cop and in most cases, killing all the terrorists is hardly police protocol even for a SWAT team, something even a discharged lawman should know; second, the cops are held back due to Sarif's influence, something that pisses them off as it allows Sarif Industries to bend the law to protect their corporate secrets, something the SWAT will chide Adam for if Sanders escape.

really hate Deus Ex - Human Revolution

the way they've explained the technological advancements in dxhr and dx1 makes me hate it even more in fact. in my head it makes the first retroactively feel less grounded by its existence.

Watching this in 2023 was like opening one of the weirdest time capsules I've ever seen

These adults are not adulting correctly... Or at all.

i don't think we will have anything like this in the near future maybe 100-200 years if we can get the money problems solved

The pattern on Jensen's coat is not paisley.

I like how prostitutes is a major job being lost
Those damn cyborgs

Most of your take was good, except that part at the end seems inconsistent, borderline hypocritical - you don't like the unrealistic augment talk (a future problem), but you want them to talk about future problems? And you don't want them to point out modern day parallels, when that's exactly what you like about the original? You like when they talk modern, relevant socioeconomic issues like the oil crisis or self-employment rates plumetting. Isn't that literally what they said the rumors say they're doing more of, Ross?

This turn towards artificial controversy and people not acting believably is now the mainstream Hollywood approach. I suspect the writers never have real interactions with people, they probably just meet others from the industry and everyone acts cliché, while for everything else they have people doing it for them.

Rewatching this now with Neuralink and augmented reality visors looming on the horizon, I think the biggest problem HR's writing has is the fact that it completely failed to focus on the more mundane implants like the social enhancement module, so the focus naturally drifted to in-your-face things like cybernetic limbs. I could totally see a solid amount of office workers getting cyberlegs, because why bother when you sit in a chair all day, maybe some warehouse workers saving up for a new spine, but the thing that big corpa would most likely push on its workers is exactly something like Neuralink.

A chip that stimulates employees' brain activity? Sounds like a perfect way to boost productivity and boost those sales. Add a radio module for phone and Wi-Fi on top of that so that you could monitor and reach anyone at any hour like it's a digital Panopticon, and it's a perfect thing to force onto an average cyberpunk dystopia Joe. AR capabilities will follow shortly after: since so many people have a brain chip, we may as well use it for entertainment and advertisements. And you could probably force people into guaranteed several months long employment contracts to pay off the surgery expenses.

Now THAT would totally divide the society. People would protest the brain chips, but hey, the chips are effective and the rent needs to be paid. And with regulations taking years to be implemented, some businesses will totally abandon what little ethics they were abiding by. In this reality, even things like thought crime could be a possibility.

But that's not as cool as slapping cyborg arms on everyone, I guess.

The original feels like it could be real in a few decades, the rest of the series feels like a bad SyFy channel series

The makers of Human Revolution (and mankind divided) should do a sequel from the original and not a prequel

It’s not bad design… it’s actually pretty realistic design because sometimes in life you wanna do stuff but you can’t cause MORE important stuff has to be done. Your company needs you to go save hostages which is ALWAYS extremely high risk and almost always dealt with ASAP. You act like you HAVE to talk to all the random people and check emails… we’ll the fact that you would rather check emails then go save hostages is kinda telling.. but don’t blame the game because you clearly don’t have good time management skills. And for the record, you don’t have to do the mission when they say but you can always go back and check emails and waste time talking to people, you know, when there are no hostages waiting to be saved! This is pretty exceptional game design to me, giving the player real choices that will harbor real consequences.

The reason I can't see mechanical augmentations ever catching on is basically anything you can do with a mechanical body part, you can do with a wearable piece of equipment.

I really wish they'd rebooted this series after Invisible War.

Even as an AU I just cannot bring myself to see this as 2027 when I play. I always have to set it 10 years later in my mind.

Whats the name of the song in credits?

NVM, its from DEHR itself.

I can't wait to come back to this video in 2027. I'm going to be very disappointed if we don't get that suspended city

Not gonna lie, even if the review was largely the same, it would still be awesome to see Ross cap this off with Mankind Divided.

It's funny Ross draws attention to the RoboCop parallel, given that THE GAME ITSELF draws attention to it as well in an easter egg dialogue between two cops in a police station.

Great video buddy!

You should do a dungeon on Death Stranding

Sadly there is a glitch that sometimes when you do a non lethal shot, they die, so completing a pacifist run is quite hard.

Tell me you wouldn't pay extra for the robot pussy

There is an article to be found in the Tai Yong Medical offices talking about the flu pandemic of 2018... one year off, almost right!