Deus Ex: Human Revolution looks better & better

Gallery & preview: A recent Sydney Deus Ex reveal showed off the game's open-ended gameplay. And ways to make police explode...

So, zombies aside, there's one game we're looking forward to more than any other - more even than the fabled, mythical, and apparently now real Duke Nukem Forever.

And that game is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

It was practically the game of the show at this year's E3, and few gaming journos who saw the demo walked away unimpressed. In fact, it's fair to say that most walked away wanting to mug one of the presenters and do something intimate mildly illegal with the demo code. It was looking that good.

This week in Sydney we got to see a great new demo sequence, that cleverly showed off the open nature of Deus Ex's gameplay. It's important to mention at this point that 'open gameplay' does not equal 'open world'. Rather, that game takes a few solid leaves out of the Hitman playbook, offering you fully fleshed out environments for individual missions. How you approach this missions, and how you upgrade yourself, is going to make all the difference in the gameplay.

The demo mission we saw was simple - infiltrate a police station to recover a cybernetic implant from a body in the morgue. You're warned by your employer to find a non-violent way to get the job done, but he makes it plain that the chip is vital, and should be recovered at all costs.

We got  to see the level played through three time - once guns blazing, once using the game's dialogue system to get access, and a third time using a combination of hacking and stealth.

Bang
Combat's a combination of first person shooting and third person locked to cover combat. The two merge together pretty seamlessly, at least to look at, and a range of upgradable weaponry offers just about every tool you could want for any given combat situation.

The minute we went loud in the cop shop, pretty much everyone was on to us, and it was a running battle all the way to the morgue. Different ammunition can be used in different weapons (explosive ammo in a heavy pistol is... impressive!), and you can even turn grenades into mines with a few clicks on the inventory system.

Modifications and enhancements make a huge difference in combat, whether it be vision that lets you spot targets through walls, or camouflage that renders you invisible, letting you easily flank opponents. 

Finally, with a police station full of bleeding out bodies and a few angry/scared cops, we could subvert the security systems leading to the sewers to get out of the building.

Chat
It's curiously telling that the Eidos Montreal guys keep referring to winning and losing conversations. More than any game before it, Deus Ex is turning the humble dialogue into a keen weapon, allowing you to carefully lead on friends and foes before extracting info from them, getting them to help you, or otherwise aid you in your missions.

In the second demo runthrough, we discover via one NPC that the station's desk sergeant is an old colleague. Discovering that he's holding a grudge about a previous mission (you were both in the same SWAT team), you can lead him through guilt, remorse and finally acceptance of a rather dubious act - and then get him to give you the run of the station as a favour.

It seems a really robust system, and one that's going to go a long way to allowing you to traverse almost the entire game without killing anyone - if that's your style...

Hack
Our infiltration involved skirting the station, boosting ourselves into a fenced back alley, and hoisting heavy objects using enhanced strength to get up to first floor door. The door was locked, but this was a good chance to see Deus Ex's hacking game in action.

It's awesome - most likely the best hacking mini-game to date. You need to go from your node to a control node to disable any given device. At the same time, you can explore wider systems to find useful datahacks and other loot, but the more you explore, the more you risk triggering aggressive security routines - which will track you down and boot you out of the system.

It really feels like hacking, or, at least, the kind of hacking any cyberpunk fan would be familiar with. It's influenced by in-game skills and augmentations, but is as much down to your own skills as well. Very cool. 

Once the door was hacked it was a (relatively) simple matter of using our stealth enhancements to get into the morgue, get the chip, and sneak out again. 

That's just a sample of the ways into the station, too. We were told there was roof access, and you could always get in via the sewers too, or use any combination of the above options to get the run of the building. We're pretty much totally sold on this game already, and cannot wait for February next year. While you wait, check out our gallery of new art and screens.