Human Revolution
is good. I posted my initial responses in a comment here. Now that I've beaten it, my final reaction:
Overall, I think it's about the best adaptation that we were likely to get. It made a few well-needed changes, and really, the bits that I enjoyed more about Deus Ex were at least partly because of the original game's sheer reckless enthusiasm as it tried to do EVERYTHING. Deus Ex was running around with ADD going 'okay, so we make this game and it has aliens and the knights templar and area 51 and manmade plagues and supercomputers and black helicopters and genetically engineered monsters and government conspiracies and the men in black and the illuminati and majestic 12 and...!' while Human Revolution mostly picked a few things it wanted to focus on and did those.
Human Revolution feels more... engineered in points, which has its highs and its lows. It also lacks some of the character and 'holy shit' moments that the first game had. Deus Ex was downright goofy in some of the places where it tried to elicit emotion, but goddamn, 'ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU!!! RUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!!' still freaks me out every time I encounter it. At the end of the day, I think it's possible that Deus Ex is the better work of art or revolutionary boundary-pusher, but Human Revolution is the better game.
Overall, I think it's about the best adaptation that we were likely to get. It made a few well-needed changes, and really, the bits that I enjoyed more about Deus Ex were at least partly because of the original game's sheer reckless enthusiasm as it tried to do EVERYTHING. Deus Ex was running around with ADD going 'okay, so we make this game and it has aliens and the knights templar and area 51 and manmade plagues and supercomputers and black helicopters and genetically engineered monsters and government conspiracies and the men in black and the illuminati and majestic 12 and...!' while Human Revolution mostly picked a few things it wanted to focus on and did those.
Human Revolution feels more... engineered in points, which has its highs and its lows. It also lacks some of the character and 'holy shit' moments that the first game had. Deus Ex was downright goofy in some of the places where it tried to elicit emotion, but goddamn, 'ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU!!! RUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!!' still freaks me out every time I encounter it. At the end of the day, I think it's possible that Deus Ex is the better work of art or revolutionary boundary-pusher, but Human Revolution is the better game.