Game Review – Deus Ex: Human Revolution

 

Company: Developed by Eidos Montreal, published by Square Enix.

Platforms:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was initially available on PC, PS3 and Xbox360 and later ported to Mac OS X.

Few variations are present between the platforms, mainly involving variations in color grading and particle effects.

Genre: Action, RPG, FPS.

ESRB Rating: M (Mature) due intense violence, blood and gore, drug reference, sexual themes, strong language, use of alcohol.

Illegal drugs and the words f**k and s**t are occasionally present in dialogue along with intense violence, which alone justifies the rating. A perfect example of blood and gore present in the game is seen below:

Don’t try this at home! Well, except if you’re playing the game.

Story
The game revolves around Adam Jensen, the head of security at Sarif Industries who has to get augmented with cybernetics after an incident that occurs at the company. Upon returning to work after his life-saving surgery, Jensen tries to find the truth behind the incident in the labs while in the midst of a global crisis between people for and against augmentations (think ‘Repo Men’ to get an idea!).

Graphics 9/10
Visuals in Deus Ex are quite impressive, and developers did an amazing job of blending the graphics with the game environment. They never feel forced and a steady visual theme is maintained throughout the game, keep the Deus Ex look and the flow of the game intact. One thing that takes away from the graphics are the limited facial animations of the characters.

Game Play 8.5/10
Players are provided with a ton of choices throughout the game, not only in the form of responses as you interact with people but even how you choose to taken down enemies. A whole range of weapons are available for the user (as long as you can get to them), though you are limited to the size of the inventory. As the game progresses, Praxis points earned by completing tasks allow you to update your ‘augmentations’, or your cybernetics be it your arm, your leg or even your hacking skills.

Controls in Deus Ex are fairly simple requiring, like every other first-person-shooter out there, mainly the mouse (for aiming) and the keyboard (for movement). On average, it should take users only 1-2 short levels to get used to the controls. Since the right-mouse button is used to take cover while taking enemy fire and is used quite repetitively, things play out a lot smoother on the PC than on a console; the game generally received better reviews on the PC version as well. Covering while taking enemy fire is a vital part of the game, and this turns out to be a downside at certain points throughout the game as players are not usually adapted to such a feature in an action game.

Complaints against Deus Ex have mainly been about the boss battles as players are forced into situations and you’re not allowed to stealth yourself or to get around them somehow.

The game is primarily first-person, while third-person view is activated when taking cover, climbing ladders or using ‘takedown’ when you melee an enemy.

 Audio/Soundtrack 9/10
The futuristic atmosphere of the game is complimented even more thanks to the amazing soundtrack present in the game, composed and performed by Michael McCann.

Bad ergonomics can kill you, literally.

Overall 9/10
Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a few flaws but at the same time proves to be quite entertaining and is definitely one of the best games in its genre for 2011.

Image Sources (in order of appearance) 
Game cover http://www.panelsonpages.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/DeusExHumanRevolutionCover.png
Takedown http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/08/5513dxhr_screenshot_takedown2.jpg
Derelict building http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/DeusExHumanRevolution/DeusExHumanRevolutionMedia/dx_hr_screenshot_derelict_building.jpg
Inventory http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-622xJBtrtqQ/TekyhUBCHbI/AAAAAAAAAFg/NS1DxInDtiQ/s1600/dxhr+2011-06-03+13-10-40-46.png
Gameplay http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2011/08/deus-ex-human-revolution-review/deusex-hr-review-screenshots3.jpg
Takedown 2: http://www.dpadmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Deus-Ex-Human-Revolution-01.jpg

Audi Photoshop Website Layout – v2 :D !

Here’s the original Audi Layout we created in class (just redirecting on my own blog):

https://digitaleffectx.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/photoshop-website-layout/

A useful list of Photoshop shortcuts provided by my teacher (ITS ALL ABOUT SHORTCUTS PEOPLE!!) [for both Mac and PC] :

http://www.mediafire.com/?32eb6f1taoc8i4p   (PC shortcuts – Photoshop CS5)
http://www.mediafire.com/?p9fo8g8zyz1t4pd  (Mac shortcuts – Photoshop CS5)

Source files for this project (if anyone wants to take a look):

http://www.mediafire.com/?7cby1fa9tj9upsz

Second Audi Layout

The images had to be shrinked a lot to fit in the small column on here. Click any to view them full-sized, it will redirect you to my Flickr.

Here’s some insight on the second audi website layout which we had to create ourselves:

Starting off with the file from the previous project, I selected the center-point image. From there, I used a rounded rectangle for the top menu and added a few logos (to decide on one later). Used the stroke effect to get that gray outline on the top and bottom around the image!

Adding a rounded rectangle as a way to create round rectangular quick links at the bottom of the image:

Sadly, that didn’t work out as when I inserted the image on top of it, the corners looked terrible. I finally ended up using this tutorial from Matt Thomes so my image would instead serve as the rounded rectangle:
http://matthom.com/archive/2004/09/10/fast-rounded-corners-in-photoshop

^ If you end up using that trick to get fast rounded corners and you want to get the result on the same page, ignore the last step under ‘Almost Done’. Instead, click on your image layer and then click the ‘add layer mask’ tool which is on the bottom right and looks like this:

Once done implementing that, I tried to alt-drag and make 2 clones but apparently that didn’t work out as I couldn’t replace the image for each of them. I had no groups but just an image itself which served as each block. To get a better picture:

The 3 links are just images with a mask on them. Since replacing the images on the clones didn’t work out, I just deleted the other 2 and repeated the process separately for each one. The top menu seemed to have too much empty space and didn’t look balanced, so I added an extra menu there. On top of that, I gave the 3 bottom images a ‘difference’ blend mode on the stroke so they change colors as it goes from the grey stroke of the other image to the background (look at the border of the image) Once finished with that, I had my images and the menu pretty much set up:

All I did next was add a few text layers under those 3 images, add some final touches and make sure everything was lined up right according to the guides and the grid. Ctrl-click multiple layers, then use the selection tool (v on keyboard if not in selection tool mode) and you’ll see the align options on the toolbar under the file menu. And there you have it!!! Enjoy!

End Result

You won’t be able to see the image properly due to the white background. Click here or on the image for a direct link view it in flickr’s lightbox!