14 DAY TRIAL // Deus Ex: Human Revolution was released last week by publisher Square Enix and developer Eidos Montreal as a prequel to the massively successful and influential Deus Ex, and its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, launched at the beginning of the 2000s.
I've already praised the game for its great visual design or the well done social boss battles, while bashing it for the convoluted Hengsha city hub that doesn't want you to reach any of your destinations.
Now, it's time for a crucial tip for people just getting into Human Revolution: invest in hacking the first time you can.
Part of the game's four main aspects, alongside combat, stealth, and social, hacking is pretty much crucial if you want to have an easy time going through the title and learn key information about characters and environments, or just laugh a bit because of the Nigerian scams that are still quite popular in 2027.
Sure, you can rely just on your observation skills to find and pick up all sorts of pocket secretaries that hold information about computer passwords or terminal codes, but hacking such things is much more rewarding, both for your personal sense of accomplishment but also for your total experience points, which in turn dictate when you'll get a new praxis point to invest in your augmentation tree.
Hacking in Deus Ex will not only make your life easier in the futuristic world of Human Revolution or increase the pace at which you get your augmentations, but also allows you to engage in one of the most fun mini-games in recent RPGs.
Basically, the hacking activity in Human Revolution is similar to Risk the board game, as you have in front of you a network of nodes, each with a certain difficulty grade, that you need to conquer in order to get to the end server. While doing this, you can get detected by the security system, which in turn starts going through each node until it finds your entry point and kicks you out.
Besides regular nodes there are also bonus ones, which give out extra XP or money, not to mention special items, like Nuke software or Stop viruses, which help in the hacking process. Nukes ensure you conquer a node immediately and without detection, while Stop viruses put a halt on the security system which is trying to find you.
Alongside the actual gameplay in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the hacking activity is greatly implemented and loads of fun, so make an effort and invest in it at the beginning to hack higher level terminals and decrease your odds of detection, because it's quite worth it.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is now available on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.