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- We will randomly choose two winners on Friday, August 26.
- The prizes are one Steam code for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and one Steam code for the Deus Ex Collection containing Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition and Deus Ex: Invisible War.
- Along with your comment below, make sure to include your YouTube username and subscribe to the Bitmob YouTube channel.
Although this game boasts an alleged 20+ weapons, you’ll only ever need two: the stun gun and tranquilizer rifle, both of which silently one-shot all enemies besides robots and bosses. Running and gunning will get you killed more often than not, and even the achievements reveal that the developers intended for you to play this game from the shadows. You will usually see a heavily fortified “front door” for trigger-happy cowboys, but you'll always find at least one (and often more than that) alternate route that may not involve conflict whatsoever. You’ll have to hack a door, climb through a vent, or punch through a wall, but especially on the higher difficulties, it pays to avoid firefights.
Going stealth not only keeps you safe, but it also prevents you from expending valuable — not to mention extremely limited — ammo or hanging on to bulky weapons that you can sell to black market dealers. Unless you’re putting away for Jensen’s retirement fund, you have no reason to hang on to your credits. Whenever you first enter a new city hub (or return to an older one), always find the LIMB clinic and drop 10K for two new Praxis points. Because they are so limited, getting two additional points sooner rather than later will give you a notable advantage in whatever trials lie ahead.
Even if enemies do spot you, you need only hide in a vent for a few seconds (like all stealth games) before the AI opponents forget about those 10 dead bodies they just discovered and go back to their predictable patrol routes.
4. Try before you buy
If and when you find yourself with two or three Praxis Points, it would be a good idea to save your game and start experimenting. Curious as to what the Icarus Landing System does but don’t want to wager your precious PP to find out? Sample it, and then reload to try something else if you’re not a believer.
You start the game with two energy bars, but for the most part, you’ll only ever need one. In what is perhaps the game’s biggest fault, even if you upgrade your energy to five bars and max out regeneration, only the first bar will benefit from this. The other four bars will never regenerate on their own, and Adam must consume energy supplements to replenish them. To make matters worse, these supplements are in limited supply.
The primary purpose of energy is two allow for takedowns, each of which consumes a single bar. In many areas you can just pick enemies off one-by-one, waiting for your energy to recharge before moving on to the next unsuspecting sap. If you purchase the Enhanced Reflexes augmentation, you can even start taking down guards two-at-a-time for the same amount of energy.
If and when you’ve unlocked the Cloaking System, this is where you can tear through energy extremely quickly. You’ll need to spend four PP total to upgrade cloaking so that you can remain invisible for seven seconds per energy bar, but coupled with the sprinting and noise muffling augs necessary to quickly move from point A to point B without being seen or heard, now things are getting costly. Still, if you need more than two energy to overcome any obstacle, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Human Revolution has 20 different save slots, and I recommend that you use them all. After each encounter and before each important-looking area, go ahead and save. It takes mere seconds but can save you a lot of replaying due to an unexpected death or unwanted alarm being triggered. In fact, my first 22-hour playthrough consisted heavily of restarting an area after being detected or accidentally throwing a trash can at a security guard and starting World War 3 with the friendly NPCs.
Saving before bosses and other important events may also come in handy in case you learn of an achievement you missed, and you don’t want to play the whole game over again, so use those 20 slots wisely.
Hopefully some of these tips help you, but Deus Ex is also about discovering your own strategies and cutting your own path. I'm currently on my third playthrough (since I got robbed on two big achievements), and I am still discovering new ways to go about my dastardly deeds.
- We will randomly choose two winners on Friday, August 26.
- The prizes are one Steam code for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and one Steam code for the Deus Ex Collection containing Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition and Deus Ex: Invisible War.
- Along with your comment below, make sure to include your YouTube username and subscribe to the Bitmob YouTube channel.
