Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut is the most complete version of one of the smartest games of its generation, and it actually arrived on Wii U before any other platform. The player takes on the role of security chief Adam Jensen, who survives a brutal attack on his company only thanks to extensive mechanical augmentations. His investigation leads him from Detroit through Shanghai to secret laboratories, and along the way he keeps bumping into the question that holds the game together: how far should a person go in upgrading their own body, and who actually profits from it. The environments are designed as small open cities full of side quests, apartments to search, and people whose worries flesh out the picture of the world.

The core of the gameplay is freedom of approach. Every mission can be completed through silent stealth, hacking, persuasion in dialogue, finding a ventilation shaft, or brute force, and the augmentation system supports all of these styles. The player chooses whether to invest in invisibility, heavier weapons, the ability to punch through a wall, or the skill to read an opponent during conversation. The Director's Cut fundamentally reworked the boss fights, which in the original release forced even stealthy players into direct shootouts, and folded The Missing Link add-on directly into the main campaign. The Wii U GamePad served as the map, inventory, and interface for the hacking minigame.

Visually the game relies on a gold-and-black palette, Renaissance motifs, and a clearly recognizable cyberpunk styling, while the music works with slow electronic soundscapes to create a melancholic, oppressive mood. Reception was very good, and the game is still cited today as a model of how to make a modern immersive sim accessible to a wider audience. Technically the Wii U version isn't the smoothest, but it is the most complete in terms of content. Today the game's theme, unequal access to technology and corporate power over the human body, feels more relevant than at launch, and the gameplay itself has barely aged at all.