Deus Ex: The Fall (PC) Review

This really leaves just one question: how well does Deus Ex: The Fall mimic Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Does it play exactly the same, one for one, gameplay mechanic for gameplay mechanic? Is it just a smartphone sized adventure in the Human Revolution engine? Actually, that's more than one question, isn't it...

The answer is that The Fall is not built on the same engine as Human Revolution, which uses Square's "Crystal" engine. Unfortunately, smartphones don't have the horsepower to push the Crystal Engine, and so The Fall is built with Unity. Further, The Fall was made by N-Fusion, with supervision by the original Human Revolution team.

With this change has come numerous technical differences between the two games. The most striking is how low-tech The Fall looks. Character models are laughably low poly, and textures are often low quality. Lighting is garish, bringing to mind the early 3D efforts of the 1990s, when gamers were still buying 3DFX Voodoo cards for their systems.

This clunkiness extends into the gameplay arena, as well. There is no jump button. The few objects that can be moved slide as if on ice, rather than with the graceful physics of Human Revolution. NPC AI is often just poor.

Those are the forgivable flaws, depending on how hungry one is for more Deus Ex. Less forgivable are such issues as sound effects not playing at all, dialogue text disappearing without enough time to read, and the absurd inability to remap keyboard controls. That is right, left handers need not apply to Deus Ex: The Fall.

This review has not yet touched on other quality issues. Voice acting is often terrible. Dialogue and story are tiring. There is no save slot management. Gunplay is often inaccurate. Levels are rarely anything more than a couple of thin corridors connecting a couple of thin rooms, and then a level transition requiring load times (obviously due to smartphone hardware).

What about the gameplay itself? Is it Deus Ex? Well, yes, in a Frankesteinian horror show sort of way. All the pieces are there. They are mashed together in sort of the right way. There is sneaking into cover, hacking computers, battery management, and takedowns.