[quote name='The Crotch']It wasn't just the boss fights that did it for me.
Everyone always talks about the stealth of Deus Ex and the pacifist runs and all that awesome stuff.
But it also had autoshotguns and rocket launchers and plasma guns and bulletproof skin and point defence systems and flamethrowers and shit. And you could play through the whole god damn game just using those. Or just doing your stealth pacifism. Or some combination thereof.
When I played it, it seemed like Human Revolution remembered that both those things
existed in the original, but it forgot how they were implemented. So you go through long sections where sneaking is
always the best solution and then you get to a pretermined point and suddenly combat is the
only option. Deus Ex was great because it seemlessly integrated the two. Human Revolution went out of its way to say, "Hey, woah, are you trying to
shoot that guy? No, no, no, this is a sneaking part. You'll need those bullets for the boss fight coming up. Look, an air duct!"
HR also has a lot of minor lame-ass shit in it. Energy requirements on melee attacks, lack of variety in the augs, a hacking minigame that was interesting but poorly implemented on the PC (An interface that needlessly clashes with mouse-and-keyboard controls? Surprise, asshole!), etc. But the great big signs that said THIS IS A STEALTH SECTION and THIS IS A FIGHTING PART were the real problems for me.
...
And how
ing awful the "fighting parts" were. Daaaaaaamn.[/QUOTE]
Aside from the boss fights though, there weren't any parts where fighting was the only option.
I can't speak to how good the game was if you took the action route since I never played it that way, but I can say that the way I played it (stealth pacifist) made for one of my favorite gaming experiences this gen other than the boss battles.