Right, so here’s the first step in answering the mystery of Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s boss battles – they were outsourced. Meaning, a lack of continuity during the development process, one has to assume. That’s not a condemnation of the work done by G.R.I.P., the company responsible for the bosses, who will have their own story to tell. As I said in my review of the game, the real story of how they happened will likely come out in a few years time, once enough people have moved on to be willing to explain. So why such a feature was outsourced, why there wasn’t a coherence between them and the rest of the game, and why they weren’t just ditched when it became clear they didn’t fit in, are questions that will perhaps one day be answered. But not yet. But as a magazine noticed, there’s a behind-the-scenes video with GRIP’s president discussing the battles that quietly appeared last month. So yes, this information was always out there. You can see it below.

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“Patch notes, RPS? Really?” YES REALLY WHAT OF IT, EH? When it’s a game as big as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a lot of what might otherwise be minor becomes major. Square-Enix have chased a few bugs out of their bearded man simulator, including some important-sounding stuttering performance snafus, as well as adding in the really very useful windowed full-screen mode, the saviour of impatient alt-tabbers the world over. Most importantly: you can now skip the logos at the start of the game. Alas, it also introduces occasional tiny but silly/obnoxious loading screen ads, as seen above. No, I don’t have time to watch a 70s cowboys in space soap opera for the millionth time, no matter how high its definitions are: I have a world to save from corruption and people with robot legs. Thank heavens the last patch improved load times so I don’t have to stare at this cheekily-added promotional bumpf for even longer. There’s a dark rumour more ads might come to in-game billboards, which is an extremely> unpleasant and disruptive prospect. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to pass.

Update: there’s an ad-disabling mod here. Thanks, Theory.>

Meantime, full patch notes are below. Bulletpoints! (more…)

Attention, owners of expensive, hard-to-upgrade aluminium PCs: Square-Enix have just sent word that Deux Ex: Human Revolution is going to be getting a Mac release. It’s due out in “Winter 2011/12″, and London based Feral Interactive are going to be responsible for it. They tackled the Mac ports of the likes of BioShock, Borderlands, Rome: Total War, LEGO Star Wars & Tomb Raider: Anniversary, so I guess they know the ropes. Has anyone played any of their ports? (more…)

You there! Remember the parody video in which the likes of DLC references, object highlighting and iron sights from Human Revolution were added to the original Deus Ex, and how even-tempered everyone was about it? Well, now you can recreate that past-meets-present, JC/AJ mash-up yourself, as creator Ceski has released the mod he made to achieve the video.

Also includes instant wristblade takedowns (press use when behind an enemy), regenerating health and a surfeit of black and gold. Grab Deus Ex: Unreal Revolution from here.

The order in which information arrives is very confusing. Everyone heard about Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s The Missing Link DLC earlier this week, and today Square have officially announced it. But that means we also get pictures and a video. I’ve augmented the post with the details below. Do you see? I said “augmented the post”. Because in Deus Ex you augment yourself with augments, and so in saying “augmented the post” I’m applying that theme to a piece of writing about the game. It’s a bit of wordplay.

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The new Deus Ex is about many things, but ranking high amongst them is DRM. I’m not even joking. (The following article contains spoilers to the very end of the game.)> (more…)

Here’s a huge news story that we somehow didn’t manage to post yet, because we’re big, silly poo-poo heads. Also, I was distracted by being stung on the eyelid by a wasp, which is something I can recommend to precisely nobody. While I was busy bellowing in horror, the Deus Ex Human Revolution DLC teased by last week’s rather inelegant ARG finally came to light. As suspected, it’s called The Missing Link, and as speculated it concerns the rather odd scene late in the main game where Adam goes on a secret journey to an unknown location. (And if you think that amounts to a spoiler for a game that’s all about mysteries>, I honestly despair.)

If you haven’t gotten that far in the game, don’t read on – because more fulsome details are below. If you can’t read the rest but are itching for safe DX reading – well, how about browsing RPS cunningly rejiggered to look like one of DXHR’s in-game electro-newspapers? Top work, Nir Yomotov. Truly, his vision is augmented. (more…)

The more modern values of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, transplanted into the resolutely year 2000 Deus Ex 1. Admittedly, this video occasionally strays into tiresome ‘THE PAST WAS NECESSARILY BETTER AND EVERYTHING IS RUBBISH NOWADAYS’ whingeotron territory, but it’s nanotongue-in-cheek enough to elicit a good few guffaws, I think. What if… JC Denton had elbow swords? And augmented vision? And could only rescue Tracer Tong if he’d preordered? (more…)

Scaleform? Dolby Digital? AMD? I didn’t ask for this. Neither did you, probably, so if you fancy a way of disabling all those annoying unskipable splash screens, here it is. Word on the street is that the member of staff at Eidos Montreal responsible for them fully intended to make the splash screens skippable, but as they entered the meeting room to discuss it, a prerendered cutscene took over and forced them to make the splash screens unskippable. What a shame. (more…)

Those among you with your ears to the internet will have noticed that a mystery has been unfolding around Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Some people are referring to it as an “ARG”. That’s a pretty serious term and shouldn’t be bandied about lightly, but this does> have all the hallmarks of one. It all started with a code, or “some gibberish” as I call it, and eventually led to the image you see above. Quite how people worked it out is a mystery to my little meat-brain, which is to say I’m convinced they had some form of calculating device embedded in their skulls. Rather amusingly, even that wasn’t enough though because Eidos Montreal had to release extra clues. To be fair, I didn’t even understand those though. The story so far is here. What does it all mean? Were any of you involved in figuring out what’s happened so far? And am I actually quite stupid for not understanding how any of this worked? Arg(h)!