A listing for a certain Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut has recently popped up on Amazon US. The Wii U-exclusive rerelease apparently has "a multitude of improvements, features and additional content" over the original game, along with the ability to use the Wii U Gamepad via a brand new augmentation, the Neural Hub. Features list below:

• Ultimate Deus Ex: Human Revolution experience : take advantage of a multitude of improvements, features and additional content that bring this already critically-acclaimed adventure to whole new levels
• Tap into the Wii U's GamePad true potential: Adam Jensen's newest augmentation, the Neural Hub, offers an immersive and empowering experience, right at the tips of your fingers
• Absolute fusion of action and role-play: A unique combination of action-packed close-quarter takedowns and intense shooting, offering a vast array of augmentations and upgrades for the many weapons at your disposal
• Multi-solution structure: Choose how to accomplish each mission using combat, hacking, stealth or social mode to create a customized experience to suit any gaming style
• Diverse customization: Engage in combat and challenges utilizing deep, specialized character augmentations and weapon upgrades

The Amazon page advertises a price of $49.99, and a release date of May 7. We're contacting Square Enix for any comments, and will update this post if we get a response.

Update: Square Enix told us that they do not have a comment at this time.

DeusEx Human Revolution Director's Cut

The movie based on the third Deus Ex game, announced this summer, now has a director: Deadline reports that it'll be Scott Derrickson, the guy who directed... the supernatural horror movie Sinister (62% on RottenTomatoes). And... the supernatural horror movie The Exorcism Of Emily Rose (44% on RottenTomatoes). I guess someone must have asked for this.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution happened in 2027. Last year's hit stealth/action hybrid featured Adam Jensen, a lead character who sported cool, lethal cybernetics in his rebuilt body. Nigel Ackland isn't a shooting/sneaking action hero, but he's a huge step closer to the augmented humans in Deus Ex's future.

The bebionic B3 prosthetic that Ackland is outfitted with receives signals from muscle twitches in his upper arm. These inputs can perform a range of motions that let him do things like hold a mouse, shake hands and write his name.

While it's great that it lets Ackland to all kinds of normal activities that he couldn't do before, he's not exactly superhuman. But hey: it also has a trigger pull motion. All he needs is some upgrades and a trenchcoat to be a dystopian cyberpunk hero.

Or he could drink more robo-beers.

So "better" might be subjective. But while I absolutely adored Deus Ex: Human Revolution as it was, I would totally play this pop art version of it. It's also making my heart ache to play the game again.

We saw some screens of the shadow glitch last month, but you can see it above in all its colorful action.

This Is Your Brain on Deus Ex [YouTube via Reddit]

Say what you want about its lackluster boss battles, but no one can say that Deus Ex: Human Revolution wasn't a great looking game. However, the glitch that Reddit user TheFightingDumples encountered stripped away all of the shooter's detailed textures and replaced them with eye-popping colors. If only there were more games that had this much style on purpose…

My game glitched and gave me some pop art.[Reddit]

It's apparently a big week for silver screen adaptations. Yesterday we heard that Michael Fassbender would star in an upcoming Assassin's Creed film, and today, we learn we're getting a Deus Ex movie. And not just any Deus Ex story, but specifically Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Eidos and Square Enix have announced a deal with CBS Films to adapt the 2011 hit game. The Eidos Montreal team behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution will reportedly be working closely with CBS Films on the project. In a statement, Terry Press, co-president of CBS Films, said: "No one knows Human Revolution like the team that created it, and we look forward to working with them from day one to make a film adaptation worthy of the Deus Ex name."

The two producers assigned to the project, Adrian Askarieh and Roy Lee, have widely different histories. Askarieh produced the 2007 Hitman adaptation, and is also working on a Kane and Lynch adaptation. Lee, meanwhile, co-produced How to Train Your Dragon and was executive producer on the American remakes of The Ring and The Grudge.

There's no word if it's connected to the previous Deus Ex short film that made the rounds earlier this year, but either way, that gives us a taste of what Deus Ex might look like, Hollywood style. Given how strongly the art aesthetic of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was inspired by films like Blade Runner, it somehow makes sense that the series would be coming full circle and going to film. And even if the movie is terrible, at least it will have one thing going for it: the audience won't have to play the boss fights.

I first heard "Icarus," Michael McCann's main theme from Human Revolution, when it was revealed for the game's E3 trailer. It fit the trailer so well, making the dramatic moments even more dramatic, and emphasizing the dire situation in the fictional future it portrayed. I knew it had to be made available as an mp3 sooner or later, and lo and behold the overwhelming fan reaction to the piece left Square Enix with no other choice but to offer it. And they offered it for free. What gracious gents.

I threw it on my iPod and instantly knew it'd make the cut for my "repeat" playlist. I like to tire the hell out of my favorite tracks, and making a playlist for all the songs I like to put on repeat helps me to do so.

It's appropriate that "Icarus" is the main theme for Human Revolution, because it could fit literally every moment I remember playing—viewing a sprawling city and towering corporate buildings, punching through walls with unique arm augmentations, or piling up dead bodies for fun. "Icarus" adds a sense of intensity that was the final sell on the atmosphere and experience that Eidos Montreal had created.

But the other part of what makes "Icarus" a favorite track of mine is that it still exists as a great song outside of the medium it was born into. It's a song I can appreciate regardless of whether or not it's being played along with the orange and black scheme of one of my favorite games from last year.

It starts slow, separate beats playing on top of each other, before slowly adding in a female's voice that feels like what a "modernized" opera singer would sound like. It reminds me of the singing in the Gladiator soundtrack, and emulates a similar vaguely ethnic feel.

As her voice grows songer, so too does the music. It doesn't just get louder, though. Each tone is strengthened and layered. When I listen to it, I always catch myself drifting off into some awesome daydream where I'm wielding a katana with ninja-like skills, kicking ass (of course), and intermittently transitioning to slow motion (because why not).

I love music for that. It inspires playful thoughts, and lets me get lost in them. And when that daydream is a badass vision like the one that "Icarus" inspires? All the better.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a very good game. But it had one big problem: those frustrating, out-of-place boss battles. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Eidos Montreal's senior game designer Francois Lapikas addressed the boss battles once and for all: The team didn't put enough thought into them, he said, and weren't aware what a problem they really were until the game shipped.

"We didn't have a direction sheet for boss fights," Lapikas said, referring to the complex and detailed sheets that the team created for other systems like hacking and conversation. "We kind of forgot about it."

"Because we didn't have these direction sheets, we didn't know what we were doing with boss fights. We saw them as a way to break the pacing, more than as a way to test the player's skills. That's a big factor of why you can't go through them using social or stealth."

The team didn't do any pre-production on the boss fights, and designed them as they were developing the game itself. "We thought that by putting enough ammo and enough weapons in the room, that would be enough for players to just defeat them and say 'That was nice, let's go on.'"

Playtests flagged the boss fights as a problem, but they didn't flag them as a serious problem. "It was only when we shipped, and we saw the complaints, that we understood. It was a surprise to us, actually. It was a big surprise, and not a good one," Lapikas said.

"I don't really have a solution for boss fights, except that next time we're going to think about it more. They were a big part of the game, and we should've put more effort into them. So, truly sorry about that."

With that, there was some light applause and laughter. Clearly, many of the game developers and aspiring game developers in the room enjoyed the game, but agreed about the boss fights. When asked about the possibility of fixing or removing them during the Q&A, he said that it just wasn't that easy to just patch them, or remove them.

Some other interesting notes on Lapikas' talk, in which he discussed how they created the other systems in the game:

• For a while, Human Revolution gave players unlimited energy to power their augmentations, since the developers were getting feedback that players wanted more energy. But then they found that the takedowns ruined the game, and that players would just stealth and takedown their way through every level. No matter how many energy bars they added, players would want more. But when it comes down to it: "Deus Ex is a game about scarcity of resources."
• The team didn't know about L.A. Noire while they were designing the conversation boss-battles. They worried that players wouldn't be able to read the feedback from the characters they talk to, but found in playtesting that players liked the uncertainty, because it felt real.
• The hacking game, which was based on hacking in the real world, was almost unworkable. Lapikas said: "At some point it was so complicated that I didn't even know what it was doing." Then, someone suggested adding a graphical element. Lapikas' initial reaction was negative, but he realized that by making the hacking graphical, he could easily implement all of the complicated systems he had made and make them playable. Two weeks later, they had a working version of the hacking minigame. It was the earliest system to be done in the game, finished two whole years before the game's completion.
• The team came up with a bunch of influences that they wanted to use for every system, which explains why the game felt like a love letter to a bunch of different games. Among those specific influences were Rainbow 6 Vegas's cover system, FEAR's AI, and Call of Duty's health system.
• The way that the team described the overall vibe of the game was this simple, kind of perfect combination: "Children of Men meets X-Men."

It's many months in the past now, but you probably remember watching the title sequence for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and thinking "This game is going to be awesome." That's exactly what it was supposed to do.

When you think about it, title sequences are an oft-ignored part of a video game that still needs to do important work to sell a player on the gameworld that they're about to enter. Film enthusiast website The Art of the Title talks to the creators from Goldtooth Creative and Square Enix who crafted the reel for Square Enix's game and find out about the inspirations and methods behind it.

The Art of the Title's in-depth article breaks down the process and inspiration behind the DXHR title sequence, teasing out obvious callbacks like The Six Million Dollar Man TV show and more elusive references from master painter Rembrandt. The whole thing's worth reading, so head on over to The Art of the Title and read their first game-related post.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution [The Art of the Title]

Did you buy, rent, or steal a game last year expecting the worst only to be pleasantly surprised? Commenter DerpiestShazbot wants to know, and you'll tell him in today's Speak Up on Kotaku.

Heyo Kotakuites! So which game(s) from 2011 ended up being better than you expected?

Not asking which games you thought were good but instead which games actually surprised you by even better than you thought!

Right now the only games I can think of are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Battlefield 3, and Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat probably surprised me the most seeing how my friend and I each bought a copy for ourselves as a sort of joke. I wasn't expecting anything more than just a fun little fighting game with hilarious amounts of gore. What I ended up getting was actually, in my opinion, a very deep and engrossing fighter with an entertaining story mode which never took itself too seriously AND hilarious amounts of gore!

So how about you guys?