It’s 2027. It’s 25 years before the events of the original Deus Ex. This means no nanotech and that means no nanotech augmentation for the game’s protagonist, Adam Jensen.vInstead of nano-augmentation, Adam is armed (and eyed) with more simplistic bio-mechanical augmentation. Adam Jensen works in a security capacity for leading biotech company Sarif Industries. Following an attack on the company that leaves him horribly injured Jensen – voiced by Elias Toufexis – is himself augmented. His job is, of course, to discover the cause of the attacks. But who is trustworthy? Sarif Industries? Or its enemies? Or no one? The game is played out in Cyberbunk environments in cities including Detroit, Shanghai and Montreal as well as in Adam Jensen’s own home – a place of safe haven that can be used for storage and analysis. The gamer gets through to the heart of the conspiracy in a number of different ways depending on the decisions made by the player at key moments during gameplay. These options include: Combat, which requires the player to use ranged-weapons in all-out attacks appealing to the fan of bold play; stealth, in this option handguns and short-range weapons are the order of the day. But so is close-up, hand-to-neck battling. And, with hacking, the player must puzzle solve, hack machinery and generally make the environment work for themself. Alternatively, with exploration, the player routes around danger by finding additional less direct routes to his or her destination. Then there’s social – basically talk to the other characters and use them to your advantage. Fortunately, for this game in the series at last there is health regeneration. This means that the player can, when necessary hide and heal rather than being caught in impossible to win battles. Also new to the franchise is the use of tactical vision augmentation which enables the player to more easily perceive goals and targets. This Wii U Director’s Cut comes complete with GamePad features such as touch-screen hacking, augmented sniping, interactive map editing, grenade throwbacks and other neural hub enhancements. You also get the added bonus of Tongs’s Rescue mission and the entire Missing Link chapter, previously released as DLC on other consoles. Even better – they’ve been integrated into the main game for a seamless experience. The future’s getting closer and closer…