Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Previews @ Joystiq, IGN

Joystiq got to spend three hours with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which seems a reasonable taste. As with other previews, they emphasise this is going to be a "special" game:

When Deus Ex: Human Revolution launches, two things are going to happen: 1) People are going to inevitably compare it to Mass Effect 2 and 2) Fans of the original game are going to find a prequel that carefully and methodically takes its cues from Warren Spector's masterpiece. I know it's not actually out and I didn't get to toy around with the final product, but my near three hours playing through the beginning of the game and its first major mission were incredibly telling of what Eidos Montreal is trying to accomplish here. This is going to be a special game.

IGN takes a different approach, with a Newcomer's Perspective. I'm not sure how someone who has never played DX can declare this one "feels" as trailblazing as the first but there you go:

Me? I'm simply curious, first to see what all the fuss is about and then to see how Deus Ex's open-ended model holds up in an era where, thanks to its progeny, choice is king. There's no doubting that Human Revolution feels like a Deus Ex game, but is that enough to cut it against the new breed of games its predecessors helped spawn?

Short answer, yes it can, and it cuts it in its own very special way. In many ways Deus Ex: Human Revolution feels as singular as the trailblazing first game did 11 years ago. It's ball-breakingly tough and asks you to play it in a way that, to an audience raised on the high-budget shooting galleries that are now ubiquitous, feels counter-intuitive, while as a role-playing game it's detailed to a degree that's initially terrifying.