NOSTALGIA GOGGLES ALERT!

Deus Ex is my second-favorite game of all time, I have played it through roughly 20 times, it is EXACTLY how you describe Human Revolution. It looks mostly contemporary with a taste of cyberpunk. If anything Human Revolution has MORE cyberpunk.

Actually, when it comes to setting, I feel DX:HR is more imaginative than the original game by a pretty wide margin. Deus Ex was extremely inventive in the gameplay department, but the setting was quite bland.

I was about to get ninja'd. But I pressed F5 the second before posting and it made my post redundant. I'll keep it short:

Deus Ex is one of my favourite games, but HR is better in just about every aspect. Which is quite the achievement.

HR is not so open, I generally liked the flawed skill system from first DE more than streamlined one from HR, I found the story in the first game to be far superior. And it's had memorable characters, in HR everyone but that boss of yours seemed pretty bland. All that I actually like more about HR are these 2 things: You can carry turrets around and shooting is not a chore. But do keep in mind that I am not easily swayed by polish (or lack of it. And no, I'm not talking about nationality here,) so I am very likely to ignore downsides of a flawed system and only enjoy it's upsides.

edit: Oh right and what DID constantly annoy me about HR were automatic switches from 3rd to 1st person. Let me stick to only one of those, game!

You must be delusional if you think 2027 counts as "cyberpunk". Maybe if THR was made in the 80's, when what the future would be like was much less clear.

Waitwhat?

If you ask me, an attempt to analyse the potential impact of comercially-available augmentations on human society beats kitchen sink conspiracy theory extravaganza with philosophical quotes thrown in to pretend it has some depth to it any time.
So something being "cyberpunk" mostly depends on the year it's set in?

The more you know.

People need to normally composed of more cybernetic parts, the setting needs to be more grim and dystopian, yes.

Congrats on offering one the most derp retorts I have ever read on a forum.

Yes, but it "felt" right, and the progression of the story was solid. Just to be safe, I give both games high marks for the effort. In effect, I like them both equally, but for different reasons.

Yet again, F5 saved me.

The most impressive "story parts" of part one weren't the main story itself, but the "side storys" you only glanced ad. War on Terror (before it was cool), treatment of veterans, inequality in medical aid, etc.

They touched a lot of issues that became very important in the coming years. DX:HR wasn't bad in that regard, bit it just didn't have the "prophetic vision" of the first one.

It's also been done to death in various media, and the overal quality of the plot itself in HR wasn't really that good. It's even been pondered in original Deus Ex, just not nearly as much. So yeah, it just raised a question that I myself was fully aware of for a long time, and so it didn't really have any impact at me.

Meh, you are just grumpy and don't want to admit that DX could actually be pushed of the throne.

;-P

Well, that probably is a factor; I first played Deus Ex having read both the Illuminatus! trilogy and Foucault's Pendulum, which use essentially the same approach to conspiracies to a much greater effect. Both make DX look very childish in comparison.

And as I don't read very much science fiction these days, least of all cyberpunk, DX:HR was pretty much the first time I've seen the augmentation issue tackled well. But I agree with Simon – the game basically took the most interesting bits of the DX world and moved them to the forefront while shoving the silly Illuminati plotline as far back as possible.

And I didn't read either. Actually, I haven't red any book about conspiracies, ever. So yeah, I suppose it all comes down to personal preference :D Just a note thou, I do like the general world and location design more in HR. They really did that well.

What I dislike is that it really only has 2 hub locations that get recycled, most of the levels themselves felt less open which is a major complaint, and I found the XP+container-based level-up mechanic better. I know it was horribly unbalanced, but I don't care about that at all in a singleplayer game.
Well you're a lawyer, you should know. And no, I will never stop pointing that out.