All impressions are based on a pre-alpha version  supplied by developer Eidos Montreal, covering roughly the first third of the game. Another six months' work remains; some elements may still be "in progress." Spoilers ahead.

Adam Jensen isn't completely human anymore, but he still makes a human mistake: walking through the wrong door. Didn't see the tripwires. Or the bomb. The doors slam shut, and the hostages start screaming at him to do something before the poison gas releases. A hack on the bomb's control panel fails. With no way to get the people out, Jensen takes the only option left...he crawls through a vent to safety while all those people die.

Anyway, his boss told him those folks were expendable. Priority goes to securing the top-secret Typhoon weapon system down in the lab.

Eeny...meeny...miny...oh, hell, I'll just shoot them both and loot their bodies.

That's not the only way it can go down. Deus Ex built its fame on letting gamers roll their own way, mistakes and all, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution definitely wants to walk that walk. I see its potential, no lie, and I enjoyed my several runs through Detroit's troubled cybernetic Renaissance. As this unfinished version stands, I also found plenty of clichés, omissions, and character animations just a few puppet strings away from a perfect Thunderbirds-style supermarionation homage.

But here's what you really want to know: Does Revolution feel like Deus Ex?

Well, it definitely covers the conspiracies-within-conspiracies angle early and often. Your first two missions cover an attack on cybertechnology giant Sarif Industries that results in Jensen's life-saving augmentation, then his first day back after six months' recovery. Anti-augmentation sentiment runs high, and human-purity fanatics have stormed one of Sarif's factories. But terrorist leader Sanders -- the guy who cooked up that gas bomb -- doesn't know one of his men has a head full of cyberware...and somebody remote-controls that terrified ringer into eating his own bullet when Jensen catches him hacking into the building's mainframe.

After you deal with Sanders (or let him go), you're finally free to walk the open-world streets of Detroit and pick up side missions. Help a corrupt cop start a fun little gang war, or get dirt on the bastard for Internal Affairs. Give a mother closure on the death of her daughter (your ex-girlfriend, an augmentation scientist killed in the initial attack) or shake her down.

It's too early to tell how your moral lapses might play out over the long haul, and factional alliances aren't a concern yet, if ever. You've got one boss, David Sarif himself. Your orders come from him when you're not operating as a free agent. And while Sarif's an interesting portrait of the hyper-powerful CEO driven to improve the world his way, so far Human Revolution lacks DX's moral ambiguity.

Also missing? A city with a pulse. Detroit's streets feel dead, full of cars parked at the curb but none driving the roads. Lots of people stand around, but few outside of cops and guards actually move around. While you can speak to any of them, it's a one-in-three shot whether they'll say something interesting. So while you're looking for Grand Theft Auto 4-style mission pickups, don't look for a living, breathing Liberty City to go with it. That makes exploration and the inevitable backtracking a bit tedious, but assignments to date show decent variety in what you're doing and how you're doing it. That's good, because focusing on story missions alone would chop playtime in half.

Folding blades and retractable mirrorshades help with the existential cyber-angst.

When you do turn back to the conspiracy, data pulled from the ringer's neural hub points Jensen to one of those "abandoned" factories, where he spots the same three combat cyborgs who led the raid on Sarif HQ.

Catching up to them means a lot of sneaking around. As with the first Deus Ex, you'll get swiss-cheesed unless you stick to cover, and every area includes plenty of options for stealth-killing everybody in the room or avoiding combat entirely. You can always enhance your durability, but I get the impression it's not possible to tank up and go heavy to the extent DX allowed. The list of available cybernetic augmentations (which you can read more about)  makes it pretty clear Revolution wants you to be sneaky, not loud. Only a handful of purely offensive "augs" exist, and only the Typhoon system, which turns you into a 360-degree human claymore mine, feels properly devastating. The rest are defensive, physical (jumping, lifting, carrying capacity), stealth-based, or informational. This is Splinter Cell, not Modern Warfare.

Still, once you earn or buy a few Praxis points -- the currency for buying and upgrading your augs -- Jensen can leap a car and hurl an explosive barrel (red) at baddies he's marked for death. While invisible. Oh yeah, that's entertaining.

I also liked the social enhancement augs, which give you a profile on your target -- say, "looking for empathy" or "wants absolution." It's more interesting than a blue/red instant-win dialogue selection, but labeling options "empathy" and "absolution" telegraphs things a bit. Regardless, it's your job to figure out what each person wants to hear, and that's a nice bump on normal game interactions. Hopefully, it plays out in longer-term relationships, too.

Your limo and your driver. Tip well.

But mostly you'll shoot people, sneak past, or authoritatively nail them with lethal or non-lethal takedowns...nice to see those return to the franchise. Enemy A.I. is smart enough to flank, dumb enough to forget you after a few minutes' searching, and if you're acclimatized to any shooter from the last five years, Revolution's controls will take getting used to. Cover is mapped to the left trigger, a stick-click covers iron-sights aiming, and Jensen has no melee attack aside from the takedowns. That should tell you where Eidos put the emphasis right there.

Just for laughs, I saved up all my Praxis points on one playthrough specifically to try different tactics in my boss fight against Barrett, a tank cyborg with a minigun arm. Nothing worked until I cloaked and snuck away when he got too close. Walk into that room with nothing but maxed out hacking skills and you're doomed.

But did it feel like Deus Ex? Well...so far, so good.

Don't expect this to be as fresh and groundbreaking as DX was. Revolution goes back to the franchise roots so deeply that it tips toward imitation rather than innovation. Even the guns are the same. Fans of the non-lethal takedowns, get pumped; those who enjoyed specializing in grenades, start downscaling your expectations. That said, it works nicely as a stealth shooter, and consider the all-important paranoid vibe fully intact. I definitely don't trust anybody in Jensen's circle, dead or alive. A big smokescreen lifted just during this all-too-brief demo. One of many, I hope.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution packs in solid gameplay, but success will hinge on twists not even hinted at yet. It's off to a good start. Now we just have to see how deep the conspiracy goes.