Stealth games make me feel like an idiot. It doesn't matter how hard I try or what tactics I implement, something about covert action just refuses to jibe with my play style. So when I sat down to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I was prepared to accept this failure and go through the massive demo with guns blazing.

After doing that for the first hour of the preview event, I realized I had three hours more to fill...somehow. Eidos Montreal wanted to give us plenty of time to learn and explore the highly customizable skill and combat systems in Human Revolution.

So I decided to try out stealth, even though I knew I'd come close to throwing the controller through a screen at some point. Luckily, this isn't the story of me being banned from Square Enix events.

Opting for stealth wasn't an active decision. While Human Revolution has an open-door policy on how you fight, rushing into situations like a Spartan isn't a good idea. The developers told us we would almost certainly die during the tutorial, and they weren't joking. You can't plow through this game like just another shooter. Even lethal combat requires some stealth skill to pull off effectively.

Since my efforts to both run and gun were met with a tremendous amount of death, I opted to move slowly and precisely. The augmentation system aided this effort as I explored its many options. The player can customize protagonist Adam Jensen with any number of defensive and offensive abilities. I opted for a well-balanced choice of better aiming mixed with the ability to see the enemy's line of sight.

With a slight tweak in the favor of stealth, a whole world of opportunity opened up. Fighting the alarmingly aggressive and accurate throng of terrorists was much more manageable once I accepted that I needed to watch their movement patterns and drag their bodies out of view of others.

Before too long, I realized that I was playing through the demo without killing anyone at all. Human Revolution's less-than-gentle introduction to combat was precisely what I needed to force myself into a stealthy frame of mind.

Four hours left me feeling incredibly positive about Human Revolution's future and about my own gaming skills. Hopefully the final product will introduce other uncertain gamers to the benefit of covert and non-lethal tactics when it comes out on August 23.

Note: Square Enix paid for my flight and hotel room for this trip.