Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided continues the story set up from the last two games, set in a world where augmented humans are a reality – humans with robotic body parts and enhancements making them stronger, faster, more capable than mere humans. But then between this and the last game, was the incident, where some bad due set of a virus that turned most Augs into human killing machines and whilst there were many casualties, mankind emerged the victor and the Augs, through no fault of their own became the outcast, the entrusted. New laws and regulations were set up and Augs now live in a world akin to Apartheid or NAZI Germany. Police checkpoints, brutality, even whispers of internment camps.
This is the world that you inhabit, you are Adam Jensen, an augmented special operative from a UN style police force, and by the end of the game’s first mission you realize that everything is being controlled by some shady organisation so decide to go to ground and try and find out just who is responsible for all the shit that has been happening.
Or something like that. As story-lines go, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’s is pretty solid and interesting. Once you get past the first mission in an abandoned building site in Dubai, you get to sneak around the streets of Prague. This is where the game really kicks into gear, and you have to get to know you capabilities, and limitations to really get around. And like any good RPG, you have to look at everything. Anything interactive comes up with a line around it when you look at it. My only moan about this, other than it visually breaking immersion, is that you get the same coloured line weather its something of interest, some loot, something important, or just something you can throw. Over time you get to know what’s of interest and whats not, though you still have to look at most things, because you never know if that bottle is going to be a throw-able object or a bottle of beer.
Beer is a keeper as it helps heal your health. No, really, in Mankind Divided beer is really good for you. Well, it does have it’s downsides. Chug a couple when you’re behind cover to bring you health back to full, and you’ll end up with blurry double vision until the effects of the alcohol wear off, making that firefight you were half way through all that more interesting.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a very clever game that rewards the explorers among us. You can approach the game in a linear fashion with all guns blazing. And good luck to you with that. It’s probably achievable, but be warned ammo is limited so you’ll have to loot bodies as you go.
More enjoyable is figuring out ways to get past road blocks without smashing through them. This can either be through finding a stealthy route to starting an option but by no means shallow side quest. Some times these side quests will feel like part of the main story and unless you’re paying attending, asking the right questions, you’ll go back to the road block and nothing will have changed. One of the first road blocks in Prague is a corrupt Cop, and there are three ways to get past him: find a way to sneak past him, kill him or get someone to kill him. The third option, and most enjoyable is to complete a side quest and listen to what the girl tells you about the police in the area.
As well as alcohol, bullets and guns, you can pick up money (credits), sellable items and crafting resources. Crafting resources obviously enable you to craft items, items which you can use on the fly to customsie your gun, turning a spray and pray assault rifle into a silent killer by adding a silencer, single shot mode and a scope.
Of course the key to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is knowing which augs to use and how. Some augmentations will allow you to get to areas a normal person can’t, some will allow you to hack remotely, give you better amour or kill someone who really needs to be killed, instantly, no matter what amour they are wearing. Having powerful augs might some a bit God mode like, but each ability is coupled with a power drain, and has to be re-charged before it can be used again, meaning that even the powerful ones are accessible whilst never loosing their feeling of rarity and awesomeness.
All up Deus Ex: Mankind Divided manages to pull of something quite spectacular by easily being the best game in the series, and playing out like a game that feels like it gives you some many options that the experience always feels unique to you.
Rating: R16 Contains violence, offensive language and sexual themes.
GAMEGUIDE rating:
