Today we look at the video game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The game known for triggering Black Lives Matter for concept art with an ‘Aug Lives Matter’ sign and therefore accused of cultural appropriation of Black Lives Matter (despite the fact that Eidos came up with the sign before Black Lives Matter started Click the link for a polygon article on the matter ).

Yet moving onto the big question is it a good game, does it live up to the last game Deus Ex Human Revolution and fix some of its flaws?

Well as always I’ll look at the story, and the gameplay for the game to give you the final objective review and make sure your time and money aren’t wasted. I won’t look at the characters this time because this is still a Deus ex game meaning mentioning the characters without spoiling or even hinting at a potential plot point is next to impossible.

The story

The story of Deus Ex Mankind Divided starts two years after the first game after all the augmented people went berserk and Adam had to make a completely pointless choice between three buttons (Your choice isn’t referenced in this game by the way). Now he’s part of an Interpol task force to stop global terrorism from augmented terrorists. He does this in spite of the fact that discrimination is now completely legal against augmented people throughout many parts of the world due to what happened two years ago. That is where a great deal of personal conflict comes from. Does he loyally serve the government that outright hates his kind, doubt him constantly, do things behind his back and clearly take orders from the Illuminati or does he join with his fellow oppressed augmented people?

> Okay that was a bit of an exaggeration it’s not that bad but you get the idea, the story in this game isn’t really as complex and deep as Human Revolution was. Whereas Human Revolution was who did, who did it? Was it him, no he’s a puppet for someone else, well was it that guy? Nope also a puppet for someone else keep looking!

>And as you kept going more and more of the world became open to you and felt real depth in the story and Mankind Divided just doesn’t have as much of that. You are introduced to most of the main players in the story at the beginning and the game world feels smaller as a result.

The Gameplay

Gameplay wise the game is still very much Dues Ex, the gameplay that made Human Revolution great is still there (your even given the option to use mostly the same control scheme when you start the game) and new things have been added in. Downside being there’s not a whole lot of reason to use many of the new features. That even extends to a lot of new augmentations as much as I wish that weren’t true.

For example one augmentation gives you a very Far Cry 3-esque power to mark targets after looking at them for a while and always know where they are on the screen. Would be relevant if it weren’t for the radar that tells you the enemy position at all times. Or the Batman Arkham Asylum-esque power to see enemies through walls. Would be relevant if those enemies had any chance of actually seeing you. One that involves having a blade that you can use as melee weapon and shoot at enemies because guns and your regular takedown moves are boring apparently and another that allows you to taser the enemy from a distance and knock them out because the taser gun you already have is so last year and so on.

However the features that you do get to use do very well in the new game and the design of this game far surpasses its predecessor. For any players of the first game that went the pacifist route and then found out the very first boss is half man half tank and felt really silly as they had to get really creative in the boss battle don’t worry that issue is gone in this game. There is a stealth option available if you really want to use it.

The Conclusion

Deus Ex Mankind Divided fixes some problems the original had yet it leans too heavily on the original in order to make up for less story than that one had. To the point that it only just feels like a real sequel rather than an expansion pack. Another thing that really stood out to me that I only just remembered was there’s a lack of consequences. In this game you can assault police officers on missions and on side missions, even kill them, get spotted doing it and yet the entire city police force won’t be hostile towards you as long as you get out of sight and holster your gun. Because of that Mankind Divided gets a drop in the score I was going to give.

It receives a 7.4 out of 10