9.5/10

Deus Ex is just a wonderful series. Sure, there was that one game that people didn't seem to like, but this, Deus Ex and Human Revolution are all great games. This just polishes the formula and continues on from HR, so the mechanics are similar, but it does everything a new game should: it improves upon everything. Augs are more fun to use, the story still taps into the paranoia and anger towards governments, corporations, etc, while spinning a fun tale, and the music is on point.

Most importantly, however, is how the map design has gotten better. Human Revolution was a lot of fun minus a few flaws, but it's like the team learned from their mistakes. Areas are open and truly free to tackle how you see fit, whether it's complete stealth, tanking, hacking, etc. It's really entertaining to just explore areas and see what kind of mischief you can get up to, and that's where Deus Ex has always shined.

Definitely pick it up if you're a fan of the series and haven't already done so.

P.S. I didn't get involved with any of the microtransaction bullshit: this is just a review of the campaign, which is all I wanted and needed from the game.

Podría decir que mecánicamente es una continuación de Human Revolution con escasos cambios, esto es para bien en el sentido de que sigue siendo un juego de sigilo y exploración sólido, aunque sigue pecando de los mismos fallos que hace que el juego se sienta algo "torpe". Sus tiroteos y las sensaciones de estos siguen siendo bastante insatisfactorios y se hace notable que el juego no busca esta salida en absoluto, aun así podría haberse desenvuelto mejor. En general a la violencia le falta cierta "espectacularidad" y fluidez.

Del otro lado tenemos una historia cuidada en sus detalles y con unos diálogos tratados con mimo. No obstante, es muy evidente que el desarrollo del juego no fue del todo tranquilo y aunque las secundarias son coherentes y auto-conclusivas (integrándose muchas en la campaña principal) es evidente que la campaña no es tan larga como debería y el clímax no sabe a nada dándote a entender que la historia acaba cuando en realidad está empezando. En resumen, la historia que se cuenta es pequeña, a ratos inconsistente y no arroja información valiosa sobre los iluminati o sus planes respecto al juego anterior.

Mi consejo es que si te gustan los juegos de sigilo le des un tiento, si vienes por los tiroteos date media vuelta, y si buscas una historia tan desarrollada y bien tratada como en su anterior entrega será mejor que relajes tus expectativas.

Warning: Don't play the hacking minigame, it ruins the game.

Introduction

Ok, with that out of the way, let's talk about the best game of all time - Deus Ex.

DX came out in 2000. Half-Life had come out two years earlier and blown all of our minds - you could actually tell a story in first-person shooters! And you could have actual puzzles, instead of just different coloured keys. You could even kill enemies in sort of creative ways.

DX took that to heart and expanded on it. It had an interesting story, influenced by the X-Files and other 90s conspiracy stuff. It had sprawling maps that allowed for multiple solutions to problems (locks, enemies, etc.). It even offered the player the opportunity not to kill, similar to Planescape: Torment (1999). Plus you developed your skills, augments and weapons like in a role-playing game. This all sounds "normal" to us now - but it sure wasn't back in 2000.

DXMD - The Good

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided takes that formula and lets the player roam in what is probably the largest map of all 4 Deus Ex games. There is a ton of stuff to do. Lots of places to break into. Lots of secrets to find. Lots of side-missions. Lots of world-building. It's a step up from Human Revolution - bigger and better.

DXMD also has new skills, new items, new enemies, new everything. It also has a more interesting world that feels more real than the half-empty streets of DXHR. The comparison to Apartheid was dumb, but the game does instill you with the feeling of being the Other. Take the wrong entrance or train car and a cop will waste your time checking your papers.

DXMD - The Bad

Ok, so the hacking minigame is really bad. I hacked everything during my first playthrough and it was awful. It's boring, luck-based, tedious and often requires reloading saves. The second time i played the game i only hacked once or twice and used password/passcodes and multi-tools instead. This makes the game go from a 7 to a 9.

I would strongly recommend hacking as little as possible. Only invest points in hacking cameras/turrets/robots if you want to disable/use those. The remote hacking system is fine by the way, i would definitely recommend getting that upgrade.

Another major problem is the stability of the game, especially during the A Criminal Past DLC. During the second half of the DLC i had constant crashes in both of my playthroughs. It was really bad, which is a shame because the DLC is great otherwise. And during the main game i only had a couple of crashes - i think it happened when using the metro so save before fast travelling.

There were a few other glitches and annoyances as well. A turret i was carrying disappeared and turned into a ghost. Sometimes the AI behaves really strangely. And stashing corpses can still be a problem, just like it was in DXHR. I also had a camera magically spot me through a floor once. And the game didn't de-spawn the turrets i placed in front of the bank so they were sort-of in the objects that spawn there.

Conclusion

If you love exploring a similar but different world and learning about its people you'll love DXMD. The game just offers so many things to see and do that i still discovered a whole bunch of new things the second time. There's a whole slew of appartments in Prague that you can only reach by climbing to the top of some buildings and hopping from balcony to balcony.

The many ways to deal with obstacles are also lots of fun. You want to hack a door but there's a camera watching it? Pick up a fridge and block their view. You want to knock out a guard but he won't turn his back? Remote hack something nearby and he might investigate. I've played through the entire game twice and i was only bored during the brief venture into the digital world.

If there's any game that doesn't deserve a ridiculous "Mixed" rating on Steam, it's DXMD. Yes, it has technical issues and they should have fixed those. But it's easily one of the best games of all time.

Mankind Divided is the sequel to 2011's Human Revolution and a prequel to the Original Deus Ex. You reprise your role as Adam Jensen - A mechanically augmented super-soldier working for Interpol in a dystopian/cyberpunk future where there is a large social and political gap between augs and naturals.

The game is set in Prague which is a small open-world hub that connects the missions of the game. This map is pretty small but it is full of nooks and crannies for you to explore and side missions to earn more money/XP.

The graphics are great, I played the PC version and while it was smooth sailing for the most part, there were some visual glitches and a couple of crashes in areas with lots of lighting and particle effects. Although this sucked it wasn't enough to tarnish the overall experience for me.

In the usual Deus Ex formula you can complete missions in many different ways. You can just go in guns blazing and killing everything that moves, take a stealthier, silent approach, or a combination of the two. You can go in through the front door, maybe hack a lock on a side door or find a vent to sneak in. I found that the game seems to be more oriented to the stealth play-style but you can level up body armor and weapon handling to make it more of a shooter if you want.

You also have a lot of choice when making decisions in the story. Decide who to kill and who to save or what information to divulge to which people. This effects small parts of the game but doesn’t vary things too much until you get to the final cinematics.

You level up by exploring, hacking, killing/knocking out enemies and completing missions, then you can spend your points on upgrading your augs. Including gadgets like a cloaking device, hacking software, x-ray vision, silent movement and a blade firing arm cannon. These are all pretty useful depending on your desired playstyle.

One moderate problem I had was the story and the length of the game overall. The story just doesn’t really have the hook the other games do. It has some great moments and it wasn't really bad. It just didn't pull me in that much. It also felt like an extra chapter or two were pulled from the game to tease a potential sequel. If you just blaze through the main story missions you’ll probably be done in around 12-15 hours. Although exploring and doing side-missions are great it still feels a bit short.

Overall a good looking, interesting game that should keep you entertained but just a bit lacking in the story department.

You know who you are. You either loved HR and loved this, or you want a return to the old game. DX is now surely becoming a fanbase divided. You are either nano-aug or a mecha-aug, orange or lemon-lime
Not that it matters, how one defines greatness. Canadian 23 will decide our future and write fate, and their motives are inscrutable

Playing this game you really do have 'free choice' but when there is clearly posturing due to mechanics, rewards, risks etc, you are essentially goaded into making certain developer sanctioned decisions, based on efficiency and convenience... Sometimes experimenting or trying to think out of the box is just too risky or too much trouble. In this regard DX is no different than many other stealth games... it become inefficient to fire shots or even use biocells when you can just patiently mark targets and opt to whittle away and clear areas low risk by going for stealth takedowns that recharge.. Why would you shoot a camera out when you can just hack it, or often just walk around another way? Why even waste an EMP grenade on it? In a way being goaded into 'right choices' this way is 'okay' you can adapt and be an illuminati-puppet mindcontrol pawn-slave, playing the game the way the developers want, but what sucks is that if you 'rebel' and test out that cool hardware, (shoot people, and drag their bodies into the womens' restroom!) or even just assassinate key NPCS you often get dialogue and cutscenes that are very out of character, or dont fit jensen's behavior and this is where the new breed of DX games fail as RPGS, and it doesnt help the fact the story is watered down window dressing. I also thought these characters are simply bad. The game would actually be better if they stripped out these elements as they aren't really bringing much of anything to the table and the old fans know the difference between orange and lemon-lime.

Now the gameplay, environments, exploration and stealth are all quite good though. In many ways better than in DXHR. Prague is basically several maps connected together, and it fits well and feels like a real city and at times the subtle changes fool the player into thinking the game is more nonlinear than it actually is (rain, time of day, some other changes as your playthrough progresses make it feel like a real place to some extent) I enjoyed DXMD prague as much as Watchdogs chicago or GTA4's Liberty City. All games where the city itself made the game worth a visit/playthrough. The weapons are fairly cool (as well as your augs) and you can customize things nicely depending on what you have aquired and how you wish to use them. the AI, combat mechanics, controls, all work fairly well together for the player and functions well enough as a game. Despite what i dont like, how much can I gripe at a game I played 6-10 hour sessions and throoguhly explored every bit of it? While I dont exactly appreciate certain bits of the canadian vision/design, it's in no way a badly designed theory for deus ex. The highlight of the game is probably the Palisade Bank, and all quests and backstory associatied with it, it was a fun idea and a bit what DX players expect. You have a nice twist, if you dig deeper, you can rob the place, you can in general do a lot of things in different ways and for a split second it feels like an old DX sidequest. I also liked the underlying elements of the plot in a criminal past, that start to paint an interesting picture if you dig deeper.

In the end this isn't classic DX, and it's unlikely it ever will be such again with the roiling warren specter tale and a straylight productions atmo, mainly as there isn't really much 'choices or consequences' or emergent gameplay but there is a nice aspect of improvisation when shit hits fan and alarms go off (and the tried and true methodical stealth takedown fails and combat becomes necessary once in a while) That makes it still fun in it's own right, and despite a bunch of junkmail to read through and a goofy story it's far better than what these canadian sloopsellers called Thief It would be nice to see the new philosophy and improved game play elements merge with the kind of storytelling in the original games, and maybe even build functional RPG (with characters, and choice and consequence)

I am also curious how/if the new games can marry lore with the old games. I dont really quite see how they could pull it off. in this world people are paranoid of augs because they have potential to be instant terrorists again (As they were during the incident) so people dont trust them, yet at some point the augs become less visible as nanotech develops, and mix amongst us more or less unnoticed.... That's true catalyst for off the hook xenophobia and it's never an issue in the old games aside from the mistrust of nuts like joe greene and his radical newspaper :P

Would like to see some offices in Austin reopen again and Americans show canadians how it's done. lol None of this nice guy non lethal/stealth takedown stuff.

I didn't finish Human Revolution, mostly because of the controls. Thankfully, those are much better this go around, as well as some other quality of life improvements. Don't worry if you didn't play or finish Human Revolution. They give you a very detailed background at the start of the game.

The story is interesting and there are plenty of side quests to keep you engaged. There's a variety of ways to approach every single quest. You can truly play things out your way, and you can spec out a character build to match. There are some really fun new augments, and the overclock system adds an interesting level of strategy.

Overall, this game was a fun romp with great characters, a good story, and some really interesting/challenging levels.

DLC Review:

There are 3 DLC's, all of which are standalone stories and have some minor spoilers to the main game.

A Criminal Past: This is a mission that takes place before the main game. You are able to choose if you want to go with only Jensen's normal augs, or if you want to break canon and also use his new overclocked augs. This one was the most difficult, as you start out with only some basic skills, no PRAXIS kits for upgrades, and no weaponry. It takes awhile before you really start to collect things, and PRAXIS kits are few and far between. That said, it was a fun DLC, albeit challenging. A good length for the main mission with plenty of places to explore and hidden things to find.

Desperate Measures: I think this one is actually just a bonus mission rather than a full DLC, but it's listed in Jensen's Stories and is separate from the main game like the others. This one was quite fun, and I enjoyed the challenge of breaking into a Tarvos facility without anyone being the wiser. You start with a few items and a handful of Praxis kits (10?), with your basic upgrades unlocked and new overclocked augs available. There are plenty of goodies spread throughout the level.

System Rift: This was another fun one, teaming up with good ol' Francis to take on Palisade Bank's Blades facility. Again, you start out with a few items and Praxis kits (13?), basic upgrades and overclocked augs unlocked. This DLC has its own small hub and then the Blades facility itself. As you'd expect, there's plenty of places to poke your nose into.

I enjoyed all the DLC's. They each had their own challenges and intrigue attached. My only complaint is that I feel like Desperate Measures and System Rift would have been better served as part of the main game. They could have slid right in as some secondary quests for you to unlock at certain points in the game. Given the limited nature of them being self-contained, you don't get the chance to go at them to your fullest, nor do you get to experience them in NG+. Now, the prequel mission (Criminal Past) makes sense to do separately, but otherwise, I think it was a missed opportunity by the devs. Especially as DLC's, particularly in open world games, are more often than not thread into the main story to access. Being able to super stealth my way through the Blades with all my upgrades would have been the best.

The main story of Mankind Divided begins in 2029, two years after the events of the previous game Human Revolution. After the catastrophe with the bio-chips that cause enhanced humans to attack everyone, societies have split into pro- and anti-enhanced humans. The former groups began to congregate in ghettos where crime increased and the police became accustomed to abusing their powers. In an atmosphere of widespread social unrest, terrorist organizations claiming to fight for equal rights for empowered people began to emerge.

In the game we again take on the role of Adam Jensen. The heavily augmented hero works for Interpol as part of the anti-terrorist group Task Force 29, and also collaborates with a group of hackers called the Juggernaut Collective. Jensen's ultimate goal is to solve the mystery of the sinister Illuminati. In subsequent missions, the two allies often have conflicting goals, forcing the player to play a game in which dangerous decisions will be made that will affect the fate of all humanity. Similar to previous games in the series, Mankind Divided gameplay is non-linear and offers a variety of approaches.

The developers allow players to play in two main core ways: One is focused on action and open combat, while the other is sneaking, infiltration and silent elimination of our enemies. Enemies are now much more dangerous thanks to improved AI and the ability to work in groups. Rarely do we see a situation where the Guardians are on their own. They act in pairs against Jensen, even when patrolling nooks and crannies. On top of that, the developers have made sure that our opponents are significantly more diverse, and so we'll face opponents who use power-ups and exoskeletons as well as mechs. Much attention has been paid to improving the fighting segments against powerful enemies. During battles can now take place in a variety of ways, including sneak surprise attacks, full frontal attacks or a combination of both.

Adam Jensen has also gained a number of completely new skills. The upgrades in Mankind Divided are about twice as many as in Human Revolution. The hero can now remotely hack turrets, robots and cameras, and can also almost instantly leap meters upwards over short distances. The knife on his forearm can be used for direct melee attacks or for throwing smaller projectiles. There's also a power-up that incapacitates our enemies with electricity. As we progress, we unlock access to new skills that can be used during combat, sneaking, or both. But using them drains our energy reserves. Although they partially regenerate themselves when Jensen doesn't use his enhancements, their full regeneration requires special bio-cells.

Depending on our choices, the game's story can take unexpected turns in the long run. For example: In the beginning we encounter some criminals and if we choose to kill them you can be subjected to their revenge later on. Not everything is limited to this, though. The events of Mankind Divided are also influenced by the conversations we have with other characters, which allows us to resolve some conflicts only through diplomacy. This part of your gameplay becomes more detailed when you get the implant CASIE, a perk that analyzes the psychological state of the NPC during a conversation.

Even though Mankind Divided has great improvements compared to Human Revolution, it was much less liked and criticized by players than Mankind Divided. While the gameplay is very enjoyable, it has to be admitted that the ending is extremely weak. The game offers an average of 25 hours of gameplay with all the side content and if you don't do the side interactions, it will be very short. Mankind Dived has the technical infrastructure to be a standalone game.

But it also has a rather abrupt and uninspiring finale, more like the first episode of a game as the main story. This was one of the biggest reasons why it received negative reviews. Because according to many people, Adam Jensen's story was already completed in the previous game. The 2nd game just left more unanswered questions and ended without tying it up. Regardless, it was one of the best series I've ever played and I'm looking forward to Eidos Montreal wrapping up Adam Jensen's unfinished story with a satisfying finale in the years to come.

Gameplay: 3.75/5 Story: 3/5 Presentation: 4/5

Basis:

Story= plot progression, intrigue, characters, world

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

I would like to start by saying that I have not played the other games in the Deus Ex series. This game was very well designed. Its cybernetic near-future setting was super awesome to explore. They did a really good job of filling small spaces (relatively) with a lot to do and explore. The story carried from the previous game but wasn't very hard to follow even if you hadn't played the first. Lots of deceit and mistrust with everyone you meet made you always feel a little on edge.

As I would play through some levels I would hack my way through a lot of doors to get to my objective only to later find out I could crawl through a series of ventilation systems to get to the same place. The level of diversity of how you could complete a level was impressive. It also carries through the whole game because of how they build your skill tree. For example, I started out building my skills to be sneaky and when I realized I wasn't very good at the stealth in the game I switched to a more direct assault build which worked out really well but played completely different. Freedom to choose how to progress through linear levels in a game is a huge plus for me.

In the end, with all the games style and creativity the story felt unimpactful there were some twists and turns, but because the character building wasn't very strong I wasn't surprised by any of it. Certain individuals dye or betray you, but they seem so small in scale to the game that it left me think " oh who is that character again. Wait they are important?" I had hoped that there would be a more grand scale ending, but the game was left open-ended. I would definitely be on board for a sequel, but with Cyberpunk 2077 coming up I don't know that that will be the best move for Square Enix to do. Who knows though. If they make a stellar sequel then it could compete.

I would recommend it for anyone who really likes near future sci-fi and stealth shooters similar to Splinter Cell. If I could give a half star rating I really would give it 3.5, not just 3.