Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Review

I first found out about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided when I went to EGX in Birmingham back in 2015, they had a screening area and we watched and listened as one of the lead designers talked us through some gameplay. The game then look incredible and with playing Deus Ex in the past it really perked up my interest in this futuristic augmented reality.

You play, as always as Adam Jenson, a high-tech augmented human (by augmented I mean think of a hardcore RoboCop on some serious robotic steroids). Jenson has always been different, his body doesn’t reject augmentation so is able to get his hands on some serious hardware.

Being an RPG it gives you the player the choice to either be a stealthy not being seen, hiding in the shadows operative with the ability to become invisible and go through areas completely unseen. Alternatively find and upgrade an assault rifle, activate hardened rhino skin and kill everything giving you the freedom to loot their corpses and explore the world unhindered. For my first play through I opted for the first, it just gives you that little bit more of a challenge, especially when you get stuck on a certain part that you have to reload over and over again.

The first thing that really hit me about this game was its recommended specs, the first game I’ve seen that wanted you to run an i7 processor and sixteen gigabytes of RAM seems a bit extreme. Although I have those specifications it became a daunting reminder that my PC doesn’t have much life left in this vicious world of PC gaming and that in general some of these triple A titles are really starting to require the power of the gods to run. Saying that the graphics as expected are incredible, the environment, lighting, shadows and effects are unbelievably good but that is to be expected considering the spec it needs to run.

Graphics aren’t everything especially as I can pour hours into a basic 8bit indie games over some of the high-end games. Deus Ex however has the graphics and the content to keep you interested. This, for me is because it’s all about player choice, the decisions you make and whether you choose to be non-lethal or lethal stealth, all guns blazing or just mix it up as and when you feel you forge out your own story. You even don’t get to go to certain areas or do the same missions. In my shoot everyone ask questions later new game plus I’m doing different missions and experiencing a new style of gameplay even though I’m nearly at fifty hours of gameplay.

The only thing I don’t like although it’s creeping into so many games now is micro transactions (in a single player game!) and DLC to enhance your gaming experience, it’s just unnecessary especially if the DLC’s actually finish off the story to the main game. At least make them separate in some way, the prelude to the next game as a teaser maybe. I don’t know, it’s because I’m from a generation pre internet that once you bought a game it was done. I won’t even get started with episodic games (Hitman) another Square Enix game. Well Deus Ex is sadly rife with such things but I won’t spoil the story but.. well, yeah.

All in all Deus Ex: Mankind Divided offers a wide choice of play styles, I’m halfway through my second more violent play through so it has loads of replay value (including the host of DLC which will follow, I believe one has already been announced), the graphics are as mentioned incredible and storyline flows with a great deal of decisions that need to be made at critical moments. I can easily score this Deus Ex: Mankind Divided 9/10, I’ve always loved the franchise and although micro transactions, pre-order content and extra story related DLC mildly annoy me, sadly I can do nothing to stop its endless press on the gaming world.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.