I recently finished a play through of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I’ve been a fan of the Deus Ex games since the first release way back in 2000, and I was pretty excited for the new release. Eidos Montreal promised they wouldn’t mess up the boss fights this time, and outside of that unpleasantness, I loved Human Revolution. I’ll do my best to avoid massive spoilers but there might be a few at the end of this.
The game puts you back in JC Denton’s Adam Jensen’s shoes in the wonderful city of Prague. In the story’s universe, the city of Prague is not the nicest to its augmented citizens. The city even has it own ghetto to corral all the augmented citizens in one area. If you might recall, our stories protagonist has about as many human bits left as Robocop does. This leads to some interesting interactions with the local security forces. I highly recommend walking in the non-aug areas as much as possible to trigger the events btw.
The city’s paranoia is not entirely without good reason. The world is still scared from a horrific event years before when the world’s augmented population went berserk causing the worst loss of human life in history. I might be a bit scared of the guy with arms strong enough to tear through sheet metal knowing a loss of control had happened.
It is all good for the hero though. He’s in town working for Sector 7 er Task Force 29. He is hunting terrorists who enjoy blowing things up or something. Too be honest, the side quests are better then the main plot line. They bring up some really thought provoking topics, but they never delve deep enough into them. So that’s two things so far. Piss off the local cops, and do the side quests.
Game play is good. You can sneak around and punch people, or sneak around and gut them. You’ll also have lots of guns and explosives to help you on your quest. Your character is more then capable to demolishing AI characters in a 1v1 fight. However, they will set off the alarms quickly. You’ll be outnumbered in no time, and probably die. If you’re character is using a stealth build, you’ll probably die anyway. I know I did, a lot. 🙁 At least it reloads fairly quickly. Anyway, I’m sure an assault build would make quick work of the bad guys if one wanted to play that way.
I attempted to go non-lethal in my play through, but the first NPC I spoke with said I hadn’t been. I must have held down ‘Q’ for too long and executed an AI. Perhaps I dropped some unconscious guy from too high up? I dunno what I did, but I guess I was labeled a murder at this point. I reacted about like this..
As for the game’s performance. Well, it did alright on my Nvidia 770. I was running it at 1080 resolution with graphics set to high. For 95% of the game, it ran flawlessly. I did have a couple of massive FPS drops in two areas. I’m not sure if my GPU disliked the rain as both drops happened during active rainstorms. However, my GPU could have been overheating. I think it’s becoming ill, and I had been playing for awhile before it went weird.
‘Hey I heard there were micro-transactions, and if you defend them you’re a fanboy.’ Controversy time! Yes, it has micro-transactions in a single player game. No, you do not need them to enjoy the game. You can buy in game upgrade points. However, the game is fairly generous about giving out those upgrades just by finishing missions. I didn’t have an issue with in game credits either. I was a bit short on the microcell batteries that recharge your augments through some of the game, but it never was that much of an issue. I should note that I barely even noticed the micro-transactions. I don’t recall any in game moments that said, ‘Hey go pay real $ for in game upgrades’. I barely noticed the ‘Store’ tab in the options menu. Yeah, it is a bit odd for micro-transactions to be in a full priced release. However, I don’t feel they’re an issue. If you have impulse control problems, you probably disagree with me and that’s cool. Rock on!
Overall, I’d give Deus Ex: Mankind Divided a thumbs up. It’s fun, the visuals are well done, and it’s a neat story while it lasts. It should be on sale soon enough. I’d recommend picking it up then.