November (18/12): Deus Ex : Mankind Divided 
The sequel to Human Revolution, Deus Ex Mankind Divided was one of my most anticipated games of the year. The latest entry to a series highly regarded as one of the best of all time, the original proving to be a revolution in game design still felt to this day, I was excited to continue the story of Adam Jensen. Unfortunately, the latest game isn't as much of a revolution as it is an evolution. That's ok in it's own right, but it also introduces some problems across the board which left me feeling ultimately rather disappointed.
One of the most interesting things about the series is that like any decent science fiction, it takes real world struggles and concepts and are able to use these to tell an interesting story. The original Deus Ex is a cyberpunk global conspiracy spy thriller but also oddly prophetic for its time regarding surveillance, data mining and artificial intelligence. There’s a general theme throughout the series around big business interests in politics, augmentations and transhumanism that raises interesting questions and makes the player think. Mankind Divided approaches a different subject, racism, but the results are not as successful. Two years after the events of Human Revolution, people are basically divided into two categories, human and augmented, with the former deeply fearful of the latter after *Deus Ex Human Revolution Spoilers* ‘The Aug Incident’. Basically a global catastrophe where people with augments where driven to violent insanity after a biochip embedded in people’s augments was activated. Augmented people turned on non-augmented people which resulted in the death of 50 million people worldwide, particularly where the population of augmented people were highest. Adam Jensen stops it from continuing on and pulling the people back to themselves but the damage was done and governments around the world decided to pass laws on how to deal with people’s fear and anger. In Mankind Divided’s case, a ‘mechanical apartheid’ is imposed on Prague where augmented people have human rights taken away and segregated to live in ghettos under constant police surveillance.
If that all sounds a bit far fetched as the narrative basis for this game then that’s because it is. To know that the upper class individuals from the first game who were able to afford augments in the first place now become a poverty stricken oppressed class, in the space of two years since the events of the previous game, is pretty far fetched. The level of open racism on show by civilians and even police forces seems comically over the top. There are even examples of ‘Aug Lives Matter’ printed across the world, a real world allegory about as blunt as a sledgehammer to the face. It’s not new for Deus Ex games to take real world issues and exaggerate them to fictional extremes and as we near some cyber dystopia of our own here in the real world, a story around identity politics could be interesting. But the handling of it in this game, having to incorporate it to events of the previous game, seems ham fisted and indeed even a little disrespectful to the very issues it is attempting to explore and expose.
The main narrative isn’t much better. You play as Adam Jensen once again, a fully augmented secret agent who gets caught up in a terror incident in Prague and finds the strands connecting to a bigger conspiracy involving the Illuminati and must uncover them. The problem is that the story told over 30 hours isn’t particularly meaningful. I got my money’s worth but it doesn’t feel like I had accomplished much by the end of it. It’s hard to feel you’re involved in a global conspiracy if the majority of your time is spent in Prague, as opposed to previous games that would have you globe trotting. The ending came more abruptly and anti-climactically than any game I’ve played since Halo 2, leaving the game with several plot threads left unresolved and where the real conflict will be addressed in a future sequel. But as a prequel to the original Deus Ex, we already know the outcome so it just seems like delaying the inevitable for the sake of more games to release in the series which is pretty shady.
The main strengths of the game come from the other aspects that Deus Ex is renowned for, it’s first person stealth RPG hybrid combined with expansive level design. In many ways it feels like fine tuning the formula laid out from Human Revolution as opposed to doing anything drastic to try and break it. You will often find that there isn’t just one solution to an obstacle in your way but many, all catering to how you approach the game. As an example, if you need to get to a location but need to get through a room of guards in order to do it, you have a number of options as your disposal. You can hack into terminals to unlock doors or bypass security systems in order to progress or you could find a vent shaft that leads to where you need to go, you could use your augments such as an invisible cloak to move from cover to cover or you could even construct your own path using crates and boxes to reach a higher elevation that allows you to traverse right above them without them seeing you. You could also use a lethal approach but I wouldn’t recommend it, the FPS mechanics just aren’t on the same level as a Titanfall or other FPS you care to mention. It’s fairly clunky, imprecise and slow, even pulling out the gun takes longer than you expect. Stealth is the best way to approach the game and it shows as you are given experience point bonuses for completing an objective for not raising an alarm or being spotted. For what it's worth, I played on the hardest difficulty option available to me when I started the game and didn't feel challenged at all when taking this approach. I imagine it's probably more difficult to go in each encounter all guns blazing but I can't imagine why you ever would if it doesn't feel great to begin with.
Your actions in the game like completing objectives or hacking terminals gives you experience points which you can use to upgrade your abilities and define your own play style, especially when combined with the array of lethal and non-lethal weapons. New to this game are new ‘experimental’ augmentations, which offer new abilities. The inspiration from Dishonored is apparent, even including it’s own ‘Blink’ mechanic to be able to teleport short distances across. While interesting, the trade off is that you must permanently turn off one of the core abilities to facilitate it’s inclusion. An interesting dilemma to begin with, however these new abilities don’t have a fundamental impact on the way you play the game in the same manner that your base abilities do and they often use up a lot of your energy meter, which can’t be so easily replenished without a fairly rare resource you must buy or find through digging meticulously through every container in the environment. Remote hacking and firing a concussive blast don’t amount to much other than a fancy parlor trick, the trade off with your base abilities is too high to even warrant the deal and you’re not going to be challenged without using them. It even seems like the developers were aware of this as halfway through the game you can complete a side quest which allows you to bypass the limitation. Any base ability you had previously disabled is now re enabled ready for use and every experimental augment is available to upgrade without penalty. Again, it’s a case where the gameplay doesn’t quite match with the story they’re trying to tell. How am I meant to feel part of an oppressed class and made to be treated as such when I can kill multiple security guards with the push of a button? I can launch explosive blades from my arms but I’m meant to feel scared of the security checkpoints and racist police force? There are a few tonal inconsistencies like this which only highlights that maybe there were missed opportunities they could have taken with the story.
There is a lot to like about Mankind Divided, it has smart level design, a cool looking cyberpunk world and offers the freedom to approach the game in a combination of ways that make the player feel smart and rewards their curiosity. I feel the core gameplay loop is solid enough to shine through its mechanical flaws and hasty writing but as a fan of the original and of Human Revolution, I was hoping for more from the story and it doesn’t leave me with confidence that it’s in good hands with the series going forward. In addition the game feels like a fine tune of Human Revolution that I felt like I was playing more of the same with incremental changes. It’s a good game from a series where I was expecting greatness, even excellence.
6/10 Side note: One 'improvement' from Human Revolution is that there is only one boss battle in this compared to the several that plagued the previous game, unanimously the worst parts about it. It’s saved to the very end but I feel the boss may have helped to my overall impression that the ending was so anti climatic. You're fighting a villain who you've only seen maybe twice throughout the whole game at this point and the room is fairly large, there are various avenues to go down, rooms to explore, potential doors and turrets to hack. I think what they intended was for you to make use of the whole environment, using it to your advantage but I tried a tactic by hiding behind cover, moving to the side of him where he couldn't see me, threw an EMP grenade at him and whilst he was stunned I ran up and pressed Circle to perform a non lethal takedown. It worked, the boss fight lasted roughly 20 seconds, dispatched as easily as any other human enemy in the game. Going forward, they should just stop making boss fights altogether, it’s not worth it.
Topic: 12in12 / 52in52 Video Game Challenge in 2016 (Read 33865 times)