Review Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Launch Trailer and Reviews

[toro]

This settles it.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You review the Shitcher 3, which is the definition of popamole fantasy action FPS with light RPG elements, but refuse to review Deus Ex, which is even more an RPG than most of the other reviews in that genre?

I would like to meet this Yu, that you speak of, he seems an interesting character.

I preordered this, but the meh reception from media makes me consider canceling it. 7/10 more of the same from the shill brigade does not inspire any confidence.

Except it's actually a 84/100 and 81/100 average on metacritic and opencritic, not really a 7/10. But sure.

http://opencritic.com/game/1812/deus-ex-mankind-divided

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-mankind-divided

A AAA title getting 81-84 means it's shit and no matter how much the media wants to give it 12/10, they really can't.

If I'm reading the reviews correctly, it seems that:

- the game is very easy on Hard, which isn't really a big deal these days, but it does fuck up a game where using different tools to deal with the obstacles is a major feature
- the first mission is well designed, the rest is formulaic and uninspiring shit
- steal is OP and removes what little challenge the game has.

 

[Tito Anic]

A AAA title getting 81-84 means it's shit and no matter how much the media wants to give it 12/10, they really can't.

Stolen for signature!

 

[Infinitron]

A AAA title getting 81-84 means it's shit and no matter how much the media wants to give it 12/10, they really can't.

You do leave room for exceptions, I hope!

 

[Bubbles]

You review the Shitcher 3, which is the definition of popamole fantasy action FPS with light RPG elements, but refuse to review Deus Ex, which is even more an RPG than most of the other reviews in that genre?

I would like to meet this Yu, that you speak of, he seems an interesting character.

I preordered this, but the meh reception from media makes me consider canceling it. 7/10 more of the same from the shill brigade does not inspire any confidence.

Except it's actually a 84/100 and 81/100 average on metacritic and opencritic, not really a 7/10. But sure.

http://opencritic.com/game/1812/deus-ex-mankind-divided

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-mankind-divided

So almost as good as Doom 4.

 

[Vault Dweller]

A AAA title getting 81-84 means it's shit and no matter how much the media wants to give it 12/10, they really can't.

You do leave room for exceptions, I hope!

The media is rarely excited about 'same engine and assets' sequels.

 

[Infinitron]

A AAA title getting 81-84 means it's shit and no matter how much the media wants to give it 12/10, they really can't.

You do leave room for exceptions, I hope!

The media is rarely excited about 'same engine and assets' sequels.

I'm willing to believe that its story is a bit fucked up, but since you bring that up, this game is also receiving some of those "more of the same" criticisms and lack of excitement. Even though it uses a new engine, the gameplay and aesthetics are very similar to HR.

 

[Naveen]

All I want to know if it ties in some more to the original Deus Ex story.

Of course it does, look at this majestic and incline writing:

 

[Tito Anic]

Of course it does, look at this majestic and incline writing

Source?

 

[Naveen]

Of course it does, look at this majestic and incline writing

Source?

Some sort of Square Enix newsletter I subscribed but still haven't labeled as spam for some reason.

Here's the link: http://bit.ly/2bBUy1w

 

[Vault Dweller]

@Infinitron

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/d...08/19/a-big-heart-with-a-mechanical-soul.aspx

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is futuristic science fiction, but the message it delivers stems from today’s societal problems. Police shoot unarmed innocents, extremist groups unleash acts of terror, and communities are torn apart by segregation. The story explores these issues thoroughly and makes a clear statement about the threat posed by totalitarianism, but the delivery is often heavy-handed and overstated. ... Eidos Montreal attempts to disguise hot-button issues as speculative fiction, but sacrifices an interesting story to hammer home its messaging.

Liberal Agenda the Game

When we first meet Jensen, he’s on assignment in Dubai, tracking an arms dealer through an unfinished highrise hotel. This mission displays the promise of Deus Ex’s gameplay, deftly mixing stealth with hacking and the occasional exchange of gunfire. This mission is paced nicely and delivers true excitement, culminating in the surprise assault by a new terrorist cell, each of its soldiers adorned in stylish gold masks and augmented enhancements. Player choice (which is woven into the entire narrative arc with plenty of difficult “no-win” moments) comes into play here, as does a timed event that applies unexpected pressure to the gameplay, making me switch from stealth to run-and-gun to reach my objective in time. It’s a hell of an introductory sequence, but the game never finds that pulse again, and instead becomes formulaic.

Good ol' Fargoth's Gold.

Once the action starts in earnest, the missions are surprisingly dull, mostly having the player navigate a sea of enemies to track down people to communicate with or an object of desire. I know this may sound like Deus Ex at its core, but my back was hardly ever against a wall, and I wasn’t compelled to search high and low for a more efficient path through these hostile grounds. I rarely ran into a need to switch play styles (as I did in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the precursor game), as most zones are only lightly peppered with guards or threats. The game allows you to settle into a nice groove, which is great to an extent, but it doesn't deliver much intensity (even on the higher difficulty levels).

Dumbing Down: the ride that never ends.

Outside of the critical-path missions, the world opens up and allows players to sink their teeth into what Deus Ex is known for: player freedom. None of the hub worlds are huge, but they are all truly open, with numerous side missions to tackle and secrets hidden well off of the beaten path. The world itself is beautifully realized, visually giving us a look at the different wealth classes, and the impact government has had on their states of living. Just walking the streets can be an intense experience, given how heavily policed some areas are.

This does sound great but if gameplay is shit, it will be as exciting as playing Oblivion for its much hyped soil erosion.

Although Eidos Montreal apologized for the terrible boss battles in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, this sequel delivers a battle that is just as infuriating. I ended up cheesing the sequence by hiding in a vent, waiting for the alert phase to expire, and then snuck out to shoot my target in the head with a sniper rifle. I had to repeat this tactic at least a dozen times to drop the foe, fearing the game was glitched, but it turns out he’s just a bullet sponge. If that fight wasn’t frustrating enough (and it’s oddly the only boss I encountered), the game’s ending doesn’t really feel like an ending at all. I accomplished a feat, but was left with a half-baked sendoff, and not enough exposition – which is surprisingly out of character for Mankind Divided.

Bloated HP, easily exploitable scripting, non-existing AI. What's not to like?

http://www.pcgamesn.com/deus-ex-mankind-divided/deus-ex-mankind-divided-pc-review

Sadly, for a game so defined by choice, the overall experience can feel, if not entirely claustrophobic, then half-baked and unfinished. Compared to its predecessor, Mankind Divided feels far less sweeping, almost as if Eidos made two thirds of a full game before pulling the plug on the final act. Indeed, I don’t know if I’ve ever been so shocked to see a set of credits hit. Not shock in the sense of ‘Holy sugar, I can’t believe how bold and surprising that last cutscene was!’ More ‘How the hell is this over?! I only thought I was 60% through the game’. Pacing-wise, the final few hours feel horribly rushed.

Length isn’t necessarily an assurance of quality, but Mankind Divided definitely took me a good ten hours less to finish than its predecessor. I wasn’t rushing, either. I finished every one of the game’s side quests, including one that took me 40 minutes longer than it should have because a mission-critical NPC kept getting his head trapped in a crate. Gah.

The shortened campaign also impacts Mankind Divided’s locations. Last time out, Jensen jet-setted between Detroit and the multilayered Hengsha island; two fully formed cities you could freely explore. Here, you’re essentially limited to Prague, with a couple of brief detours to the slum town of Golem and the Swiss Alps - both of which play out in tightly confined military bases, not open-ended hubs. It’s another way in which Human Revolution makes its sequel look more than a little small fry.

Seems that the awesome visuals (which do look spectacular) came at the expense of everything else: story telling, gameplay mechanics, even scope and length.

PS. Oddly enough most reviews don't mention that there's only city. They say that the world is truly open but don't say that it's a single city game that offers less than its predecessor.

http://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps4/deus_ex_mankind_divided

When it comes to the length of the story, you could probably blitz through Mankind Divided in about ten hours if you ignored side missions and rushed down the critical path alone...

8-10 hours, 12 hours with sidequests.

However, when you start to break Mankind Divided down into its separate components, you can't help but begin to see the cracks. While none of the game's core mechanics are especially bad, they're far from being perfect

I'm not saying it was aliens especially bad, but it was especially bad.

http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2016/08/19/review-deus-ex-mankind-divided/221651/

It should be stated that Mankind Divided is shorter than its predecessor, comparable to that of Invisible War. Completing all of the side quests and main missions, along with exploring virtually everything in the world took us roughly twenty to twenty-five hours, and then only eight hours on our second go around while still accomplishing everything. Overall, there’s around 25 missions combined, with only one of them spanning a decent length. Forget the short campaign, though; easily the worst offender of the story is that there’s no stakes at play. Neither Jensen nor anyone in the task force becomes in danger throughout the plot. There’s one instance where someone can die if you didn’t choose one of the branching paths earlier on, but the few choices given feel inconsequential to the story, not to mention they don’t build that character very well to begin with. Speaking of the branching paths, there’s only one instance of this throughout the game, and it feels completely unnecessary. It does force players to choose between two missions, but it’s something that should have been better explored, ultimately contributing to lack of peril.

The story itself is the generic threat that needs to be stopped with some of the most predictable “twists,” if you can call them that, spread throughout the relatively short campaign. Eidos Montreal even seems to leave out some of the unique characters that inhabit the world; why are they even there to begin with? Usually, it’s the side quests that make up the bulk of the interesting tales, but unfortunately, of the few that are here, there’s only one that’s compelling enough to follow. This is because it focuses on the player’s investigation skill when a gruesome murder occurs. It will make you go back and forth on who to suspect while collecting evidence. The rest of them are essentially glorified fetch quests that require you to break into a location and take a single item. The worst part is that there’s very few of these that go past a couple of tasks, making them not only creatively disappointing, but quests that are over instantly.
...
Don’t be confused, though; Golem City isn’t the Hengsha of Mankind Divided as it’s a straightforward mission with a couple optional tasks that might get you to the end goal a little quicker. Unfortunately, everything past Golem City is a huge disappointment. Literally the next two missions outside of Prague can be completed in a combined time of one hour, and that’s if you’re exploring most of the rooms and hacking most of the terminals available. Even the time spent in Prague decreases significantly, mainly because the city itself begins to change for the worse, to the point it’s hard to find any quest givers. Because Prague is the only hub Adam Jesen will have, it should be a well-designed area with a plethora of content to back it up. Unfortunately, that’s not entirely the case.
...
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s not all great in the gameplay department. The biggest criticism with Mankind Divided is how Eidos Montreal lays out each scenario. I hope you like grates as they’re everywhere and connected to every room, not to mention being conveniently placed to find in order avoid combat all together. While some of the levels feel incredible creative from an artistic standpoint, they’re damaged by the inclusion of so many easily accessible shortcuts. Of course players can avoid them all together, but in the attempt to make the game accessible to all, they’ve also made it far too easy to actually avoid engaging in the enjoyable combat. There’s no challenge, even on the harder difficulty setting, lazily designing simplified environments that will make stealth fans feel dumb. The mission structure is also tedious. It amounts to hacking, spying and talking with NPCs until the very end of the game where it finally becomes original, but by then, it’s far too late.

I enjoyed HR and really liked the DLC, so I was looking forward to DM (coudn't wait, actually), but this review tore the game apart piece by piece, leaving nothing to be excited about. Sure, there's an odd chance that they "didn't get it" or played it wrong but it seems unlikely as the points are well explained and don't contradict what the other reviews say.

 

[Infinitron]

Vault Dweller I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I'm not saying Mankind Divided is good (as the language of my newspost plainly indicates). I was just pointing out that it potentially also has a similar reason for game journalist lack of enthusiasm that New Vegas did.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I'm not saying Mankind Divided is good (as the language of my newspost plainly indicates). I was just pointing out that it potentially also has a similar reason for game journalist lack of enthusiasm that New Vegas did.

I don't see how. The media loves shiny new things and by the time NV rolled out it was no longer new and exciting but same old shit, a game they've already played once. MD looks fucking amazing, so the eye candy factor is definitely there. However, what these reviews are saying is that the game delivers significantly less than HR in terms of everything but the visuals.

 

[Infinitron]

Vault Dweller I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I'm not saying Mankind Divided is good (as the language of my newspost plainly indicates). I was just pointing out that it potentially also has a similar reason for game journalist lack of enthusiasm that New Vegas did.

I don't see how. The media loves shiny new things and by the time NV rolled out it was no longer new and exciting but same old shit, a game they've already played once. MD looks fucking amazing, so the eye candy factor is definitely there. However, what these reviews are saying is that the game delivers significantly less than HR in terms of everything but the visuals.

Same protagonist, same gameplay, visuals that are still similar enough to the previous game. There's also at least one review that's turned off by an increased emphasis on lore, which suggests similarities with the way New Vegas was received.

*shrug* Just a thought. Perhaps one day you'll play it and tell us your thoughts.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Same protagonist, same gameplay, visuals that are still similar enough to the previous game. There's also at least one review that's turned off by an increased emphasis on lore, which suggests similarities with the way New Vegas was received.

More like similarities with how Pillars was received. The reviews didn't like the infodump way it was handled not the fact that the game has plenty of lore. The gameplay can't be the same if it was streamlined as some reviews are claiming. The context of these claims - they made sure that everyone would succeed no matter what - makes these claims easy to believe. :It's 2016:

*shrug* Just a thought. Perhaps one day you'll play it and tell us your thoughts.

I surely will.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I'm still going to get it and play it....hopefully until finish. I feel a bit like Dues Ex type games are now more common and therefor less impact as they used to have on me.

 

[DeepOcean]

When we first meet Jensen, he’s on assignment in Dubai, tracking an arms dealer through an unfinished highrise hotel. This mission displays the promise of Deus Ex’s gameplay, deftly mixing stealth with hacking and the occasional exchange of gunfire. This mission is paced nicely and delivers true excitement, culminating in the surprise assault by a new terrorist cell, each of its soldiers adorned in stylish gold masks and augmented enhancements. Player choice (which is woven into the entire narrative arc with plenty of difficult “no-win” moments) comes into play here, as does a timed event that applies unexpected pressure to the gameplay, making me switch from stealth to run-and-gun to reach my objective in time. It’s a hell of an introductory sequence, but the game never finds that pulse again, and instead becomes formulaic.

Is this Dubai level the one they showcased on the gameplay trailers? Because if it is, the situation is pretty similar with HR, where the levels used for the gameplay trailers were considerably better than the other ones.

 

[Infinitron]

The Dubai level was shown at E3, but it seemed more like a straightforward/linear tutorial level where you get tons of augs.

 

[Tito Anic]

8-10 hours, 12 hours with sidequests.

So basically it is Deus Ex: The Fail 2?

 

[cvv]

Hmm, based on the reviews it looks like a more-of-the-same cash grab.

 

[J_C]

Tags: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided; Eidos Montreal
As you can see, the reviews are generally positive but not overwhelmingly so. Many of the slightly less positive reviews cite issues with the game's storyline - too short and constrained, not interesting enough, even unfinished-feeling - as well as a lack of mechanical innovation. Gee EM, maybe if you hadn't spent the last five years making a crappy tablet spinoff, a crappier Thief reboot and a "challenge mode" nobody asked for, you would have had time to address those concerns. Oh well!

I read some reviews that said that it took them about 15-20 hours to finish the game, including all the side quests they could find.

The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine took me about 20 hours to complete and it's a fucking DLC!

This game cost 60$...

Now mommy, I know that quality is much more important than quantity...But if this game were a dick - no woman would fuck it - IT'S WAY TOO SMALL!!!

Who the fuck want to buy a game that cost 60$ but deliver the length of a DLC!?

I dunno, maybe i'm missing something...

People buy games with 5 hours of gameplay so 15-20 hours is totally fine, especially since there is at least 2 playthroughs in this game.

A bit bummed about the unfinished story, but at least the game turned out good overall.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Director's cut when?

 

[Roguey]

Was there a nontrivial amount of people who thought Human Revolution was too difficult or is this another case of New-Vegas-playtester-anecdotes?

 

[Vault Dweller]

http://truepcgaming.com/2013/04/11/deus-ex-human-revolution-retrospect-interview/

"In retrospect, I think our game is a tad too hard on normal difficulty. It was quite a challenging game to balance. Our first pass at game balancing was too permissive. Players were playing the game like a typical run & shoot action game. Players weren’t using tactics, let alone their augmentations. It was tricky to find that sweet spot where the game is hard enough that you want to think and use your tools a little bit more, while still allowing the FPS vets to have fun with combat itself. Unfortunately, the game ended up being too punitive for some. If I could go back, I’d tone it down a bit, all over the place (AI, more consumables all in all, redesigned bosses, etc.)."

 

[DeepOcean]

Well, it seems they achieved what they wanted, popamole balance.