Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, man vs cyborg in the grim dystopia

Having a robot arm would be brilliant. Just imagine: giving your enemies a super-strength slap in the chops, winning every arm-wrestle, lifting even the heaviest bag of shopping with ease endless fun. Perhaps less so, however, in the world of Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where cyborgs have become a persecuted underclass living in a kind of robotic apartheid, and stripped of their basic human rights.

Coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, the game follows on two years after the end of 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. You’ll be stepping back into the stylish metal boots of certified cyberpunk Adam Jensen (and yes, he does still sound like Keanu Reeves doing an impression of Batman). Our part-mechanised hero is now working for a new branch of Interpol called Task Force 29, where he’s given the job of hunting down the cyborg terrorists who are rebelling against government oppression of their kind though given that his sunglasses are built into his face and his limbs can all turn into guns, we suspect there’s a chance he might find himself sympathising with his enemies’ cause before the game is through.

“A particularly snazzy device lets Adam teleport fist-first into groups of enemies”

Jensen’s got more bells and whistles than ever, in fact, including a stun-gun that extends out of his fist, an indestructible metal shield that can cover his whole body at a moment’s notice, and a particularly snazzy device that lets him teleport fist-first into groups of unsuspecting enemies. All-in-all there’ll be around twice as many augmentations to choose from as in the previous game, and this excites us greatly.

Future shock
You’ll be able to use them rather more, too. The segmented energy bar of Human Revolution is gone, with it now seeming that you can recharge to a greater extent without using energy cells (or their equivalent), so less guards will be able to escape your wrath.

In what we’ve seen so far there’s been rather a lot of robo-biffing and very little in the way of sneaking, but Eidos promises the game will feature more freedom and openness than ever before, allowing players to approach their objectives with as much or as little subtlety as they like. It’s also been confirmed that the entire game, including boss fights, can be ghosted. It’s definitely not looking like a big departure for the series even the black-and-gold colour scheme is back but considering how good the last game was, more along the same lines is a-ok by us.