Game Review: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

To be honest, I'm pretty mixed on it, the story, mainly it's pacing was so strange and felt so quick that when it ended I found myself asking "that was it?". The gameplay was an improvement to human revolution in some subtler ways like the ability to move to other cover in a similar way to The Division and switching sides was always really snappy compared to HR in which the distance effected the speed. Gunplay honestly pretty similar with it continuing with enemies being able to die pretty quick but so can Adam, a small change I was pretty mixed on was the machine pistol now being burst fire and not full auto like in HR. My biggest complaint with this game minus the cliffhanger that's been lasting 9 years and will never be resolved and poor pacing was the cutscenes. The cutscenes in this game are handled super strangely, instead of making the choice to animate everything EITHER in engine or pre-rendered, they do both within a single cutscene, most notably the first time meeting Marchenko in Golem City, Adam sneaks into ARC territory and is initially in engine, then jarringly cuts to a pre-rendered cutscene of Marchenko dragging a drone, then back to in engine for a conversation between the two and ending again in pre-render. Definately can't knock the quality of the cutscenes tho they still hold up really well 9 years later. To end this rambly ass review on a high point, the soundtrack for this game is well worth a listen totally capturing the vibe of Deus Ex in the best way possible, and Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor being brought on to play the ending credits theme which is definitely a nice pay off after a weird ending and an espically droning ending cutscene of watching Eliza Cassan describe the political state of the world after stopping the expo attack in the final missions.

I do aplogize for how rambly and poorly worded this is, I'm by no means a real game reviewer I just figured I write about a game I recently finished for giggles and shits