Deus Ex has become a pretty familiar franchise for many, I am an exception to this however, When I heard this game was coming out I had heard of the franchise but I had only heard of the one other game in the franchise and that was Human Revolution I figured it was a fairly new franchise and was unaware that there was actually more games in the series. Playing this franchise for the first time had its ups and downs for me there are some positives I got from this game but there was also a lot of negatives also I will get into that right now.
Story: For newcomers most of the plot will have you scratching your head on what is going on, you definitely have to play the other games to actually know most of what’s going on, there is a lot to it and most of the time I explain the plot even in some of the most convoluted games, however I found this story so uninteresting that if your honestly that interested I would recommend you look it up, but I will definitely talk about the plot a little bit. I would definitely say that this is one of the game’s biggest flaws, at least in my opinion, I have to be honest when I first started this game I was ready to play I was thinking wow this game looks fun let’s see what it has to offer and then I was suddenly astonished to see that I was playing Metal Gear Solid, what? I’m not? Well it sure feels that way in the beginning when there is so much story going on come on I just want to play the damn game! But why does Metal Gear Solid get away with having a lot of plot in the beginning? Well because I don’t know it actually has an interesting plot to go on! I know I am reading too much into this but come on I just wanted to play the game! And not only that the plot is the same way throughout most of the game, look I don’t mind long plots in games but there’s just nothing interesting when it comes to this plot no part where I was truly interested and I think one huge reason to that is that their our no interesting characters and to be honest I really wasn’t a huge fan of the main character Adam Jensen, their our so many voice actors that our doing the tough guy act its getting really tiresome and old and not only that but their our so much better voice actors that do the tough guy act, so it was honestly really hard for me to fall in love with this character, and many others that aren’t really worth even mentioning. You do actually have a dialogue wheel in this game but to be honest it just adds more dialogue that’s not needed that lengthens the plot longer that is already longer than it needed to be even without the option of more dialogue. Their our actual multiple choices when it comes to the story I figured I also would end up mentioning as this is one good thing I could find out of something that I honestly just didn’t enjoy.
Presentation: There have been some pretty amazing games graphically this generation just to think of some recent ones, Uncharted 4, and Quantum Break come to mind, so seeing these recent games would make you think, wow theirs going to be games that look even better than these coming up, and you might be right, but if you think that Deus Ex, would be the next best looking game you’d be wrong, look it’s not terrible looking but comparing it to the best it just does not look that great I mean I realize that not every game is going to look likes those games but come on this just looks so lackluster compared to these games, in my opinion I think it could of looked at least a little better. When it comes to the soundtrack in this game there was also nothing really memorable also.
Gameplay: You know it was really hard for me to figure out what Deus ex was as a game, is it a stealth game? Or is it a more action type of game where you can choose to kill everyone, well I still don’t really understand what type of a game it is and the reason why I say this is because it honestly doesn’t define itself well, I think this game definitely prefers stealth over action because if you are caught and decide to engage the enemy 90 percent of the time you are going to die and not only that but you are limited in ammo so good luck getting anywhere in this game taking that approach. The stealth approach also has its faults though because their our many areas where you will have to silently take down someone and you are limited to one takedown until you have to recharge again for another, and look I get that this doesn’t seem that bad but the problem with this is that in a close cornered area full of people it’s very hard to takedown just one person while their our so many people around you making it easier to get caught. Their even might be another way of playing it, running away… yes I am not kidding there were a lot of areas where I literally just ran away and got away… no joke I am being serious, and that’s another thing about this game the AI is literally either retarded sometimes or actually so hard that if you make the slightest mistake they will take you down in seconds, there were many times in the game where like I said I would run away from the enemy and literally actually make it to where I needed to be without dying, and then there were sometimes that I would be in the same area for an hour to two hours trying to get through the same area over and over again because the AI was impossible to stop in that area, and that really made the gameplay uneven, it seems they got lazy with the AI in this game like I said in some parts of the game their fantastic but in other parts of the game you can just run on thought it, what a miscalculation! Anyways, Deus Ex does have a upgrade system and to be honest it’s really just not that great, a lot of my upgrades were either to hacking which you will need for this game quite a bit or more energy so I could do more than one takedown or so my ability’s would last longer but the other ability’s really didn’t feel worth it and not only that but their our certain abilities where you have to cool off another ability to use which makes you ask yourself are they really worth getting in the first place? When it comes to gameplay as I said its usually stealth or action but there is also other things you do in the game hacking is pretty prominent in this game and its actually kind of fun, it would have been nice if they explained how to do it at first though, I hate when games do that and just expect you to know, and I know you can figure it out how to do it in the menu but I didn’t know you could do that when I first started and also how hard would it have been to add some details to it in the beginning! But anyways it’s pretty simple once you get used to it, basically the whole point of it is to access turrets or other weapons or just be a stalker and look at some peoples laptops and their private information, it’s pretty simple once you get used to it and once you upgrade it can be really easy as it will minus your chances of getting locked out. One big pro I will give Deus ex MK is that their our multiple ways things can turn out in certain missions and the ending, and I always think that it’s great when games give you that option but here again I have to complain and I think it’s really just Deus Ex Mk as a game, if you want the game to go the right way you have to figure out very clearly how to do so, again Deus Ex MK does not hold your hand during a lot of this game and this is just another part of the game that is the same way you must know what you are doing in order to get the right ending, and I’m ok with that but most of the game especially for newcomers desperately need a little bit of handholding and that’s where I think a lot of the gameplay flops, at least for me, and I’m not saying the gameplay is terrible or even bad for that matter it just doesn’t cater to newcomers.
Overall Deus Ex Mankind was a decent game I didn’t hate it I didn’t love it, there were some times I really enjoyed the game and there were sometimes that I really despised the game as well. I think my main gripe with this game is no sense of guidance when it comes to really any part of this game, whether it be the story or the gameplay, and that really is a bit of a disappointment for newcomers to this series because a lot of the game feels like it doesn’t want to welcome you to it. If you’re willing to pay the sixty bucks for this game and you’re really willing to invest the time in this game then I guess I could see this is worth a purchase, newcomer or not I think you could still find some joy out of this game if you are willing to put a lot of time in it but if you’re just looking for some simple game to play this is definitely not your type of game.