Shock and Aug

Stealth, shooting and everything in between. Ben Tyrer gets to grips with the many ways of playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided_.

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Dubai, 2029. The skyline is littered with half-built hotels that look unlikely to be finished. In one of those failed construction projects – the forlorn Desert Jewel Hotel – a trade is about to take place between Iraqi smuggling cartel The Jinn and an arms dealer known as Sheppard. We’re flying overhead as returning cyborg Adam Jensen, who’s now part of Interpol in the covert Task Force 29, in a swish jet that doubles as a command centre. A pop-up message gives us a stark choice: play lethally or non-lethally? It’s never that simple, of course, with Deus Ex – so over the course of the game’s first eight hours, we push Jensen to his limits to find out if Mankind Divided can really be played any way we want.

STEALTH_

Snapping necks and playing hide and seek through the opening two hours of Adam Jensen’s grand return_

AUGS USED Smart Vision, Wayfinder Radar_

Dubai is Mankind Divided’s tutorial city, a relatively linear way to reintroduce yourself to its fractured future. Jensen skydives without a ’chute, the big show-off using his Icarus Landing Augmentation for a pain-free touchdown on the hotel’s roof. Scanning with the Smart Vision Aug reveals two Jinn members milling about. Their positions noted, we punch through a brick wall and head their way.

The pair is patrolling a room filled with abandoned construction equipment – a click of sees us sliding into cover against the gear. The first guard walks towards us and we easily knock him out from behind cover with a tap of. The elaborate takedown animations return, with Jensen grabbing the unlucky sod, punching him into a sleep that’ll last for days and then yanking him back behind the cover.