An improvement over Deus Ex: Human Revolution graphically and mechanically, but not narratively. Like most cyberpunk games, Mankind Divided struggles with its politics -- what is it trying to say? Usually, the problem is that Cyberpunk games run with a high school-level understanding of the world or just passively avoid engaging with their themes. Impressively, MD doesn't actually get far enough for you to be able to watch it do either, because it trips over itself with confusing mixed messages like the notorious "Aug Rights Matter", which even ChatGPT would probably raise an eyebrow at. It's so bad that I can fix that one here and now: Stock Lives Matter. All of the oppression nonsense in the plot would actually be consistent if it's people who can afford augmentations dunking on the rest of society, with the sh*t cherry on top being that they get dunked on by the puppet-masters themselves with, I dunno, a Deus Ex classic like another virus or something (Eidos hire me). As one final flourish, the sh*t cherry on top for us is that the story just ends on an abrupt cliffhanger that was meant to segue into the next game (which was never made).

Also, skip Breach mode -- it was a lame minimum-effort attempt to turn MD into a live service game that isn't only unfun, but actually wears out the game's mechanics to the point where I got sick of the game for a while after clearing it for the achievements, even with a strategy for minimizing the amount of time I spent in it.

But do I love the game anyways? Yeah, I do. Despite all of this nonsense, this world is even more fleshed out than Cyberpunk's at times, a game that came out four years later. It's fundamentally fun to burglarize military bases. It's fundamentally fun to Adam Jensen all over hapless troops with surprise military-grade everything when you finally mess up. It's fundamentally fun to read people's emails. My eyes lit up when I punched 0451 for the first time. THIS IS A CYBERPUNK IMMERSIVE SIM bayBEE. The mechanics and the environment are like HR's, but newer and better.

So I'm still out here wishing I had an Errolson Hugh trenchcoat. And I hope they make another one.

An improvement over Deus Ex: Human Revolution graphically and mechanically, but not narratively. Like most cyberpunk games, Mankind Divided struggles with its politics -- what is it trying to say? Usually, the problem is that Cyberpunk games run with a high school-level understanding of the world or just passively avoid engaging with their themes. Impressively, MD doesn't actually get far enough for you to be able to watch it do either, because it trips over itself with confusing mixed messages like the notorious "Aug Rights Matter", which even ChatGPT would probably raise an eyebrow at. It's so bad that I can fix that one here and now: Stock Lives Matter. All of the oppression nonsense in the plot would actually be consistent if it's people who can afford augmentations dunking on the rest of society, with the sh*t cherry on top being that they get dunked on by the puppet-masters themselves with, I dunno, a Deus Ex classic like another virus or something (Eidos hire me). As one final flourish, the sh*t cherry on top for us is that the story just ends on an abrupt cliffhanger that was meant to segue into the next game (which was never made). Also, skip Breach mode -- it was a lame minimum-effort attempt to turn MD into a live service game that isn't only unfun, but actually wears out the game's mechanics to the point where I got sick of the game for a while after clearing it for the achievements, even with a strategy for minimizing the amount of time I spent in it. But do I love the game anyways? Yeah, I do. Despite all of this nonsense, this world is even more fleshed out than Cyberpunk's at times, a game that came out four years later. It's fundamentally fun to burglarize military bases. It's fundamentally fun to Adam Jensen all over hapless troops with surprise military-grade everything when you finally mess up. It's fundamentally fun to read people's emails. My eyes lit up when I punched 0451 for the first time. THIS IS A CYBERPUNK IMMERSIVE SIM bayBEE. The mechanics and the environment are like HR's, but newer and better. So I'm still out here wishing I had an Errolson Hugh trenchcoat. And I hope they make another one.