Fight For The Top 50 2016 – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Each year, we do our best to keep up with the games released so that we can make educated decisions when it comes to accurately rewarding titles a spot on our annual Top 50 list. Unfortunately, while the early months can be simple to stay on top of, we can quickly find ourselves buried under the avalanche of games as the year progresses, and several games wind up not having enough people organically playing it to argue for their spot on the Top 50. That's why we've done the Fight for the Top 50 each year in the lead up to our Game of the Year discussions. The goal is for a Game Informer editor to challenge another one to play a game they think was underplayed by the rest of the staff that deserves consideration for the Top 50.

Look: I will be the first person in line to tell you about how flawed Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is. The plot is bad. Skills being tied to batteries is still dumb. The few boss battles here are just as bad as they were in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Most of these things Andrew Reiner pointed out in his review for the game when he took it to task, and I do not disagree with him on any of those points.

However, alongside those flaws, there is also an ambitious and even timely game lurking within the heart of Mankind Divided. As often as I was annoyed with the ho-hum main missions, most of them playing out like barebones immersive sim levels that give you a choice between accomplishing your objectives with lethal or non-lethal means, I fell in love with the side missions of the game and Mandkind Divided's rich and broken world, one where there is growing turmoil between people who have been augmented with cybernetic implants and those who have not.

During my time running around various hub worlds, I helped the police solve murders, I got a mob boss' son out of trouble, and I aided revolutionaries seeking to topple a crooked regime. Moreoever, I felt sympathy for everyone I came across. Sometimes the people I fretted, worried, and cared for weren't even there. I was just exploring their houses, each of them constructed in hauntingly intimate ways. I wrote about these environments in detail for my column shortly after the game's release:

[Narrative] riches are tucked away at the corners of this assemblage of sci-fi clichés: apartments and offices, so meticulously designed that you can feel the presence of the people who inhabit them walking alongside you. Sometimes I’m pilfering through them in search of pass codes or weapon attachments. Most of the time though, I’m just being nosy, exploring every corner of the hub world. Nearly every room I find is a treasure trove of subtle storytelling, like Johnny Gunn’s self-imposed prison or a trashed luxury apartment filled with drugs belonging to a fresh corpse tucked halfway beneath his bed, a message from a loved one on the PDA next to his hand.

These are places that belong to people who live in fear, staring out at a world that’s gone to hell. As part of a generation that’s grown up watching reports of disasters and unspeakable atrocities, often carried out by both individual terrorist groups as well as people and organizations charged with upholding the law and safeguarding human lives, this is a terrifying sense of powerlessness I can relate to. The thing about modern political terror, the kind that Mankind Divided is trying to exploit with mixed results, is that it isn’t limited to big moments of explosive horror but also includes their silent aftershocks, like someone constantly wondering if they’re going to become a target because of their skin color, gender, or sexuality, or a victim of the sort of “random” gun violence that seems to become more and more prevalent with each passing day.

Though its gameplay is often shoddy, its main story poorly told, and its hero as dull as he ever was: Mankind Divided paints a picture of a world that is eerily close to ours, one shrouded in dark times and with people ready to commit violence out of desperation. To try and capture the true essence of the present is a feat rarely encountered in games, and Mankind Divided, in spite of its failings, should be rewarded heavily for its immersive storytelling and boldness. I strongly feel that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided deserves a place in Game Informer's top 50 games of the year.

The Top 50 Challenge

The lukewarm reception to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided means that people were understandably hesitant about playing the game far enough to see its best qualities. In order to have more people give the game a fair shot, I've challenged our PC editor Daniel Tack, who has also played more than his fair share of immersive sims, to play the game and give us all his two cents on whether or not it belongs in our Top 50.

Come back tomorrow at 12 p.m. Central to see what Daniel Tack thinks about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.