Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: Day One Edition - Xbox One

It's increasingly difficult to tell whether Deus Ex's dystopian near-future is implausible or too conservative. As the latest game in the series, Mankind Divided, opens the year is 2029, a mere 13 years from its release date. It's two years after the events of Human Revolution and the infamous 'Aug Incident' that resulted in the death of millions at the hands of those who had installed bionic augmentations. Thanks in large part to this event the human race is (you guessed it) very much divided. On the one hand you have unaltered, flesh and blood humans and on the other those who have been augmented. In the middle are those who would seek to manipulate the situation to their own ends.

Into this milieu you step as returning hero Adam Jensen, the super-augmented anti-terrorist agent playing by his own rules. Social and political tensions are playing out against the backdrop of conspiracies surrounding the Illuminati, and Jensen is caught in the middle.

The game continues the series tradition of RPG elements, stealth and combat. Jensen's augmentations are upgradeable as ever, enabling players to choose their own play style. That freedom is only enhanced by the game's sprawling open world and Jensen's ability to to socially manipulate characters via augmentations.

A new mode called Breach takes the series' signature stealth gameplay and distills it even further. It's a bit meta, taking the form of a virtual reality simulation within the game. The player must use this to infiltrate the servers of a bank containing many of the world's most closely-guarded secrets, dodging guards as they make their way through the Tron-like visuals.

With it's grand, paranoid and dystopian world, this 16-year-old series couldn't feel more eerily relevant in the year 2016. more