Video Game Review

“Deus Ex: Mankind Divided”

Grade: 3 stars (out of 4)

Details: Square Enix, for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, $59.99

In the 1970s, “The Six-Million-Dollar Man” had all us kids fantasizing about the cool bionic parts we’d all be getting one day. Super-speedy legs? An arm that can punch through brick walls? An eye with a built-in zoom lens? Who wouldn’t want to be Steve Austin?

Adam Jensen, the protagonist of “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided,” makes Steve look like a weakling. Not only can Adam jump higher and punch harder, he can also turn invisible, make himself bulletproof and shoot electricity from his fingertips.

It’s 2029, and Adam is hardly the only bionic marvel around. Plenty of humans have had their bodies “augmented” – but the world is still reeling from the disastrous “Aug Incident” of 2027, in which thousands of them went berserk. Augs are now quarantined in urban ghettos, fighting for respect and dignity while powerful forces beyond their control wrestle over the fate of humanity.

Adam works for a counterterrorism unit of Interpol, though his investigations unravel a conspiracy involving a chain of seedy operations, from street-level criminal gangs to the dreaded Illuminati. Frankly, there are so many factions conspiring with and competing against each other that I lost track; the best way to approach “Deus Ex” is to dive into its individual missions and try to sort out the mystery later.

The bulk of “Mankind Divided” takes place in Prague. There’s a lot going on under the surface and much of the fun comes from stumbling across its cleverly designed side stories.

“Mankind Divided” also tackles some of the issues of our real-life surveillance state, such as security vs. privacy, cops vs. civilians, freedom of movement vs. the desire to control borders. It doesn’t offer any easy answers.

So, go ahead, get that laser surgery; maybe someday you’ll be able to upgrade to X-ray vision. The future presented in “Mankind Divided” may be bleak, but you can still dream of having a truly awesome cyborg body.

—Lou Kesten, Associated Press