The Bridge & Mankind Divided Are Free on Epic

Monday, Activision QA testers joined the Strawbs at becoming “Part Of The Union,” and there was a dev diary for Titan Quest II. Tuesday, Multiversus is relaunching later this year, and the Monster Hunter Stories games are coming to new platforms. Wednesday, Stig Asmussen was really quick at setting up a new developer of single-player games, but can he take Gambon flat out? Thursday, couch Co-op is coming to Sea of Stars, apparently, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown will have DLC later this year.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store this week, we’ve got a repeat of Tyl Taylor and Mario Castañeda & The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild’s psychedelic puzzle platformer from 2013, The Bridge. Designed to look and feel like one of M. C. Escher’s bad acid trips after going through a time machine with Isaac Newton (Sexy Nathanial Curtis?), there is something interesting here, but I don’t think anyone’s jumping out of their seat to pick up The Bridge. It is unfortunate to say, but I think it might be true.

Before getting on to the more interesting offering, at least personally, I think it might be worth mentioning the current sale on the Epic Games Store. Spring is on the horizon, with clocks changing for many of us, and both Epic and Steam are holding one of the quadrennial sales. With Alan Wake 2, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077, among many others on sale. Maybe you’ll want to pick up the classic Fallout-like SRPG, Shadow Vault.

Onto the headliner this week, we’ve got Square Enix’s last endeavor with the Deus Ex license before selling off Eidos and its properties. Some take a dour view of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, for simply not being as in-depth as the psychotic detail Warren Spector got into 2000’s Deus Ex. There is merit to that criticism, to a degree, but at the same time, there is a much bigger issue to Mankind Divided, that it stops halfway through the conspiracy. “Away with you,” it says, “stick a finger up your nose and press on your brain to forget we never got around to a third act.”

Despite this, I deeply love Mankind Divided for its allegory of racism. One quest asks you to go to a place, which forces you into a side quest where you interact with a “police officer” who tells you “Clanks” need special ID to access certain areas of the city. Racism towards a little robot that helps a Lombax aside, you have multiple options here: Stealth around the fake officer, pay the fee for the fake documents, or stealthfully find a way to get those fake documents without paying. Yet in the quest you also have a darker human trafficking story underneath.

Far from perfect by any stretch of the imagination, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided does a lot to improve on its predecessor, Human Revolution‘s shortfalls. That says nothing of the mobile pile of utter tripe that is The Fall, something so bad there isn’t even a developer noted on the Steam Page. It was N-Fusion Interactive, for the record, and shame should be piled upon that name forever more as a result.

All this week, you can pick up The Bridge and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on the Epic Games Store until the morning of the 21st. Those in the UK or other regions yet to change times, note that the time is a little earlier, as clocks rolled back/forward in the US and have been screwing up everything for me all week. To quote a three-time Belgian-born Dutch world champion, it is “simply lovely.”

Next week is another one of those pesky double-bills, which means I will stick my head in a microwave and hope to end it all. Released in 2022, Expansive Worlds’ Call of the Wild: The Angler is about standing at the edge of a lake and throwing string on a stick with a metal hook on the end into the water. Maybe this is how I can get my dad to stop spending so much on fishing gear, and while I’m at it I can go fishing without throwing my guts into the water. Otherwise, you can pick up Invincible Presents: Atom Eve, which is available through Prime right now anyway.