Review: Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link DLC

Reviews: Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link DLC

Pros: Fleshes out the final Chapter of Human Revolution

Cons: Your decisions and objects do not carry through to the actual Human Revolution game

Final Judgement: The solid eight to ten hours of gameplay Missing Link’s playtime will give you your money’s worth and quench any Deus Ex fans thirst

http://www.deusex.com/themissinglink

Available On: PSN, Xbox Live, Steam

Well here we are, deep in the belly of the after Christmas season. God I hate this time of year for gaming.  All the major developers have gone big for the holidays and have now gone home to either count their money or lick their wounds. There was literally nothing of note being released this month. I mean it. What did we have? Final Fantasy XIII-2, Thirteen… Two.  Aside from being a title with a cluster fuck of both roman numerals and numbers, why do they need to make a sequel to a game that you had to play for over a full twenty-four hour day before it stopped being a hallway simulator? You would think that after the last game there would be no more hallways to see, even the deepest and most final of your fantasies. I think I’ll pass.

Yeaaaaah... It was a lot of this.

Things were so bad that I had to go to the island of lost and forgotten games and dig out a title that I had picked up on sale weeks earlier. A game which was so terrible that I don’t even want to waste your time by writing a full review, so instead I’ll lambast it in a paragraph. I speak of… ugh, Homefront.

Homefront is a game where, in 2027, Kim Jong-Un (who looks a lot slimmer then in real life) gets all up in America’s business and invades the mid-west. The game starts out with you in a rag tag group of guerrillas.  You then proceed to start shooting your way through hundreds of Korean dudes and American refugees that look like they got lost on their way to a Macintosh Superbowl commercial. The game was less than six hours long and crashed five times during my play through. Homefront desperately tries to stand on its own two legs by throwing in some Modern Warfare style shock value vis-a-vis discovery of mass graves and public executions.  However, the characters are so campy and the story so shallow that the game just ends up shitting the bed. What’s more, the Gameplay is bland and uninspired and reminded me of eating a bowl of gruel.  If you’re starving for an FPS it will sustain you but I doubt you’ll be left feeling satisfied. Gameplay wise Homefront is a shooter by the numbers, but that’s all it is. There is nothing in it to make you want to play it, there is nothing that it does that will make you want to take a second look. Save your time, skip this game.

"What do you mean Homefront sucked?"

Fortunately not moments after I had finished Homefront, and subsequently gargling with whiskey to get its taste out of my mouth, I remembered that a way better game that also takes place in the jolly good year of 2027 had released some DLC a few weeks back. Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link, bringing us content that promised to take us deeper into a conspiracy that ended… rather abruptly… in the original story.

Without spoiling Human Revolution, I can sum it up by saying there is a point in the game right before the final act begins where the cybernetic hero Adam Jensen stows away aboard a cargo ship that he believes will take him to the answers he’s been searching for are. The game fades to black as Jensen climbs into a stasis pod about to be loaded onto the ship.  In the next scene Jensen is in a warehouse being told by his mission handler that he’s been off the grid and out communication for several days. The Missing Link DLC fills this gap in the narrative and lets us see what Adam was up to during the black out.

More or less Missing Link has Jensen being found and captured by Bell Tower Security, one of the puppets of the conspirators in Human Revolution. Jensen awakes in the brig of the cargo ship he stowed away on and has to either sneak or fight his way through the ship and onto Bell Towers deep sea naval base. Here he makes a few unlikely allies and uncovers a sub plot involving a large number of abductions of women which is mentioned in passing in Human Revolution but never expanded on. This sub plot  helps to clarify the final act of the game and explains why Jensen seemed uncharacteristically unfazed by what he discovered at the end of Human Revolution. I see what they did there Edios: you’re filling in the “missing link” between the cargo ship and the warehouse in the story line, while also showing players the “missing link” between the abductions and the larger conspiracy. HA-HA! Double Entendre!

On paper this sounds pretty good, however there are two concerns I always have when it comes to DLC, especially in role playing games:

One, as I had already played through Human Revolution months prior to the release of Missing Link, the immediate concern that jumped to my mind when I purchased this DLC was if I was going to have to play the game over from the beginning. After all, how was I supposed to go back and play a section of the game after I had already, in theory, completed that section of the game? Thankfully, Missing Link bypasses continuity concerns by not altering the retail release of Human Revolution. Once the player downloads the Missing Link, it is a stand-alone section of the game that can be played at any time and is accessed from the “Downloads” Section of the games main menu.

Two, I find DLC is sometimes super lame, like a cash grab that developers and publishers use to wring a few extra dollars out of people who have already paid full retail price for a game. For example the oft cited “Horse Armor Pack” for Elder Scrolls IV, why would your horse need armor? It basically never dies, and even if it does Elder Scrolls has heaps of Horses like Snopp Dogg ‘be tripp’in bitches’. (I don’t know Mr. Dogg, but I’m lead tobelieve from his music, that he in fact has a lot.) Missing Link cost me around $15 and it provided me with a good ten hours of game play and an engaging, well developed story line. You really can’t ask for more than that. Now granted it doesn’t really deviate from the Deus Ex formula nor does it add any new skills, powers or equipment but it really doesn’t have to.  Why reinvent the wheel? Human Revolution is a great game; Missing Link is just giving you more of what you want.

Some people paid money for this.

The thing that I really liked about the Missing Link was the nostalgia it gave me for Metal Gear Solid from the Playstation One. Much like in Metal Gear, Missing Link picks up with Jensen being by himself with nothing in his pockets. You start out the story with Jensen back at Level 1 and you need to scavenge or steal for every piece of equipment or weapon that you want to use. Much like in Metal Gear Solid, Jensen is dropped into a facility that requires a lot of moving back and forth through the same areas in order to collect quest related items and bypass various traps and problems. The game keeps it fresh by switching up the number and types of enemies that are encountered as the story progresses to ensure you never feel like you’re just embarking on another “fetch quest” to pad the play time. Even the naval base itself with its loading bays, warehouses, narrow office corridors and prisons feels reminiscent of the setting of Shadow Moses Island from Metal Gear.   

Jensen does ol' Solid Snake proud in this game.

In keeping with the Deus Ex’s style, the Missing Link allows the player to choose to run in guns blazing or take a stealthier approach. Unlike in Human Revolution where you get experience bonuses for sneaking in and out undetected, Missing Link ups the ante by increasing the number of enemy resistance you encounter the more you are detected. Basically if Jensen is only detected once while attempting to sneak off the ship there might be an extra guard or two posted at the choke points between areas. On the other hand, if you try to Rambo your way off the ship you might find a platoon of well-armed guards with security robots lying in wait on the dock, sure guns blazing can be a lot “easier” depending on your skill, but you allies on the Naval Base really don’t appreciate the whole sale slaughter and it just feels much more rewarding to have people going on about how they can’t find you and you’re the unholy off spring of a Ninja and a Ghost. All said and done, at the end of my play through I wanted to go bust out the old Playstation and give Metal Gear another go ‘round.

Because he does, and I find meme's funny.

Overall the Missing Link content exceeded my expectations. The storyline is of the quality that I came to expect from Human Revolution, the characters are interesting and the game play, especially the stealth aspects, were enjoyable and challenging. While the stand alone nature of The Missing Link was handy, I would have liked the option to have it integrate into Human Revolution and be able to play through both Human Revolution and Missing Link as one cohesive story line.  If you are a Deus Ex fan, you won’t be disappointed by this DLC.  Furthermore, the many fans of Metal Gear will definitely appreciate the familiar flavor of this content.