The Missing Link (Deus Ex: HR DLC)

I recently raved about how much I enjoyed the heck out of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and right after finishing it I downloaded the 'Missing Link' DLC. I'll try to avoid spoilers but there is a part in the Deus Ex:HR where you are cryogenically frozen and transported, via ship, to a mysterious island. The Missing Link fills in the story of what happened on that ship (here's a hint; you didn't stay frozen for long)!

The Missing Link provides more of the same great gameplay that's found in the main game, along with some excellent storytelling that fills in even more of the backstory and the last chapter of the main game seems to make more sense once you've digested the DLC story. Two things I particularly enjoy about the DLC are the mandatory 'respeccing' at the begining of the DLC and the final boss.

Like most, I'm not a huge fan of when games 'Metroid you' at the start - i.e. they give you a full complement of powers to begin the game and then suddenly take them all away. I was initially a bit annoyed when The Missing Link did this (with a servicable narrative explanation for why your abilities have gone) but the speed at which you upgrade in the DLC is several orders of magnitude faster than in the main game. As a result this gives you a really neat opportunity to completely redefine your character in a short time. 

As I wrote in my impressions of the main game, I upgraded my character primarily in the areas of stealth and hacking, spending much of my time lurking in the shadows. For the DLC I decided to put all my upgrade points into combat and had a blast walking around like the Terminator! Best of all, since the upgrade path is accelerated in the DLC I was unlocking the higher abilities within just a few hours. 

One of the few shortcomings of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was undoubtedly the boss fights. In a game that was all about freedom and quasi-sandbox style gameplay it was completely out of keeping that you were suddenly thrust into the kind of rote boss fights that you'd find in your average 3rd person shooter. It was also frustrating because you could spend most of the game focusing on stealth, hacking or conversation to proceed through the narrative, using your upgrade points to improve these traits but then suddenly you were put into a combat-only situation that became needlessly frustrating, just because you neglected to improve your combat stats. 

Fortunately, the boss fight in The Missing Link is much better. Now, to be fair, I did have a character that was maxed out in his combat abilities but it was very easy to see how you could win the fight just by using stealth or hacking. I don't want to spoil it but it was far, far less frustrating than the boss battles in the main game.

The one downside of The Missing Link for me, personally, was the location. You spend all of your time in/around what is basically a military facility and while the art design is very good, my favourite parts in Deus Ex: Human Revolution were the inhabitied cities (Detroit and Hengsha). As a result, there isn't much NPC interaction that doesn't involve guns/fists and there are only a few side-quests.

The Missing Link DLC took me just under 4 hours to finish and is currently $15 on Steam and Amazon. I bought it during a Steam sale for less than half the price and though I did enjoy it a lot, due to it's length I'd suggest holding out for another sale. That said, I really did enjoy it and if you liked the main game I'm sure you will too. 

Lavan

Sign This Petition Or You Will Die

CLICK HERE

I'm serious. You will. Not now, probably in 50-60 years. But at least you could have another Player Manager game to play in the interim.

If you're wondering, it's basically a petition to convince Dino Dini (the creator of my favourite game of all time; Player Manager) to make a new game using Kickstarter for funding.

So far there are only 50 signatures, please add yours....or I will cry.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - why didn't I play this sooner?

When I did my Top 10 Games of 2011 I made the caveat that there were a few games that came out in 2011 that I hadn't played but that I expected could get into my Top 10. Among those was Deus Ex: HR but I didn't really expect it to break my Top 10. Skyrim, The Witcher 2 and even Batman: Arkham City were games I expected to really blow me away. Well, Deus Ex: HR took me by surprise from the moment I started it and 22 hours later I'm ready to not only say it should have been in my Top 10 games, but in my Top 3! In short, this game is bloody incredible!

I guess part of my apathy towards this game when it came out was due to the fact I didn't really love the original Deus Ex as much as some of it's bigger fans. Words like 'ground breaking' and 'innovative' are often used when describing the original Deus Ex - not that I necessarily disagree or dislike the game - but it just didn't grab me as much as other games I was playing at the time. It probably didn't help that when the game came out in 2000 PC gaming for me was predominantly Quake 3: Arena and Unreal Tournament so a slow-paced, methodical first person game was perhaps too radical a departure.

Regardless, I went into Deus Ex: HR with minimal expectations and within moments duly had my socks blown off! I'm playing it on the PC and this game is absolutely gorgeous. However, it's not just the lighting effects, resolution, textures and animations that make this game shine - no, it's incredible art design. The game takes place in 2027 and you can see Eidos Montreal put massive thought and effort into the aesthetics of their world. In the game you trot around the globe from future Detroit to Shanghai and it really feels like a living, breathing future world. The environments themselves tell a story. I love the slums in lower Hengsha (a fictional city near Shanghai) not just because of the dark alleyways and neon signs, but because of things like the 'Alice Garden Pods' - a hotel where space is a premium, finances are tough and people are crammed into a space like sardines with communal bathrooms and living areas.

This is also the first game where I have ever noticed costumes and fashion. It's 2027, so the clothes aren't radically different but different enough to reflect 15 years of changing fashion and societal change. And it's not as if everyone is wearing the same clothes - wealthier NPCs dress the part. I never thought I would pay so much attention to actual art design but the amount of effort Eidos Montreal have put in makes it impossible to ignore. It's fantastic stuff.

Likewise, the sound design is brilliant. NPC chatter, ambient sounds, gunfire all sound great. And the score? Incredible! In fact, I'm listening to Michael McCann's incredible original soundtrack right now and the dark, moody electronic and orchestral notes really set the tone of the game. I'm not surprised it was nominated for a BAFTA for 'Best Original Score'.

As a game, Deus Ex: HR is first/3rd person action RPG. The combination of absolute freedom with which to approach quests, solid shooting mechanics (with a great 3rd person cover system), and a well-thought-out upgrade tree make for a game that I pretty much played till the wee hours even on week nights. The freedom with which to approach quests is what makes the game so much fun. You can go in guns blazing and appropriately use upgrades that pertain to that - such as improved aiming or bullet-resistant shielding. Or you can go using stealth and use upgrades to reduce the sound footsteps make, or even unlock a short term cloaking device. Another route would be to focus on 'hacking' - using the fun hacking mini-game to circumvent security droids, turrets and cameras. Upgrades for this allow you to hack faster, safer (from detection) and give you access to a greater variety of objects in the world. You can also try to talk your way to success with numerous dialogue options and even the ability (through upgrades) to use pheromones to influence NPCs.

More often than not you'll use a combination of all four of the above (combat, stealth, hacking and dialogue) but will focus more on one or two particular areas. I focused more on stealth and hacking - get in and get out before anyone knew I was there. But there were definitely moments that called for the more direct approach and the mission/level design design allows you the freedom to mix it up whenever you want.

The story and characters in the Deus Ex: Human Revolution are fantastic. You play as Adam Jensen, a private security officer for Sariff Industries - a leading biotech company in 2027 that specializes in human augmentation. At the beginning of the game, Sariff Industries' headquarters is attacked, a major research project destroyed and you're left with severe injuries. You awake, 6 Million Dollar Man-style, recovered but with numerous 'augments' such as robotic limbs, enhanced vision and so on. You return to Sariff Industries to find out who orchestrated the attack and as a result uncover a vast conspiracy that spans the globe. 

The game is generally linear in scope but intersperses chapters of the story with open-world, non-linear areas where you can explore and find/complete quests at your own pace. I am a sucker for open-world games so this grabbed me from the onset.

The narrative in the game is not nearly as crazy as the conspiracy laden narrative in the original Deus Ex (remember that madness?) and much more focused. The characters and side missions are well written and really suck you into the world. You also make a lot of decisions, even early on, that have lasting impacts on the characters and the game world. I only just found out, after finishing the game, that one of the main NPCs who dies in the game (I don't want to spoil it by saying whom) could have been saved - I didn't even realize that was an option! There's also the underlying theme of augmentation and human progress, should we augment our bodies to make them faster, stronger? Is this evolution? Do we lose our humanity by doing this, or are we merely fulfilling our potential? The game doesn't just bring up these questions fleetingly, it tries to address them through the narrative. 

Best of all, the story isn't rammed down you throat with just cutscenes and deliberate exposition (though those are both there). You could run through this game as a shooter, barely register the story and still have a fairly good time. But if you take your time you'll see the story in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is everywhere. It's in journals and PDAs that you find around the environment. It's in the news/TV broadcasts that are playing in the background, or the newspapers left lying around. As I mentioned before, the environment itself helps to fill in the narrative. 

I love this game. Sure, there are four 'boss fights' which are utter garbage and shouldn't have been in the game but even they weren't enough to sully my opinion of the game as a whole. I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a masterpiece. The amount of effort that Eidos Montreal put into the story, the world, the mechanics and the presentation are clear to see and it really shines through. 

If you haven't already, you simply must play this game. It was on sale a few weeks ago on Steam for $7.50 which is borderline theft. Even without a Steam sale it's still around $30 and the soundtrack is around $11 (and well worth it too). 

Why didn't I play this sooner?

Lavan [off to play the 'Missing Link' DLC]

007: Blood Stone...Bizarre Creations died for this game?

RIP Bizarre Creations.

I was pretty bummed just over a year ago when Liverpool-based developer Bizarre Creations (BC) closed down. I've always been a massive fan of the Project Gotham Racing series and I still hold PGR 2 and 4 as two of my favourite racing games of all time. I felt that BC really nailed the sweet spot between simulation and arcade style handling models and that the Kudos system was a work of genius.

Unfortunately, after being acquired by Activision they were no-longer able to work on the Project Gotham series and instead created Blur. I have to say I wasn't the biggest fan of Blur, a Mario-Kart inspired arcade racer, but new IPs are often difficult to get off the ground. I suspect BC would have been able to right the ship if they had of been able to make a sequel.

Unfortunately, in January of 2011 Activision announced that Bizarre Creations would be closing down. They were able to get one last game out of the door prior to this date though - James Bond 007: Blood Stone.


Perhaps my headline/title is a bit misleading. I don't know for sure that Bizarre Creations folded because of Blood Stone. I'm sure Blur not doing so well had some part. But I imagine all the licensing cash to pay not just for the 007 license but also for the voices and likenesses of Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and, er, Joss Stone must have weighed heavily in the sales expectations at Activision head offices.

Unfortunately for Bizarre, Blood Stone only sold an estimated 260,000 copies world -wide. Usually, licensed games are a....ahem....license to print money, that Blood Stone sold so little surely spelled the death of this studio.

I was one of those quarter million people who actually bought Blood Stone. Such was my excitement that I bought it at half price a couple of months after its release last year and it still sat in the shrink-wrap until a month ago.

After finishing the game, I have to say it's an awful, awful disapointment. Not because it's a crap game. No, because for the most part it's stunningly mediocre. 

Blood Stone is a 3rd person shooter with cover-based elements and interspersed driving levels. Almost everything about this game screams average. The shooting is solid but enemy AI and the environments are a bore. The 'original' plot is even more non-sensical than the average Bond movie/game story (that's saying something!) The graphics are decent but are more reminiscent of a first generation 360/PS3 game with very bland textures and minimal lighting effects. Voice acting is also poor to average - Daniel Craig's Bond is fairly monotone in the movies so a similar performance here isn't out of character but Judy Dench sounds like she's been lobotomized. 

Bizarre Creations also went to the effort of creating a decent online multiplayer feature. Amazingly, there are still a few gamers playing this and I was able to get in a few games. The level design is uninspired but since you're playing against human players rather than AI idiots it can actually produce a few moments of fun. Unfortunately, there are other 3rd person shooters I would rather be playing online (Gears of War says "hi"). 

However, not everything in Blood Stone is mediocre - the driving levels are complete dog shit. I think that's what hurts just as much as knowing this was Bizarre Creations last game. How could a company that produced such great driving games make driving sequences so awful? The car handling makes Ridge Racer seem like iRacing, invisible walls are everywhere, and there's nary a sense of speed. Likewise, the scripting events (explosions and the like) are completely uninspired. The only time I felt my pulse race was when I would get frustrated at the shit controls - it's the complete opposite of something like Split/Second - every race in that game felt like Bond driving scene on steroids!

I'm a completionist so I did finish Blood Stone but as I put down the controller I felt an incredible sense of sadness - how could a studio that produced games that provided me countless hours of fun go out on such a downer? We'll never know but after this post I'm going to choose to forget this game exists - and go play some PGR 4 instead......

Lavan