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Much to the delight of Deus Ex: Human Revolution fans, myself included, Square Enix announced downloadable story-driven content shortly after the game was released. Missing Link fills in the blanks of Adam Jensen’s cryogenic transport near the end of the game. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear why this portion of the game was cut from the retail release.
At the outset of the story, Adam Jensen is strapped to an EMP chair under interrogation by two Belltower officers. He is mysteriously freed and must recover his equipment, escape the ship and make his way through a Belltower base, all while uncovering yet another conspiracy. While Missing Link was clearly excised from the main game, I do not advise playing it chronologically. In fact, you cannot choose to replace Missing Link appropriately in the story as it can only be accessed from the main menu. What makes it even more disjointed in the chronology is that
When you are finally cut free, your augmentations are reset. You’ll need to find Praxis Kits (many of which are given to you early on) and salvage your weapons from defeated guards. My suggestion is to hold onto your upgrade points until you reach an area where you need an augmentation. It’s the only way to ration them and still find success- that is, unless you are going for the challenging No Praxis/No Firearms/No Explosives achievement that amounts to 70 of the 250 gamerscore points in this expansion.
Throughout the five-hour adventure (more if you are taking the stealth route), you’ll have a few sidequests available and do far too much backtracking through the environment. The worst part of my time with Missing Link was the scanning rooms, which reminded me of the elevators in the first Mass Effect game. They were disguised loading points and dragged on with the same voice over each and every time. You’ll need to pass through this, occasionally in succession, far too many times.
Missing Link does shed some light on the final battle in the main game and hints at the importance of the research being done in the game (saying any more than that would be a spoiler). All told, though, the content was clearly removed from the main game for a reason and, especially at 1200msp/$14.99, should have stayed there. It just doesn’t hold up to the core Deus Ex: Human Revolution experience.
Between very stilted voice acting from some guards and weird graphical glitches, like a gun free floating in a character’s hand during a conversation, Missing Link feels like it was polished up for release just to make a quick buck. It’s a shame, especially given how wonderful the core game was. This is certainly one instance where length of included content doesn’t justify the price tag.
Review copy provided by publisher.
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Wally-G.
Thanks for the honest review.
Michael "PaladinXII" Futter
Thanks for reading. It truly was a shame that it didn’t live up to the core experience.