Deus Ex: Human Revolution - DLC Screens & Details News

 

Following the official announcement last weekend, Square Enix Europe has now served up a couple of extra story details on Deus Ex: Human Revolution's 'The Missing Link' DLC while dropping the first batch of screens for the content (shown at the bottom of this article).

The details are a little spoilerific, so if you're yet to finish the game's story then avert your eyes now... 'The Missing Link' takes place towards the end of the main plot, where Adam Jensen goes 'radio silent' with Sarif Industries and boards a freighter ship.

During the main campaign, gamers are shown a cut-scene where Jensen climbs into a stasis chamber of sorts and then the next scene you see shows him exiting the ship three days later and entering a complex where the ship docks.

'The Missing Link' tells the story of what happened on that freighter ship, where Jensen is tortured by Belltower agents and robbed of his augmentations. As a result, gamers effectively have to build a new set of augmentations from scratch. New story elements, characters, and environments are promised – the DLC is scheduled to arrive some time next month.

"We are very excited for Deus Ex: Human Revolution fans to be able to further develop Adam’s journey in the game with The Missing Link DLC," said David Anfossi, Producer of Deus Ex: Human Revolution at Eidos-Montreal. "Gamers will be able to experience a vulnerable side of Adam like never before, which gives the overall game a whole new dimension. The Missing Link propels players into compelling gameplay, beginning with Adam being temporarily stripped of his use of augmentations, new, visually stunning environments and the continuation of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's conspiracy rich story.”

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

Deus Ex's re-entry into the gaming scene couldn't be more timely. In an era when the world's two biggest publishers trash talk each other's impending blockbuster shooters like adolescent schoolboys – games that will once again have us headshotting, fragging, and ducking for cover in a feedback loop of mind-numbing muscle memory - the last stand of the Eidos brand name in an unassuming Montreal studio reminds us all why first-person shooters were once the future. A future, much like that of Deus Ex's own fictional universe, that hasn't panned out quite as bountifully as initial discoveries and innovations had once promised. The dawn of the FPSRPG at the start of the last decade has resulted in very few followers over the last eleven years and only one major disciple in Ken Levine's Irrational Games studio. For such a critically acclaimed genre then, it remains a mystery why so few publishers have managed to wean themselves off the teat of lowest-common-denominator FPS gaming.

You see, Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually makes you think about what you're doing, and the resulting sensation is kind of like the end scene to Ninja Theory's Enslaved. It's as if you've suddenly been emancipated  and realise that you were a wilful participant in your own servitude all along. You could almost kick yourself, couldn't you? Here's what you've been missing: first-person shooters that allow you to approach a problem in a way of your choosing, and not in the dual-pillar 'Assault or Stealth' approach favoured by the likes of Far Cry 2 either. Instead, it's crawling through air vents, hacking computers, modding guns, talking your way out of a tight spot (or into one), smashing through weakened walls to find a hidden weapons stash, jumping from a five-storey building and stealth-killing two guards upon landing, or unleashing hell with a gun turret that you've turned upon its owners.

It's all of the above, and then a whole lot more. The real icing on the cake, though, is that none of it is prescribed. You don't have to do any of those things; on almost any given objective facing you, you can choose a multitude of ways in which to complete your task – it's a bit like pick 'n' mix sweets, or bespoke tailoring. Fans of the series' two predecessors will of course know that this makes Human Revolution its father's son, and it's a testament to the brilliance of the original Deus Ex games that almost all of their ideas are loyally updated into Human Revolution's formula. This latest instalment doesn't so much reinvent the framework of what Deus Ex is as refine and contemporise what it was (another piece of music to the ears of hardcore fans, no doubt) but it's the ways in which it's all brought up-to-date that are so impressive.

Take the hacking, for example. Of the multitude of options by which protagonist, Adam Jensen can add 'Augmentations' to his cybernetic make-up, this one is perhaps the most in-depth of the lot with 16 different choices for augmentation in total. The hacking interface itself is incredibly detailed, so much so that you'll be totally confused by it for the first hour or so of gaming. Where the likes of BioShock and Timesplitters opted for a Pipe Mania blueprint in their hacking mini-games, Human Revolution instead uses a system that convincingly depicts the actual process of hacking (who'd have thought it could be conceivably possible?!). There are nodes to capture and fortify, tracers to avoid detection from, uni- and bi-directional ports, nuke viruses to unleash, stop worms to slow down or halt detection, and even spam folders to negotiate. Not since Introversion's Uplink has there been this kind of detailed hacking in a video game, and that game was based entirely around hacking!

This kind of added depth and complexity to the upgrade tree can be seen across the board of augmentations. In fact, the full list is so all-encompassing that a few of them almost seem to take away from the gameplay in its naked form at times. Take, for example, the 'Social Enhancer' augmentation, which allows Jensen to sense what a character is thinking and predict which dialogue choice they'll respond most favourably to. The upshot is that you can reliably persuade other people around to your way of thinking. Without the perk though, key paths of dialogue become an engrossing challenge as you attempt to read the reactions of NPCs and select responses on a hunch. It's a credit to the dialogue system that the game is more enjoyable without the 'Social Enhancer' perk, even if your gift of the gab fails and the quest is made harder as a result. The same can be said for some of the stealth augmentations, which include the standard vision cones, sound sensors, and last known location indicators. Yes, they're all very helpful, but the stealth gameplay is so good that it just feels more palpable; more exciting when you play without using all the trinkets.

But it's not all enhancements and refinements to the classic Deus Ex formula. Seventh-generation gaming comes with a much higher bar in terms of production, and Human Revolution doesn't disappoint here either. Whether it's the slick cover system that moves between third and first-person perspectives seamlessly – offering semi-automated commando roles between objects – or the bronzed colour-palette of the game world, everything wreaks of high production values. What really hits home about Human Revolution is just how immersive it manages to be - we've never had so much fun reading capillaries of back-story in strewn e-books, or piecing together a minor character's life by hacking their e-mails. Beyond all of the superb gameplay, it's just damn good sci-fi at the end of the day. There's a genuinely engaging storyline that rarely falters throughout what can be a plentiful 20-hour playthrough (if you're particularly diligent), and it's all wrapped together through a variety of city hubs that reach up towards the Blade Runner echelon of vivid imaginings. Technically, the graphics won't be setting any new benchmarks, but in terms of how they depict the setting, few games manage to do a better job.

Deus Ex didn't come all of this way only to forget where it hailed from in the first place though. Touches of classic PC gaming pepper the experience (such as an old-school grid system for the inventory), ensuring that this is one legendary PC series that's managed to keep its head while all around it others are losing theirs. Truly, it's a hard game to fault... but inevitably it's not perfect. The AI is, well, astonishingly good actually for the type of game that Deus Ex is, but it's not faultless due to the odd glitch. Likewise, it being such an open-ended game, there are minor exploits to be taken advantage of here and there. Criticisms have also been made of the bosses (specifically that it's impossible to beat them without using violence) and we'll concede that some shots do need to be fired in anger. Nonetheless, there are stealthy way-rounds (very long and sometimes arduous ones, we'll admit) that allow you to defeat each boss with minimal violent actions. Loading screens also take some flak because they happen often and for long periods. All things considered then, why are we giving it a 10 if it's not perfect? Because it's the best FPS we've played in years, and that's enough.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Few games do so much, so well, and for so long as Deus Ex Human Revolution. It's a proper gamey game for proper gamey gamers - 30 hours of shooting and sneaking, levelling up, conversation trees and moral dilemmas - and when it's over you can go straight back to the beginning and play it like the pant-soiling psycho Adam Jensen was never born to be.

And Deus Ex won't care. Adam Jensen is whoever you want him to be and the game never pats you on the head for being a hippy humanitarian or slaps you on the wrist for being a bodychopping nutcase who got lost on the way to Modern Warfare 3.

It waits, it watches, and it tucks away dialogue and situations recorded and designed for only the most extraordinary playthroughs. It makes you think that, yes, you were supposed to execute the hostages and stab your girlfriend's Mum in the street, smashed off your robo-tits on bad hooch. Eidos Montreal planned for that kind of maniac. They planned for everything.

It begins with a tutorial. Before Jensen gets Boddickered by unidentified mercenaries working for unidentified shadow men working for the Illuminati, he's a soft and squishy human man in a world busy sawing fleshy bits off and welding new metal bits on.

The world of 2027 is in the midst of a conflict about the nature of humanity itself; on one side are those who say everyone should have the right to modify their own bodies, on the other are purists who believe humanity should stay human. Before the assault on Sarif's HQ, Megan Reed and her team were only hours away from announcing a breakthrough which would allow access to Augmentation technology for everyone, without the lifelong Neuropozine prescription to prevent rejection.

Defending Sarif's HQ, Jensen learns a few things about Human Revolution's Metal Gear stealth and Rainbow Six combat before getting driven through a window and shot through the head as everyone dies around him.

With the tutorial done, there's still more to teach. Jensen is rebuilt with all the tools at Sarif's disposal and returns to work six months later to shut down a purist terrorist takeover on the company's Detroit manufacturing plant. He's given a crash course in his new Augmentations - hacking, localised radar, upgrades, even talking - before being thrown out onto the streets of 2027 Detroit where he meets Megan's mother and finds out his old neighbour had his dog put down while he was on the slab. Shit.

The first of several major city-hubs, Human Revolution's Detroit is dense in a way RPG's never are; it's rammed with stuff like Bioshock's Rapture, but you're free to go anywhere you like, take on any mission you fancy, and throw things at anyone you want. The hubs are big spaces, full of opportunity and secrets. No sci-fi can hide from Blade Runner forever but this is the first game to treat that cyberpunk template as a template, not an endpoint.

There's that same conspicuous Blade Runner rich/poor divide, the optimism up high and misery down low, that eternal night, and the clash of high technology bolted onto aged architecture but it all feels new. Everywhere there are fictional future-brands, discarded papers, loitering strangers, and the kinds of detritus that makes the world feel like someone lived in it before you showed up and started punching people.

Snoop around and a suicide in a dead-end alley will lead you to an illegal Augmentation chop shop and an upgrade kit. In the sewers there's a dumping ground for files the police would rather went away. The internal combustion engine is a dead scene so an old petrol station is home to an arms dealer.

Every part of the world feels like someone at Eidos Montreal had a sit down and a cup of tea and a long think about why that space exists, who might be there, and what they might be doing in it.

Forget immersion - and you'll be getting great big boatloads of that shovelled all over you - it's all about stuff to do. Deus Ex is filled with it. It's a 30-hour game, except it's not. Not really. It's a 12-hour game if you whip out your machine gun and stomp your way across North America and the Far East with less respect for human life than a Michael Bay movie, but you probably won't because of all the stuff to do.

There are hour-long sidequests around every corner and XP rewards for exploring the world and finding its secrets. There are things you'll want to stop and look at for minutes at a time because you won't believe someone designed a 'Forever ' Post-It note and stuck it on a desk where only one percent of players will ever see it and even fewer will ever get it.

Even in the linear levels between the city hubs you're given space to move and choices to make. It looks like a shooter and plays like a stealth game but Deus Ex is a proper RPG where you'll have to make real choices every time you walk through a door.

Sometimes you'll fight, sometimes you'll hack, sometimes you'll hide, and the game will trick you into thinking it all matters because the world is just so convincing.

When you meet the men who destroyed Jensen's body and murdered his friends it takes a will of iron not to instantly pull a gun on them. After walking in Jensen's shoes for ten hours you'll think, yeah, maybe they do deserve to die. You'll break your zero-kill streak and murder someone because they deserved it rather than because the game insisted.

Only four characters in the game need to die by Jensen's hands, in the game's four boss fights, and those moments are Deus Ex at its weakest. For five minutes you're locked in and forced to do a specific job; for the rest of the time you're free and every choice you make has some small consequence.

Somehow Deus Ex is always one step ahead of you. You're in the midst of the next great flashpoint in human history - by the game's end Jensen's actions will have defined the future of humanity's evolution - but Deus Ex knows you; it knows you'll go nosing around the ladies' toilets and it'll have something in store for you when you do.

And that's quite a trick. Deus Ex is a long and largely nonlinear game, but it somehow wraps a neat little bow around the story no matter how you choose to play. Bioshock treated you like the biggest dick under the sea for excavating manaslugs from zombie children but Deus Ex isn't here to judge your completely arbitrary/borderline psychotic take on morality and justice; it just wants you to do your own thing.

There are big choices - moments when conversation leads you towards an obvious branching path. In those moments you'll weigh up the options as if they really do count because those decisions will go on to define your next 30 hours of Alone Time. There are smaller choices to face, too - every room you enter makes you select between craftily hiding and sneaking or just good old running and gunning.

Stealth is encouraged by enemies who'll shoot through Jensen's wafer-thin armour in seconds and the game is better if you like to hide, but Jensen has the tools to fight his way out of any situation so long as you've Augmented him for it. In a firefight it's as good a shooter as any recent Rainbow Six (from where Eidos Montreal robbed Director JF Dugas and its third-person cover system), with punchy weapons and aggressive AI.

The moment you're spotted the AI goes to work with a vengeance, a handful of soldiers suppressing Jensen and one or two flanking around to flush him out. It's the same response over and over but it feels smart and always feels life-threatening.

There's an Achievement for a zero-kill run and another for never being seen, but Deus Ex is at its best when you're adapting to the situation at hand. Some fights you'll win with the force of a nettled Schwarzenegger, others you'll win by letting a hacked drone win it for you, and then there are those you'll win with half a dozen silent takedowns. Some fights you simply won't be bothered to fight at all.

And all this took ten years. That's how bastard hard it was to make the original Deus Ex. It was so complex and so ambitious only one studio ever attempted it, and even Deus Ex's creator reckons he didn't get everything right. By Warren Spector's own admission, he's a developer who does new things because they're so new, and he's happy leaving others to perfect his work.

Mass Effect, Bioshock, Riddick and more have all had a good go, but Human Revolution is the first game to pick up exactly where Spector's team left off and to do almost everything better. Where Deus Ex's AI was dumb, Human Revolution's feels smart; where Deus Ex's combat was lightweight, Human Revolution's is angry and aggressive; where Deus Ex's stealth was clumsy, Human Revolution's is precise.

Dubious mechanics couldn't stop Deus Ex from being a great game, but Human Revolution replicates the original with none of those caveats. It's a great shooter, a great stealth game, a great RPG, and a great world in which to spend 30 hours of your life. On the few occasions Human Revolution gets it wrong you'll forgive it, because this amount of variety and creativity hasn't been done so well in a storydriven shooter for a decade - and it's about bloody time.

Check out the massive five page Deus Ex: Human Revolution review in issue 109 of the newly redesigned Xbox World, which goes on sale on September 1. Subscribe to get it delivered to your door before it hits the shelves.

Want a second, third and fourth opinion? OXM's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review gives another look at the 360 version, otherwise read PSM3's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review and GamesMaster's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review for PS3 and PC versions.

View the original article here

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Few games do so much, so well, and for so long as Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

In any other year, we'd have our Game of the Year winner locked down before the end of August, but with the likes of Skyrim hitting shelves in the next few months, Deus Ex is in for a fight, and a sneak, and a bit of a chat, and a punch-up, and whatever else you fancy doing, really.

It begins with conspiracy - a shadowy organisation attacks Sarif Industries, kills nine tenths of their research staff and leaves their security specialist, Adam Jensen, broken and dying. Jensen's body is rebuilt with Sarif's own military-grade augmentation technology and he finds himself on the tail of the men who killed his ex-girlfriend and turned him into a mechanical man.

The pre-credits tutorial sets the stage for almost 30 hours in Human Revolution's take on 2027. It's the most credible videogame world since BioShock's Rapture - every location telling a story about what happened before you arrived and what might happen when you leave.

Over those 30 hours not one minute is wasted; Human Revolution never takes your time for granted and never bogs you down with busy work. In every city hub there are half a dozen side-missions to complete alongside the main missions; you'll be tasked with recovering evidence from a body in a police station's morgue, but find yourself taking down a corrupt cop, investigating your ex-girlfriend's disappearance, stealing weapons from gangland territory, and doing anything but the job at hand. Every mission plays differently, and every mission can be played however you want.

Deus Ex encourages you towards stealth with enemies who can blow Jensen away in just two or three shots, but if you'd rather treat it as a shooter, it's down with that. When you find yourself forced into a firefight every fully upgradeable weapon packs a punch and the enemy AI puts up a tremendous fight, moving a couple of men to flank while the rest suppress as a group.

Augment your armour and electromagnetic shielding, install a rebreather to cope with gas grenades, and improve your arms to takedown two enemies at a time and you'll become an unstoppable killing machine. And who doesn't want that?

If you'd rather go sneaky you can install a cloaking system, look through walls, mark targets, and dampen the sound of footsteps to move through the game like a ghost. In those same levels where you can throw down and shootout, you'll find room to hide, sneak, and use your augmentations to your advantage. You can rack up a bodycount in the hundreds, or collect an Achievement for not killing a single soul.

Human Revolution is a proper RPG where you have a real choice about everything you do. You'll make decisions you'll have to think about for minutes at a time, weighing the possibilities; you'll break your zero-kill streak and murder people because they deserved it rather than because the game forced you; you'll risk your life and the lives of others to save characters you've genuinely come to like.

It's a game filled with branching paths where every decision feels like a decisive moment, and a game where the results are always satisfying no matter what path you take.

But we've seen this before, after a fashion. Back in 2000, the original Deus Ex changed everything. With help from System Shock 2, it forged a template the best developers would crib from for the next decade. That game wasn't a great shooter or a great stealth game, the AI was thick, combat was lightweight, and stealth was often as much about exploitation as skill.

Somehow though, even with those problems, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Human Revolution, however, has no caveats; it is a great shooter, it is a great stealth game, and those parts come together to make it a great RPG.

It's a once-in a-generation kind of game, and the first game in a decade to do everything the original Deus Ex did, and to do almost all of it better.

Want a second or third opinion? Read PSM3's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review and Xbox World's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review for verdicts on the console versions.

Order Games Master here and have it delivered straight to your door

View the original article here

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Few games do so much, so well, and for so long as Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

In any other year, we'd have our Game of the Year winner locked down before the end of August, but with the likes of Skyrim hitting shelves in the next few months, Deus Ex is in for a fight, and a sneak, and a bit of a chat, and a punch-up, and whatever else you fancy doing, really.

It begins with conspiracy - a shadowy organisation attacks Sarif Industries, kills nine tenths of their research staff and leaves their security specialist, Adam Jensen, broken and dying. Jensen's body is rebuilt with Sarif's own military-grade augmentation technology and he finds himself on the tail of the men who killed his ex-girlfriend and turned him into a mechanical man.

The pre-credits tutorial sets the stage for almost 30 hours in Human Revolution's take on 2027. It's the most credible videogame world since BioShock's Rapture - every location telling a story about what happened before you arrived and what might happen when you leave.

Over those 30 hours not one minute is wasted; Human Revolution never takes your time for granted and never bogs you down with busy work. In every city hub there are half a dozen side-missions to complete alongside the main missions; you'll be tasked with recovering evidence from a body in a police station's morgue, but find yourself taking down a corrupt cop, investigating your ex-girlfriend's disappearance, stealing weapons from gangland territory, and doing anything but the job at hand. Every mission plays differently, and every mission can be played however you want.

Deus Ex encourages you towards stealth with enemies who can blow Jensen away in just two or three shots, but if you'd rather treat it as a shooter, it's down with that. When you find yourself forced into a firefight every fully upgradeable weapon packs a punch and the enemy AI puts up a tremendous fight, moving a couple of men to flank while the rest suppress as a group.

Augment your armour and electromagnetic shielding, install a rebreather to cope with gas grenades, and improve your arms to takedown two enemies at a time and you'll become an unstoppable killing machine. And who doesn't want that?

If you'd rather go sneaky you can install a cloaking system, look through walls, mark targets, and dampen the sound of footsteps to move through the game like a ghost. In those same levels where you can throw down and shootout, you'll find room to hide, sneak, and use your augmentations to your advantage. You can rack up a bodycount in the hundreds, or collect an Achievement for not killing a single soul.

Human Revolution is a proper RPG where you have a real choice about everything you do. You'll make decisions you'll have to think about for minutes at a time, weighing the possibilities; you'll break your zero-kill streak and murder people because they deserved it rather than because the game forced you; you'll risk your life and the lives of others to save characters you've genuinely come to like.

It's a game filled with branching paths where every decision feels like a decisive moment, and a game where the results are always satisfying no matter what path you take.

But we've seen this before, after a fashion. Back in 2000, the original Deus Ex changed everything. With help from System Shock 2, it forged a template the best developers would crib from for the next decade. That game wasn't a great shooter or a great stealth game, the AI was thick, combat was lightweight, and stealth was often as much about exploitation as skill.

Somehow though, even with those problems, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Human Revolution, however, has no caveats; it is a great shooter, it is a great stealth game, and those parts come together to make it a great RPG.

It's a once-in a-generation kind of game, and the first game in a decade to do everything the original Deus Ex did, and to do almost all of it better.

Want a second or third opinion? Read PSM3's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review and Xbox World's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review for verdicts on the console versions.

Order Games Master here and have it delivered straight to your door

View the original article here