Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link (2011)
Playing as Zelda was a nice change of pace in this series – I’m pretty sure I haven’t found Link yet (and they keep calling him “Megan” for some reason), but in the meantime I hacked everything up to discover as many secret passageways as I could and used my tranquilizer arrows and bombs to take out the guards from The Bell Tower. One of my last quests involved finding the Eye of Burke and using it to unlock a door. In the end, the big triangle forces are still powerful and the story will continue in another chapter…
In all seriousness, it was nice to get back to a slice of one of my favorite games from 2011. After having last played it around that time, I thought it might be too daunting to jump back in on an old half-way-to-the-finish save, but since Missing Link drops you into the middle of DXHR anyway, acclimating to the controls and gameplay wasn’t as difficult as I’d feared. Finished it up on a no-kill run (no achievement for this) only missing one of the secret achievements – which I really should have found on my own, but that did require an aug upgrade which I hadn’t picked up. Ran it again to get the Factory Zero achievement (no weapons, no upgrades) and realized just how short of a game it could be, and how much I must have explored the heck out of it on my first attempt years ago.
The achievements are good, the gameplay is DXHR (so, good), and the levels, while on the smaller side, are very easy to get lost in (good and bad) and hold a ton of secrets (passageways, login codes, small notes to flesh out the lore, and a couple other unique bonuses for the achievements). There’s only one real boss, and a stealth approach is definitely viable. And being that DXHR is a prequel, it was nice to read a little about some of the characters from the original Deus Ex (an all-time favorite of mine) in the various data logs. Your choices… well, they matter very little, as far as the game is concerned, but there’s just enough of an emotional resonance to make it feel like they matter to the world your character lives in. The jerky character animation wasn’t what my memory remembered, but that’s a nitpick.
One of these days I’ll get 100% achievements on the main DXHR too (I have both versions on Steam, but have only played the initial release that didn’t include Missing Link). In the meantime… The Missing Link ($5.09 from Amazon in early 2012, with a gift card) is assassination number nine from my list of The 26!
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Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link
#9 of 26 (2017)
36 hours playtime
10 of 10 achievements
Learn to Fly 3 (2016)
I also beat Learn to Fly 3 a little while ago. But it’s not a part of The 26, and I’ve still got a ways to go to 100% it. I’m undecided if I’ll attempt that, since now it’s mostly just grinding it out. Still, I was really happy to (finally) notice it on Steam, since I loved Learn to Fly 2 back in the day. :)
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Learn to Fly 3
13 hours playtime
31 of 40 achievements
Games played in May 2017
| Game | Achievements | Playtime In May | Playtime Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phantasmagoria The 26 | — | about 14 hours | about 14 hours |
| Learn to Fly 3 | 78% (31 of 40) | about 13 hours | about 13 hours |
| LocoCycle The 26 | 100% (20 of 20) | about 8 hours | about 8 hours |
| Far Cry 2 The 26 | — | about 6 hours | about 54 hours |
| Half-Life: A Place in the West | 55% (6 of 11) | 1 minute | about 3 hours |
I don’t recommend Half-Life: A Place in the West. It’s a comic book (which I knew), episodic (which I kinda knew), not fully released yet (probably knew), there are achievements (for reading, basically), and chapters after the first are not free, but apparently this wasn’t announced until chapter two released. So people who read the first chapter for an easy 100% were suddenly left with a game-incomplete unless they forked over cash for the next chapter. The creators don’t plan on adding achievements for any further chapters because of the salty reaction to the paid DLC. However… that controversy is not why I don’t recommend it. I’m one of the few people who didn’t enjoy The Walking Dead (the show (the first Telltale game was great)). I gave it the entirety of two (three?) seasons and it’s just not my bag – I hate the majority of characters (let’s fight and yell all the time!) and their irrational and idiotic choices. Same with this comic, only its worse, and then I listened to the (2.5hr!!!) commentary and the creators seem to fully realize that their story and characters are garbage, but they still fawn over it like a couple of sophmores in love. It’s not worth your time.
The art is nice.
I played DXHR a long time ago (prior to the new edition they came out with) and although I have The Missing Link, I’ve never actually played it. I need to dig it out of my backlog and take it for a spin. 36 hours seems like a long time for a DLC– I know you replayed it for Factory Zero, but were there any other factors– or was it simply that content-rich? I only ask because stealth games take more FOR-ever so I’m wondering how much of a commitment I’m looking at…either with our without Factory Zero.
I wish I could give a more accurate account of how long it took me (especially re-playing it), but I failed to track the time data. Going by my achievements, between “All of the Above” which I got just prior to running Factory Zero from loading an earlier save, and getting “Factory Zero” on completion, I think my FZ run (rushing, but also dying plenty too, from unnecessarily trying to murder everyone bare-handed – I think I only avoided taking out three guys) took just under ten hours. However, a part of that time also includes my doing things like making lunch where I just left the game on.
And a large part of my total play-time is how much I immerse myself in a game, reading all the books, finding every little nook and cranny, etc. before progressing with the story. Whenever I compare my playthrough times to those on HowLongToBeat.com, mine are always much longer. I’m trying not to do that so much these days, but it was obvious that I had done that years ago on my initial half-playthrough. And I’d accrued eleven hours of gameplay then. So, maybe 20 or so hours on an extremely methodical and patient playthrough.
Unfortunately, the game itself doesn’t provide a good sense of how far along you are. Plus, there’s a little bit of back-tracking. And the most annoying thing for me on the Factory Zero re-play was just the identity scanner between level sections where you sit there and do nothing for about thirty seconds and you’re required to pass through them multiple times. To hopefully give you an idea of how far along you are if you pick it up again, I’d break it down into three main locations – the Ship, the Base, and the Prison (that last one isn’t really a spoiler, but I’ve censored it anyway just in case). And the Base is broken down into a few loading bays and the offices. From watching a casual speed-run half-hour playthrough, you’re basically going to go… Ship (easy to get lost in) > (scanner) > Base (loading bays) > Base (offices) > (scanner) > P > (scanner) > P (elsewhere) > (scanner) > P > (scanner) > Base (offices) > Base (offices again) > (scanner) > P > (scanner) > P (elsewhere) > P (…) > P (elsewhere) > (scanner) > P > (scanner) > Base (offices) > Base (offices, optional) > Base (loading bays) > Base (loading bays) > the end!!!
In my first years-ago half-playthrough (~11ish hours), I got through the entirety of the Ship, and the majority of the Base (including some sections I wasn’t necessarily supposed to go to yet, but explorer-me wandered off the guided tour as usual). Factory Zero took less time than a stealth/no-kill approach, but definitely more time than a free-form approach mostly due to not being able to hack everything, jump high, or lift heavy things. I tried for a while to find a way around hacking anything, but I’m pretty sure that at least one (easy) hack is required. If I were to do another FZ run, I might set aside from 3-6 hours, as an estimate. For a free-form, not-reading-all-the-interesting-little-notes run, it’s probably very doable, without speed-running, in 2-4 hours maximum.
Also, the difficulty setting doesn’t matter too much (Hardest difficulty for my initial run, Easiest for FZ), and I don’t think it changes the outcome of anything.
Hope that helps! :)
Thank you for such a complete answer! The concept of TL/DR pretty much doesn’t exist for me. ;)
I also play in a super-detail-oriented way, especially in FPS/stealth where I want to play as perfectly as possible. And read every note and email (so I can find things like this. And yes, my playtime is usually less than half of a typical How Long To Beat score– even for the “completionist” estimate, which is usually what I am.
So when I saw 36h, I’m like, OMG, do I have to double or triple this figure like I usually do? But it sounds like I don’t have to. My goal would be to do everything but F0, then decide if I wanted to replay it for the F0 achievement, knowing the levels this time around, of course.
Another gratuitous DXHR screenshot because I love it so much.
Thanks again for the reply!
Nice job with that hack!!!
And it sounds like we play similarly. :)
Some of the notes in the “P” area are a nod to the original Deus Ex, so those were fun to find, but they don’t spoil anything if you haven’t played that yet.
And if you’re still itching for more Deus Ex after getting through them all, I’d heartily recommend Alpha Protocol, especially since you have it already!
Completionist on that one could be a problem though – it’s one of the few I’ve played where choices truly alter how the game plays out.
(Sorry, supposed to be helping with the backlog, not hurting it… Whoops! :D )
Anyway, if you’re determined to get Factory Zero, then it’s not necessarily a bad thing to give it a shot on the first run, but it does make one of the (secret) achievements essentially impossible, so reserving it for a second run might still be a better idea, especially since you won’t have to be worried about any spoilers when checking up on what you can and can’t do while getting the achievement (I definitely recommend looking that up – for example: I threw boxes (rather than just dropping them) into place and still got it, but I never threw a box at an enemy, which I’ve heard might break getting the achievement).
Good luck! :)
Oh yeah– I forgot about that game! I might have to add it to my itching to play list…the fact that it doesn’t have Steam achievements will make it easier just to “beat” the game and not worry about completionism.
I’m pretty sure that I’d play a “normal” playthrough the first time around, then decide if I wanted to replay with F0…because I’m not determined to get it (lol) though it goes against my completionist tendencies.
Another gratuitous DXHR screenshot for the road…
Ah, I remember that fight – I’m pretty sure I did a pacifist save of Malik as well – that was definitely one of the tougher ones!
My Pacifist achievement was long since gone though… I pulled one guy through a wall early on and thought that’d only render him unconscious – didn’t know it was a kill until long after, but kept running pacifist anyway.
Yeah, the Pacifist achievement is notoriously capricious. Drag a guy the wrong way…accidentally headshot with the tranq rifle…a couple times I found a guy dead and had no idea why they were indicated as such. So I was never deliberately lethal (due to the XP bonuses if nothing else), but several guys died.