First off, it needs to be said that the first DLC for Edios Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of the most expensive I’ve seen. £8.99 in the UK. $15, I’m told, in the US. Is it good? Well, yes. But is it really worth that much money?

The Missing Link is far from short. You can complete it in anywhere between 6-12 hours, depending on your style of play and whether you feel like being an explorer. It took me about 10 hours to complete with a stealth playthrough and a fair amount of exploration, so you’re getting a lot of content here for your money.

The DLC stands on its own from the separate game. You don’t import a save or carry over your augments/equipment. You’re forced to start all over again, building Jensen up from scratch. The game provides you with plenty of Praxis kits to help get you started, and you’ll earn a fair few more through levelling up, but you’ll only ever build Jensen up to about half-strength at best. This can be nice if you weren’t too happy with the way your augmentations have turned out for you, but it will simply be annoying for most people.

The problem is you honestly don’t know what augments you’re going to need in the DLC. You’re aware that rebuilding won’t impact your main game, so you can’t safely buy an augment knowing that it will come in handy later even if it turns out useless in the immediate future. Ultimately, this means you still waste your Praxis points. Early on, I upgraded my dermal armour figuring there would be a boss fight somewhere along the line. There wasn’t. My stealth approach meant I never once needed those upgrades, and they would have been much better spent on some stealth augments that I had to go without.

The same applies to the story, which stands separate to the main game. A new cast of characters is introduced, and Jensen loses contact with everyone in the main storyline. The story itself is reasonably solid. It relies heavily on reading email early on to flesh it out, but as you progress things begin to unfold and you get a handle on what’s going on. It’s a bit thin, and the main antagonist only makes about three brief appearances, but the plot line is entertaining enough and adds a little bit more depth to the main story.

You do have to make a few Deus-Ex style morality choices as the story goes on. They’re good moments, but dulled by your knowledge that they wont impact the game at large. Characters comment on your decision, but that’s it. What’s new is the frequency with which characters comment on your style of play. Jensen is constantly being judged, often ridiculed, for his approach. Whether you kill enemies, knock them out or avoid them, characters will let you know what they think. It’s a nice spin to a story where you’re making moral judgements on others, and may even make you doubt your approach.

What surprised me was how similar the whole thing feels to Metal Gear Solid 2. The setting is similar, the length is similar, the story has a few similarities and it seems designed to favour the MGS-style stealth approach. Even the order of the quests is MGS-esque. You’re trapped on a boat/base, corridor crawling back-and-forth at your own pace progressing an overwhelmingly linear quest-line. There are a few optional quests, such as picking up weapon parts, but the complete lack of side quests is disappointing.

The gameplay hasn’t changed much from Human Revolution. There are still multiple ways to approach situations. You can silently take out enemies, straight up fight them, hack computers to your advantage or simply find a way around without being spotted. Edios Montreal haven’t taken any risks here, but they have eliminated the forced boss-fights many gamers hated in the main game. You still have to take out the antagonist, but now you can do it however you want. I missed having a final boss, but then I was one of the few who liked the boss fights in Human Revolution. Even so, there is something incredibly satisfying about taking out a roomful of enemies unseen, dropping down behind the main antagonist and shooting him in the back of the head with his own gun that you stole from his office earlier.

In the end, the experience doesn’t quite live up to the standards of the main game. It’s a bit stale at points, but it’s certainly not a bad DLC. If you loved Human Revolution, you’ll probably still enjoy this. If you didn’t, you might be better off waiting for this to go on sale.