Deus Ex: The Missing Link - Performance and IQ Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Deus Ex: The Missing Link - Performance and IQ Review - Deus Ex: The Missing Link, developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix, is the first of hopefully several downloadable expansions for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The DLC provides 5 hours of gameplay, new characters, new conspiracies, and fuel for existing ones, as well as a polished game engine with improved graphics and performance.
 
Interesting that CF is bugged in this title - for me, as of 11.9 it's also bugged in the main Human Revolution title as well - I only get about 20% scaling.
 
Nice review. I'd heard about this DLC but I didn't know there were graphical improvements as well. I might have to take a closer look at this one.
 
Now that's how you do downloadable content! I may pick up both games but I'd love it if the developers can patch the original game to add these graphical effects. I think I'll invest when there is a game of the year edition later on. Hopefully then they will have all the bells and whistles enabled on not just the expansions but the core game too. Either way this seems like a must play, I just never played any of the old games so I hope I can pick up quickly what's going on in the story.

I am also curious if you could enable crossfire to work using something like radeon pro.

@samuelmorris 20% scaling sounds horrible, I wonder if AMD is aware of this. I wish I had a twitter account as I'd tell catalyst creator that crossfire in deus ex hr sucks.
 
hegulator said:
I'd be all over this, but 15 bucks for 5 hours seems overpriced.
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until you consider theres a lot of 50-60 dollar games i'm sure you probably have that only had 5 hours of game play. i'm not defending the game since i don't care for the game but you also have to put it into perspective with other games as well.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Now that's how you do downloadable content! I may pick up both games but I'd love it if the developers can patch the original game to add these graphical effects. I think I'll invest when there is a game of the year edition later on. Hopefully then they will have all the bells and whistles enabled on not just the expansions but the core game too. Either way this seems like a must play, I just never played any of the old games so I hope I can pick up quickly what's going on in the story.

I am also curious if you could enable crossfire to work using something like radeon pro.

@samuelmorris 20% scaling sounds horrible, I wonder if AMD is aware of this. I wish I had a twitter account as I'd tell catalyst creator that crossfire in deus ex hr sucks.
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As ghastly as this is, I never played through the original Deus Ex. From what I can gather, while there are plenty of references to the original, the game is pretty much a new title from a plot standpoint, you don't need to know anything about the original to enjoy the game standalone, and you're not missing much either.

Interested to see someone else has the poor scaling that I do. From benchmarks I should be looking at 35-40fps with a single card, and I'm getting 45-50 or so. Afterburner tells me each GPU is at about 60% usage, and the fan speeds are as a result, pretty low. CPU usage is reasonable, but also variable, between 25 and 50%, often somewhere in the middle. A shame, as the game isn't really that smooth with crossfire performing this badly, and it would be if it had the scaling of other current titles. It's not unplayably bad by any means, but annoying.

I'm quite slow with games (especially stealth, which I suck at!), I've already had 15 hours in the main campaign and I understand i'm nowhere near finishing it (maybe two thirds in?) so the game is reasonable for value at the moment.
 
So... Do the enhancements change the graphics of the full game? I'm not getting that throught the reading (probably not enough coffee this morning)...
I'd kinda love to play through the full game with better graphics. It's a great game, but some of effects really were strange (skyboxes/fire&smoke).
 
I bought this, but only because I had a $20 credit with Green Man Gaming and could get it for free. If I hadn't had the credit, not sure that I would have paid $15 for 5 hours of gaming.
 
Pretty fun, but it probably helps that I got the DLC for free from Eidos. They had a promotion going on to where if you joined their official DX:HR Steam group, jumped in their TF2 server and did SOMETHING, you got either a Genuine item or the DLC, your choice.

The DLC looked good, was fun and I couldn't find many problems with it. Probably wouldn't have been happy to play something that lasted 5 or so hours for fit-tang bucks, though. 10 would have been a better mark.
 
Heck no! This DLC is standalone! When you get to that part of the story, if you want to play chronologically, you have to save and quit, then launch the Missing link and start a new game there! Then you get to go back to the original when you're done. They can keep the improvements. I'd rather have one contiguous game to play.

I never asked for this.

DWolvin said:
So... Do the enhancements change the graphics of the full game? I'm not getting that throught the reading (probably not enough coffee this morning)...
I'd kinda love to play through the full game with better graphics. It's a great game, but some of effects really were strange (skyboxes/fire&smoke).
Click to expand...
 
Chiplg said:
Heck no! This DLC is standalone! When you get to that part of the story, if you want to play chronologically, you have to save and quit, then launch the Missing link and start a new game there! Then you get to go back to the original when you're done. They can keep the improvements. I'd rather have one contiguous game to play.

I never asked for this.
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I second this.

It being a separate executable and not slip-streamed into the main game is beyond stupid. Why do the improvements only for a short overpriced DLC and not the main game? Hell the stupid Tong quest you get is slip-streamed in even if you bought it after the fact.

If you want to make it separate so you don't have to play the game over again to just do the DLC fine. Make a link in the menu that jumps you to that point. I can see this being annoying as you have to basically replay a chunk of ME2 over again to play the DLC if you dont have a save around the proper point.
 
samuelmorris said:
ME2?
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Mass Effect 2.

I also want to add something about the "load screens".

I will take a real load screen over this dumb crap any day. Actually I will take DYNAMIC LOADING any day. Loading on the fly as you progress through the map. Or better yet, the game actually looking to see how much RAM you have and load more of the map if more RAM is available. Would make having a computer with 24GB of RAM more worth it.
 
Yeah I assumed, but you've lost me, why are we discussing Mass Effect 2 in regard to a Deus Ex Human Revolution DLC?
 
jeez.

It feels like DeusEX: HR just came out, and there's already DLC for it with graphical improvements none-the-less?

Seems like someone has been keeping busy!
 
I am currently playing through the DLC. So far I have to say that the game seems to be running more smoothly for me than when I played through HR. I have two GTX 580 cards. When I was playing HR, I played on a single monitor at 1920x1200 because I experienced lag and juttering when gaming on three monitors. In the DLC, I am having no problems gaming on all three monitors using the same settings. In fact I feel like it runs smother now on three monitors than it ever did on one monitor in the original game. I do not have DX11 on because it kept crashing at random in the original game. Turning off DX11 fixed that problem, but I lost some graphical advantages. That sucked but I enjoyed the game play enough I just dealt with it. Also I had really bad lag and stuttering during cut scenes in the first game that I am not experiencing in the DLC.
 
Supposedly this "unofficial"cap 11.9 Cap 4 fixes not only crossfire in this game but also fixes stutter in Battlefield 3!! Try em if you have these games.

UNOFFICIAL 11.9 CAP4 - This CAP was not provided directly by AMD
AMD Catalyst Application Profile - 11.9 CAP4 (Release Notes)

New profiles added with this release:

Battlefield 3 - Provides great CrossFire scaling and resolves stuttering issues when running in CrossFire mode.
Deus Ex Missing Link: Improves CrossFire performance
F1 2011: Improves CrossFire performance
Dead Island: Improves CrossFire performance
Batman Arkham City (DX9 version): Improves CrossFire performance
NBA 2012: Disables CrossFire
 
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. said:
Is it possible to force AFR via a program like RadeonPro on the CFX setup?
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This. I don't know why you [H] guys don't know about RadeonPro but you should. It allows you to make custom profiles for games and force CFX with different modes. Then you'd be able to test it with proper AFR
 
Bojamijams said:
This. I don't know why you [H] guys don't know about RadeonPro but you should. It allows you to make custom profiles for games and force CFX with different modes. Then you'd be able to test it with proper AFR
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We do know about RadeonPro, but prefer to test these games as an 'out-of-box' comparison, with 'out-of-box' support from NVIDIA and AMD, i.e. official support for such things as SLI and CFX. If these are not supported, then AMD and NV need to know about it. Gamers also need to know about it, when installing and playing the game on their SLI or CFX system. We use officially supported and built-in applications that are provided through NV Control panel and CCC, gamer's shouldn't have to download separate and unsupported third party applications to make these things work. NV provides the ability to create profiles per-game and force AFR from NV Control panel. This is a feature AMD does not have. NV has an advantage there by allowing this, I wish AMD had a similar ability in CCC or the ability to 'force on' AFR in unsupported games.
 
hegulator said:
I'd be all over this, but 15 bucks for 5 hours seems overpriced.
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I thought so too at first, but the amount of gameplay in this DLC is impressive. And, when you consider that a full version game like Hard Rest is about the same amount of gameplay, and it is $5 more expensive, it's not a bad deal.
 
DWolvin said:
So... Do the enhancements change the graphics of the full game? I'm not getting that throught the reading (probably not enough coffee this morning)...
I'd kinda love to play through the full game with better graphics. It's a great game, but some of effects really were strange (skyboxes/fire&smoke).
Click to expand...

No, new graphics are only in The Missing Link DLC.
 
hegulator said:
I'd be all over this, but 15 bucks for 5 hours seems overpriced.
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I put 9 hours into it and got 50 hours in the main game. Lots of hacking and searching every nook and cranny for items helped. It was worth every penny to me and I'll enjoy a second play through on the hardest difficulty and complete every side quest.
 
Funny how in America the 6950 and GTX570 are facing each other but in France the 6950 is about the same price as the 560Ti. This changes the price/performance ration quite a bit.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
until you consider theres a lot of 50-60 dollar games i'm sure you probably have that only had 5 hours of game play. i'm not defending the game since i don't care for the game but you also have to put it into perspective with other games as well.
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Brent_Justice said:
I thought so too at first, but the amount of gameplay in this DLC is impressive. And, when you consider that a full version game like Hard Rest is about the same amount of gameplay, and it is $5 more expensive, it's not a bad deal.
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That's totally the wrong way to look at things.

Because Company "A" screws you for $60.00 and only five hours of gameplay it doesn't mean you're not getting screwed if company "B" sells a game that costs less and still only has five hours of gameplay.

You're getting screwed either way, one is just to a larger degree.

I'll probably grab it when it's below $10.
 
Grimham said:
That's totally the wrong way to look at things.

Because Company "A" screws you for $60.00 and only five hours of gameplay it doesn't mean you're not getting screwed if company "B" sells a game that costs less and still only has five hours of gameplay.

You're getting screwed either way, one is just to a larger degree.

I'll probably grab it when it's below $10.
Click to expand...

Hey look someone else gets it too.
 
Grimham said:
That's totally the wrong way to look at things.

Because Company "A" screws you for $60.00 and only five hours of gameplay it doesn't mean you're not getting screwed if company "B" sells a game that costs less and still only has five hours of gameplay.

You're getting screwed either way, one is just to a larger degree.

I'll probably grab it when it's below $10.
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Main game+DLC can equal over 60 hours of gameplay if you do everything rather than rushing through it. As a fan of the series, I don't see how one is getting screwed with this game even if it was priced at $100. It's a masterpiece and the DLC adds great value.
 
dark_reign said:
Main game+DLC can equal over 60 hours of gameplay if you do everything rather than rushing through it. As a fan of the series, I don't see how one is getting screwed with this game even if it was priced at $100. It's a masterpiece and the DLC adds great value.
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I have almost 100 hours on my first playthrough (i'm pretty OCD when it comes to games), and from what i've seen of the DLC it does look to add GREAT value. Doesn't mean i think it is worth 15 bucks though. Discounted prices can almost be bet on, so I like waiting for those.

Then again, maybe I'm just poor. :(
 
dark_reign said:
Main game+DLC can equal over 60 hours of gameplay if you do everything rather than rushing through it. As a fan of the series, I don't see how one is getting screwed with this game even if it was priced at $100. It's a masterpiece and the DLC adds great value.
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Now I wasn't bashing the game mind you. Just the thought process of what good playtime vs. $$ is. I thought this was a very good game, not as good as the original, but still worthy of the Deus Ex name.
 
Steam tells me I put 48 hours into DX:HR, so I'm thinking I'd get like 6 hours out of the DLC. Not really worth 15 bucks to me, but I'm sure it would be worth it to some. I have enough of a backlog that I can wait for it to go on sale.
 
chockomonkey said:
I have almost 100 hours on my first playthrough (i'm pretty OCD when it comes to games), and from what i've seen of the DLC it does look to add GREAT value. Doesn't mean i think it is worth 15 bucks though. Discounted prices can almost be bet on, so I like waiting for those.
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I was going to wait for a price drop as well, but I think that won't happen until they do a GOTY edition or something. Had it been $20 or more I most likely would have passed, but I know everyone is different. With any other game I would have waited for it to go under $5.;)
 
Grimham said:
Now I wasn't bashing the game mind you. Just the thought process of what good playtime vs. $$ is. I thought this was a very good game, not as good as the original, but still worthy of the Deus Ex name.
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Fair enough. $10 is probably more fair, but I think it was pretty good value for $15. I don't think the original game will ever be topped, but this one came damn close.
 
Brent_Justice said:
We do know about RadeonPro, but prefer to test these games as an 'out-of-box' comparison, with 'out-of-box' support from NVIDIA and AMD, i.e. official support for such things as SLI and CFX. If these are not supported, then AMD and NV need to know about it. Gamers also need to know about it, when installing and playing the game on their SLI or CFX system. We use officially supported and built-in applications that are provided through NV Control panel and CCC, gamer's shouldn't have to download separate and unsupported third party applications to make these things work. NV provides the ability to create profiles per-game and force AFR from NV Control panel. This is a feature AMD does not have. NV has an advantage there by allowing this, I wish AMD had a similar ability in CCC or the ability to 'force on' AFR in unsupported games.
Click to expand...

And as greatful as I am to the creator of RadeonPro, THIS is the reason I'll be going back to the green team once upgrade time comes around again.

At the rate I go through cards that will be a while though, so we'll see if AMD improve things before then.
 
Raxiel said:
And as greatful as I am to the creator of RadeonPro, THIS is the reason I'll be going back to the green team once upgrade time comes around again.

At the rate I go through cards that will be a while though, so we'll see if AMD improve things before then.
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:confused:

According to your sig you're already using a GTX 260...?
 
Can't wait until AMD releases a fix so that Bulldozer owners can play this game. If I try to launch this title with my FX 8120, my computer just restarts. I miss playing Deus Ex!
 
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