The Social Satire of Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link

Warning - this portion of the review will contain spoilers for "The Missing Link" DLC of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

    Mercenaries, extraordinary rendition, and secret prisons. Sounds like pages ripped from the headlines, doesn't it? Well, at least, circa 2008.

    Part of the problem with being timely in video games is that by the time a game reaches the shelves, the topics raised will seem like old hat. I think the subjects invoked by Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC The Missing Link are still relevant and should not be dismissed. These subjects included issues of terrorism, detainment, Habius corpus, and other things you normally wouldn't find in your average console game.

    Deus Ex: Human Revolution, itself, included large numbers of references to the privatization of the military. This is a controversial subject in our own world and one when I break from my usual limousine liberal ways to say I actually support. I believe there's substantial numbers of jobs which can be ethically done by mercenaries and if people want to make their living as soldiers of fortune, it's their own business.

    The problem, of course, is supervision. In real life, non-privatized militaries are supervised by their governments. England and the United States, for example, have centuries of legal precedent for how to deal with misbehaving soldiers. Mercenaries, by contrast, have significantly more gray area in how they're to be treated under international law. Furthermore, since at least the Thirty Years War, mercs have had a reputation as atrocity-prone extremists.

    In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the corporation known as Belltower Inc was created as a moral alternative to the previous unethical private military corporations (PMCs) of the setting. Given Belltower serves as the chief source of mooks in the game, it's fairly obvious this didn't work out too well.

    The Missing Link doesn't forget Belltower's roots with its main NPC, Lieutenant Commander Keitner, being horrified by the actions of her fellows. Given she is a leading force in Belltower, it is implied the corruption of the group has more to do with its extra-legal backers than it does any inherent evil in being a mercenary. Indeed, the actions of Belltower in Deus Ex: Human Revolution are not the doings of a rogue military unit.

    Belltower engages in massacres of civilians, kidnapping, torture and worse but all of this is authorized by the governments which employ them. A major revelation of the first half of the game is that FEMA is being used to build camps where dissidents can 'disappear'. One needs to look no further than the CIA's own real-life prisons in Romania and other countries to know this is not too far removed from reality.

    Belltower, far from being the instigator of atrocity, is just following the orders of its employers. While it is still a partner in the terrible actions it perpetrates, the real cause lies with the people paying them to do it. As mentioned in the The Missing Link, Belltower is only a security company, look to the people who employ them to find the real villains.

    In short, The Missing Link maintains the not-unreasonable position that the behavior of mercenaries can and should be dictated by its employers. Keitner and her rival, Burke, represent two extremes of real-life militaries. Burke, despite being the very model of a rogue military officer, is mostly operating within the authority he's been given by the Illuminati. While the Illuminati, itself, is an extra-legal organization within the setting - it is clearly operating within the accepted bounds of the governments it controls.

    This brings us to the issue of extraordinary rendition. In today's global society, let alone Deus Ex: Human Revolution's, people can hop from one country to the next without difficulty. This makes issues of criminal pursuit and prosecution difficult. The method used by the second Bush administration to deal with this was to target individuals deemed to be threats and capture/eliminate them. Fair enough. As proven with Osama Bin Ladin's termination in Pakistan and Adolf Eichman's capture by Israeli agents, there's some argument to this approach.

    Heck, it would be hypocritical not to point out that the hero of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is engaging in his own personal crusade to rescue kidnapped US citizen, Megan Reed. We could be here all day listing the various crimes Adam commits in his pursuit of justice.

    The difference, of course, is what happens when a subject isn't guilty. The Missing Link's prison for Belltower detainees is filled with hundreds of innocent women kidnapped for the Hyron Project. In a nice subversion of everything you know about video game villains, it's obvious that the Belltower employees have no idea that the people they're kidnapping aren't terrorists. Bluntly, the mercs are told they're criminals and have no reason to believe they're not. It puts an interesting spin on the deaths of any Belltower operatives you may been responsible before finding this out.

    Audiences familiar with Belltower's treatment of the female prisoners may argue that they go beyond what is professional treatment for them (if I may dance around the issue). I think that just highlights an all-too real problem. In plenty of societies, when men are put in positions of authority over women they consider inferior, the results aren't pretty.

    While the characters of Commander Keitner and Doctor Kavanagh have moral reasons to act the way they do, the treatment of female prisoners undoubtedly played a role in their defection. Let's face it, it can't exactly be a comfortable place for them to work.

    In short, Belltower's prison is a place rife with potential for abuse. You have prisoners who have no way of proving their innocence, people who consider them scum irregardless of their guilt or innocence, and no way for them to serve their sentence or atone for any crimes they may have committed. In short, arrest by Belltower transports a person to a life sentence without the possibility of parole in a place you may or may not be eventually used for medical experiments. It's pretty much a fate worse than death.

    Adding further moral ambiguity to the story is the presence of the terrorist organization, the Juggernaut Collective. One of the things I always liked about the original Deus Ex was the moral ambiguity. While Bob Page was unambiguously evil, your allies were decidedly less than heroic. The New Sons of Freedom, for example, was a collection of paranoid right-wing nutjobs who were probably hording guns in a bomb shelter before the game started.

    In this case, the Juggernaut Collective and their leader Janus wants to recruit Adam for their organization, but are very clearly the sorts of terrorists Belltower is supposed to be fighting. Only the fact they're helping you against your current enemies makes them the kind of people Adam wouldn't want to take down. Certainly, it was only gratitude towards Quinn that prevented me from shooting him in the head. Like in real-world politics, morality can get very gray when the bad guys want to team up with you.

    Overall, The Missing Link is a very socially conscientious  work that contains many interesting ideas about real world political questions and ideas. If video games wrote more material like this more often, the medium would be much better respected.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link review

    This review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's only major piece of downloadable content (DLC) is going to be divided into two parts. First, I'm going to talk about add-on itself. Second, I'm going to discuss its social message. Video games are rapidly becoming a new medium for conveying ideas beyond, "rescue the princess from the castle" and it's important to analyze these messages when they appear.

    For those who just want to know whether or not it's worth the Microsoft Points to download, the short answer is yes. The Missing Link is an expertly designed adventure which contributes an additional nine hours or so of game play.

    The level design and graphics are top notch, with obvious care towards making it as fun as possible for people of varying game-styles. Gamers who prefer to sneak around problems will find as much to do here as those who enjoy blowing their problems away.

    The premise of the adventure is that, during the third act of Adam Jensen's journey, he stows away in a cargo container. In the game proper, this just takes him to his final destination. In The Missing Link, he is found by Belltower mercenaries, the bad guys for the majority of the game, and has his cybernetic augmentations turned off. Adam has to find his way out of their secret base as well as expose the corruption going on. It's a simple enough premise and nicely interwoven with the main narrative.

    Well, sort of.

    While it intersects neatly with the final section of the game, The Missing Link is actually played separately from the game proper. You have to physically go to a link called "Downloadable Content" on the main menu and start a new game as opposed to just playing through Deus Ex: The Human Revolution. Even worse, you can't take any of the experience or equipment you gain to the final levels of the game. It's a completely unconnected story and might as well be considered a distinct, if short, game like Portal was to Half-Life 2.

    I can understand the design choice, this allows players to enjoy the DLC's contents at any point rather than during a narrow time window. However, for me, it was mood-breaking and I would have preferred them to stick it after the main storyline or somehow incorporated it into the game itself.

    The game play is touted as being much smoother than the rest of the game, being created after they "perfected" it, but I don't think so. The Missing Link is noticeably harder than the rest of the game, even on Easy Difficulty, with a much larger collection of foes than even the penultimate level. There's fewer breaks in the tension than in the main game and fewer chances to decompress. Faster and more intense doesn't mean "better" in my mind, though.

    Sometimes, it felt more like Metal Gear Solid 4 1/2 than Deus Ex. I would have preferred the game include a section where you're able to peacefully interact with NPCs on the Belltower base like Detroit or Hengsha. The gameplay, while entertaining, was a little too action-orientated for a franchise built on characterization.

    While there are only a few NPCs you can interact with on a nonviolent level, I liked each of them. The character of Keitner reminded me that not all of Belltower's mercenaries were puppy-kicking evil. Irish black marketeer Quinn was amusing for reasons I'd be spoiling the game if I revealed. The main antagonist, Burke, was thoroughly-loathsome and defeating him was immensely satisfying.

    The storyline of the adventure was also well-written. Adam finds himself effectively visiting one of the prisons he encounters earlier in the game, containing huge numbers of individuals seemingly captured because of their political activities. I'll devote a whole article to the social issues raised in The Missing Link but, for now, simply state that the work has a large number of things to say about a wide-variety of subjects from private military contractors to extraordinary rendition.

    I appreciate when games try and think outside the box and possess a social conscience. That, alone, brings my score of the game up considerably. Those who are not interested in a game's political message, however, can safely overlook it for an otherwise enjoyable game play experience. The game manages that careful balance of having something to say without becoming overly preachy.

    I can honestly say that The Missing Link was enjoyable and well worth the money spent on it. The DLC removed most of my complaints regarding the game being too short and gave me more than my share of vent-crawling takedown-using cybernetic action.

    The only major flaws it possesses are the fact its removed from the rest of the game and there's not nearly enough social interaction for what amounts to an entirely new zone in the setting. The difficulty spike was, further, something I could take or leave.

    I give the DLC an 9/10 and mark it as a worthy addition to the game proper.

Writing Update

Hey guys,

Here's a progress update on my books for those who are interested.

Dating the Damned: My Paranormal Romance is finished and is in the editing stages. I'm changing around some of the character's actions because of later developments in them that I want to foreshadow but the final result is about 100,000 words. As a first person novel about a succubus, it's obviously a bit different from my usual work.

Merciless: Memoirs of a Supervillain: My superhero parody novel is also complete and currently being edited by a number of friends in a writing group I belong to. I figure this is going to be a tough sell since superhero fiction isn't really a genre right now. Still, I think it has potential, anyway. Again, it's about 100,000 words.

Merciless: World's Most Wanted: It's easy to write when you are doing it for fun. I started the sequel to Memoirs of a Supervillain almost immediately after finishing the first. It's at about 50,000 words and I'm taking a break from it to clear the cobwebs out of my head. It's going to be slightly longer than the original Merciless at about 120,000 words total.

The Legend of the Smoky Idol: My Edgar Rice Burroughs/Indiana Jones-homage is only about 10,000 words in but I have it completely outlined and am making good progress on it. I think the final results will be quite pleasing and am shooting for about 100,000 words again.

I have a number of short stories in the works as well, which I think will help ease me into professional writing.

Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect review

    Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect is a novel set in the Deus Ex setting, roughly six months before the events in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The novel stars two original characters and expands on several enemies encountered by Adam Jensen in the game.

    The books title comes from the in-universe Icarus Effect. It's a fictional sociological theory about humans and animals turning against the truly exceptional. Also called "Tallest Poppy Syndrome" by TV tropes.org and "Crab Bucket" by Terry Pratchett, it's when a bunch of people unsatisfied with their own lives get nasty to the people who succeed. I'm not sure it exists in nature but there's a certain level of truth to it in society.

    Truly, I'm not sure the Icarus Effect was the best idea to base a book around in the Deus Ex setting. Given what we later find out about augments, wouldn't a better name be the Perseus Effect? I.e. an  augment has the potential to be a great hero because of them but he's likely to end up with hubris as a result?

    The stars are Secret Service agent Anna Kelso and Belltower mercenary Ben Saxon. Both are augmented individuals who have exceptional abilities as well as highly important positions in their respective organizations. Both are individuals used to taking orders and being on the side of authority.

    Both make a nice contrast to Adam Jenson and JC Denton. Adam Jensen is a corporate mercenary and ex-SWAT team leader betrayed by his superiors. JC Denton, on the other hand, begins the original Deus Ex as a secret agent in the service of UNATACO. Anna Kelso and Ben Saxon, like Jensen and JC Denton, want to be able to trust their superiors and blindly follow orders. That's just not an option in a world run by the Illuminati.

    As you may have guessed, I found both protagonists very interesting and was eager to follow their journey through the surreal yet familiar world of Deus Ex 2020. Ben Saxon runs a little on the stereotypical side being a super-soldier with a conscience but I've used that character several times in my own writing so I'd be a hypocrite to begrudge Mister Swallow it. Amusingly, I kept thinking of Mister Saxon from Doctor Who and was tickled by the comparison. Likewise, Anna reminded me of Kate from NCIS.

    Also expanded in this book are the Tyrants, the quirky-miniboss squad of mercenaries from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Mister Swallow really doesn't have much to work with here as their depiction mostly treats them as a bunch of gun-toting psychopaths. This doesn't change in the book, though the character of Namir is expanded to become a truly malevolent evil genius. The kind of banal monster which can believe himself to be a good man while simultaneously murdering thousands of people.

    I, likewise, enjoyed the author's handling of Yelena Fedorova. She remains as mysterious as ever but does something so strange it causes you to speculate about her motives. You'll know what scene I mean when it happens. A special guest star shows up towards the middle of the book, one who made me smile every time he opened his mouth. Fans of the original Deus Ex games will love his inclusion.

    I was especially pleased by the inclusion of a new faction, Juggernaut, which makes an appearance in the "Missing Link" DLC. Juggernaut a group of anarchist hackers roughly analogous to the Illuminati but exalting everything they hate. I'm a sucker for conspiracy stories and giving the Illuminati an archenemy pleases me to no end. I hope this isn't the last we see of the oddball group of cyberterrorists.

    Mister Swallow has an excellent gift for bridging the gap between 2012 and 2020. While Deus Ex's timeline split from our own probably as early as the 1980s, the world is somewhat familiar. It's the kind of place where people suffer Wallstreet anxieties and televangelists form an obnoxious power-bloc in politics. The only major difference is the role of augmentation and, really, I rather like that sort of world-building.

    Was the book perfect? No. It has the flaws expected of a side-story which has to dance around the events of the game while simultaneously is unable to effectively resolve the fates of its central villains. After all, the Tyrants have to live until Adam Jensen can face them in-game. Still, I enjoyed the work and recommend it to fans of the Deus Ex franchise. I wouldn't mind seeing the surviving characters again and will be paying attention to Mister Swallow's future writings.

8/10

Buy at Amazon.com

The Social Satire of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Warning - this review will contain spoilers for the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

    The cyberpunk genre was created by William Gibson with the 1984 novel, Neuromancer. The punk influences talked about how technology was transformed into a tool of oppression rather than liberation while the cyber elements predicted a net-controlled world where cybernetics were a part of daily life.  Eventually, people ran with cyberpunk and produced animes like Bubblegum Crisis and movies like Robocop.

    I went back and forth on whether or not Deus Ex: Human Revolution fell into the category of true cyberpunk (the world screwed by technology) or post-cyberpunk (containing elements thereof but going in a different direction). In the end, I'm tentatively putting it in the category of true cyberpunk while its predecessors (Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War) are post-cyberpunk. In a way, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a reconstruction of many discredited tropes like the evil megacorporation and cybernetics make you evil.

    Unlike Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I felt had a obviously strong satirical message, I wasn't sure whether or not Deus Ex: Human Revolution worked as an allegory. After all, Augments are still very far away and aren't really a good stand-in for an existing problem like the X-men's mutants and racism. Then I thought about it for awhile and realized Deus Ex's central conflicts over augments and the proliferation thereof was an excellent stand-in for questions over wealth disparity.

    One of the biggest issues of the 2008 Presidential election was the housing-induced financial collapse. It helped expose the fragile peace which exists between the ultra-wealthy and the ever-increasing ranks of America's poor. In the USA, politicians can be bought (always have been), and when the ultra-rich can buy politicians then they can make the laws. As a result, to keep people in line, the wealthy have to keep the impoverished oppressed or focused on other matters.

    In the Deus Ex franchise, the embodiment of 'The Man' is the Illuminati. In the first and second games, the Illuminati were morally ambiguous and depicted as a valid choice for guiding humanity's destiny. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the Illuminati are simply a collection of people out for their own power. Like many real-world corporates, they are willing to manipulate the law in order to generate a better pay day for themselves. Bob Page, central villain of Deus Ex 1, had arguably better motivations in that he wanted to make a paradise. It was just on the back of poor peoples' corpses.

    The most visible figure of the Illuminati is William Taggart. William is a stereotypical televangelist-esque demagogue who is preaching against the cause of Augmentations under the guise of them being unnatural. For a long time, I wondered why they felt the religious right would be against augmentations. I felt it was a blatant pandering to the secular leaning nature of video gamers. After all, what is an easier target than televangelism? Then, at the end, it was revealed William Taggart was a member of the Illuminati and really only wanted to prevent the proliferation of augments across the world.

    In short, William Taggart is an enormous hypocrite. He uses the religious inclinations of his audience to lead them down whatever road he chooses. It's questionable whether he has any real opinion on Augments whatsoever, save the possibility they might eventually threaten the Illuminati. American politics is filled with rabble rousing by both parties, drawing on their members' prejudices advance their agendas. Like race-baiting, homophobia, and innumerable pet causes; the emotion is what's important. As long as people are angry and distracted, they aren't thinking clearly.

    Underneath William Taggert is Purity First, a anti-augment terrorist group. Unlike what you'd expect, Purity First doesn't appear to be controlled by the Illuminati. Instead, it's a form of blow back. William Taggart preaches nonsensical diatribes against cybernetics but his followers passionately believe in his so-called points.

    Isaias Sandoval, Taggart's assistant, truly believes in the evils of augmentation. Isaias assists the Illuminati in numerous terrorist actions but also carries out his own plans to fight for a cause William Taggart cares nothing for. It makes him a fool and, worse, shows how many people the Illuminati are willing to sacrifice as part of their endless power games.

    Deconstructing the evil corporate mogul archetypes are David Sarif and Zhao Yun Ru. Zhao Yun Ru is a more typical evil corporate mogul than David Sarif. She lies, kills, murders, and manipulates her way across the game. Hell, she's even the final boss in the game. However, it's actually her financial activities (which you can read about in e-mails) that are the most interesting.

    Zhao Yun Ru engages in all manner of horrible, but plausible, business practices to make sure augmented people need constant maintenance from her company. If you think this is unlikely from a company which produces prosthesis, maybe you should read up on many real-life medical corporations. She produces crap cybernetics and depends on it breaking down in order to force people to buy new models, despite the fact the machinery is built directly into customer's bodies.

    David Sarif, by contrast, is as close to a benevolent cyberpunk corporate mogul as possible. Unlike many real-life corporate moguls would do, he actually researches ways to make one of his most profitable production lines obsolete. Specifically, the drug neuropozyne. Likewise, he refuses membership in the Illuminati despite the limitless power and wealth it would give him. David even attempts to rebuild the devastated economy of 2020s Detroit, despite it being out of his price range.

    David is still corrupt, however. In order to make sure his dream of a cybernetically enhanced future is realized, he insists on Adam Jensen's involuntary upgrade. Likewise, he makes use of Adam's DNA information despite the fact that it was obtained without his consent. Throughout the game, he uses Adam Jensen as his personal hit-man and even attempts to frame William Taggart for terrorism (despite the bad writing about what, exactly, you're doing).

    Indeed, the most damning anti-augmentation argument is ever-present in the game but never overt. No one directly references it but it coats everything. Specifically, that augmentation is great and all but only the very rich will be able to afford it. David Sarif spends billions on his goal of creating the best augmentations possible but he's doing so in a city filled with decaying slums. The selfishness of transhumanist ideals in a world where there are very real human problems is an interesting juxtaposition. A similar theme is explored in Ghost in the Shell 2.

    While the writers seem to come down squarely on the side of augmentation in the game, the truth is that the issue is portrayed more ambiguously than I suspect even they planned. With obvious suffering and an ever-growing gap between the poor and the wealthy, augmentation seems an indulgence of the super-rich that will do nothing to alleviate the problems of day-to-day life. David Sarif, for all his lofty claims of being a visionary meant to lead us into the light (making him, amusingly, much like the reformed Illuminati of Deus Ex 1), is the kind of man who doesn't really 'see' the problems of the destitute.

    It's a kind of Fridge Brilliance (see TVtropes.org) moment when you realize that a substantial portion of the game deals with the problems of regular people. Adam Jensen has the opportunity to defy stereotype and use his augmentations to fight gang members, bust crooked cops, help hookers, crush white slavers, and smack around drug dealers. Whereas many players, myself included, initially wondered why this was included - you realize it shows the fundamental difference of Adam from other augments. He's the kind of man who believes great power shouldn't be used to achieve more great power, however benignly, but to assist those who don't have it.

    There are other interesting ideas in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, such as the expanded military role of private contractors and extraordinary rendition but I'll talk more about that in my review of Deus Ex: Missing Link. Overall, I really like the social satire in the game, it's just subtler than I expected.

    Excellent work, developers.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution review

    Deus Ex is considered by a lot of people to be the greatest video game of all time. This is a somewhat irrelevant statement because there's countless ways of measuring greatness. Pacman, for example, might be considered the best for the fact it started the  ball rolling. Still, I love Deus Ex.

    The first game touched upon themes of transhumanism, spirituality, conspiracies, and other high concepts. I found it incredibly fun to play. Sadly, it hasn't aged very well gameplay wise and I'm more inclined to tell people to watch it on You Tube than sit down to play it.

    The first game ended in a way which, not to spoil, conclusively ended the series. That didn't keep the developers from making the wholly unnecessary, but still well-written, sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War. Now, there is a prequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolutions. While I am an avowed hater of prequels, I was willing to give this one a shot because hey, Deus Ex.

    So is Deus Ex: Human Revolution awesome? Yes, yes it is. Is it as awesome as the greatest game of all time?

    No, no it's not. Is it close? I'd say it's amongst my favorite video games of all time but it's down there, like seventh in the top ten. I'd put Skyrim, the original Deus Ex, Dragon Age: Origins, Silent Hill 2, and Mass Effect 1 and 2 over it. Still, that's pretty high praise. It beats out Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and TIE Fighter. The Darkness 2 is about 11th on my list, which is why I rated it so high when I reviewed it.

    Part of what hurts the narrative is Deus Ex is it's a relatively short game. The graphics, gameplay, and world-building are so intricate that there's only so much you can stick on one disc. It's a peculiar form of criticism that a game needs to have more of its awesome content but I guess I still felt "hungry after my meal." At about seventeen hours, I could have gone for another nine hours or so.

    Amusingly, this is almost exactly what "The Missing Link" DLC provides and I wish they'd found a way to stick it into the game proper.

    I have a few more complaints about the game, but they're very minor. The fact that energy bars don't regenerate past the first level is one. I also resented the fact that I missed one of the side quests because there was no option to return to it after a counter-intuitive conversation with the protagonist's boss. Finally, felt the ending could have used some work. Compared to the overhyped Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, it's only a minor issue, however.

    Now for the positives of the game. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of the few genuine cyberpunk works to come out in recent years. I say "genuine cyberpunk" because while the tropes of the genre are common as dirt, a lot of cyberpunk is actually far too optimistic for the setting. The original Deus Ex, for example, is ultimately a Christ-story with the most obvious ending being about humanity's redemption through technology.

    Here, it's much more clearly about technology being used as a tool of control and perversion. It's not that technology is evil but it's being manipulated to make the world even worse than it already is.

    Class warfare is a big theme of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. David Sarif wants to be the benevolent King of Detroit but he's not rich or influential enough to make the entire city prosperous. The Illuminati, revealed in the first thirty seconds of the game, are still working to keep humanity under their thumb. Virtually the entire game is set in horrible slums or beautiful towering spires. Wealth, rather than cybernetics, is the guiding force of the world.

    The writers go to great lengths to examine how issues of wealth and cybernetics interact. One of the things I really liked was the inclusion of the Harvesters. These organ-thieves are created in exactly the sort of way actual thieves are created. There's an opening in the market that unscrupulous people can take advantage of, so they do.

    Speaking of which, I agree with Angry Joe, why was Adam never targeted by these organ thieves? You'd think as a walking tank with hundreds of million-credit Augments on his body, someone would attempt to mug him for them. It feels like a missed opportunity that no one ever does.

    The voice-acting in the game is incredible and I loved all of the characters. Adam Jensen is a wonderful protagonist, nicely redeeming the kind of '90s Antihero' archetype he obviously springs from. I could see Christian Bale playing him, though there's no physical resemblance.

    David Sarif, mentioned above, is plain awesome and I hope to see more of him. Likewise, I absolutely fell in love with the game's romantic interest, Megan Reed. Quite possibly my female favorite character in video games, I really believed in Adam and Megan's relationship.

    Realistic romances are some of the most difficult things to write in video games. Here, in a very short amount of time, they manage to really sell the bond between the pair. While events separate them in Act One, the shadow of Megan Reed hangs over all of Adam Jensen's ensuing actions. If they ever do a sequel, I hope they can write any future romances with the same degree of authenticity.

    Now for the gameplay. The gameplay for Deus Ex is based around four basic modes of play: stealth, shooting, takedowns, and hacking. Unlike the Metal Gear and Splinter Cell franchises, I *didn't* hate stealth in this game. There's enough vents to crawl around and boxes to hide behind that I never felt I was being shoved into a kind of gameplay I loathed. Sometimes, though it was rare, I even ended up shooting my way out. The game is sparse with ammunition and death comes after only a few shots, so the combat sequences are quite intense.

    If I had to applaud the developers for anything, it's the takedowns. Nothing is more fun than sneaking up behind a mook and promptly laying him out in one of the seemingly hundreds of martial arts animations Jensen possesses. You don't even necessarily have to creep up on your  opponents, you just have to get close enough to beat them up. The option of playing a cybernetic Bruce Lee was too good to pass up so I ended up leaving most of the mooks alive, brutalized but alive.

    Hacking is something I'm iffier on. The minigame for hacking took a while to figure out and got tedious in places, but it served its purpose. Honestly, if I had to recommend an ideal build for Adam Jensen, it would be emphasizing hacking and faster energy recharge time for more takedowns. There's enough experience in the game that you will be able to make whatever sort of Jensen you like, however.

    I could talk about the game all day, really, but there's really nothing more to say. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a well-crafted and well-written game set in my favorite genre. I suggest people purchase a copy now that the price has gone down a bit and download the DLC, "The Missing Link" for their first playthrough.

    Bravo guys, good game.

    10/10

Heart of Scars (Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter book 2) review

    The sequel to Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter by Brian P. Easton, Heart of Scars resumes Sylvester's quest to rid the world of the Beast. I have to give props to Brian P. Easton because in two books, he's created the single most unromantic depiction of werewolves (or any supernatural creature) ever.

    It makes me want to see what he could do with vampires because the werewolves are murderous, monstrous, Satanic scum. Really, for those people who are a bit tired of the "misunderstood monster" genre this is definitely the antidote.

    Heart of Scars is less of an anthology than the previous book, which makes sense since Sylvester is slowing down in his middle years. A large portion of the book is devoted to examining the staggering toll on his sanity that the hunt for the Beast has enacted.

    Sylvester doesn't whine about his condition, though. Brian P. Easton is better than that. Instead, we follow Sylvester as he travels further and further down the slippery slope until he thinks he's no better than the monsters he fights. Except, of course, the monsters keep traveling down it themselves.

    As bad and nasty as Sylvester becomes, somehow, the monsters just keep getting worse. Seriously, they're involved in everything from cannibal flesh-trading to drugs to slavery to releasing s***** video games (okay, not the last one, but they could be). The creation of organized werewolf crime syndicates and hints at a greater hierarchy makes the monsters of this book more interesting creature than the violent serial killers of the first volume.

    Really, it's a nice dissection of the usual treatment of monster and monster hunter. In a lot of books we get Vegetarian Vampire Hunters and the mortals who irrationally want to destroy them. Here, it's shown repeatedly that no matter how bad a human being is, he'll never be as bad as he would be if he was a werewolf. Lycanthropy seems to take everything bad about a person and turns it up to the eleven.

    Surprisingly, Mister Easton grounds the story in realistic morality. He uses real-life monsters and criminal activity to give a context for the horrible crimes committed by werewolves and makes it clear they're evil but that doesn't necessarily make the people who fight them good. The opening of the book, with the trial of alleged werewolf Peter Stubbe from real-life history, makes the book feel more authentic. It also prepares the audience for the kind of messed up s*** they're going to encounter within the book.

    For example, the book touches on the age-old D&D-ism "if all orcs are Chaotic Evil, what do you do with orc babies?" I won't spoil Sylvester's answer to the question.

    Some of the actions taken by Sylvester during the book may shock readers of a delicate constitution (or who simply don't much care for ultraviolence). Sylvester is a seedy, violent, and brutal man who thinks he's willing to do whatever it takes to defeat his enemies (and usually is). The book doesn't excuse his behavior or attempt to make it cool. I've had enough of Jack Bauer being lauded as some sort of hero for torturing people, thank you very much. Sylvester is a broken man who gets by on pure grit.

    Despite its many positive qualities, I think the book has some flaws. Sylvester's struggle with the Wendigo is something that tends a bit towards the metaphysical and our hero's always been a character best grounded in hard noir reality. The ending is confusing, relying on the surreal as opposed to the physical. Finally, there's a twist at the end that's somewhat unnecessary given we've already seen similar characters introduced in Sylvester's past life.

    I also question how much Sylvester has changed at the end of his spiritual journey, mostly because he remains as ornery as ever. I suppose that can be forgiven, however, since that's what makes him interesting. If you change the main character too much, after all, you lose your audience. Sylvester is the meanest monster hunter since Solomon Kane and I wouldn't have it any other way.

8/10

The Darkness 2 review

    As usual in my reviews, I'm going to open up with a digression about how a property relates to my childhood somehow. In this case, it doesn't. I'm fairly new to The Darkness universe and it was the game that introduced me to the comic book (which I love). I also played the second game first and I'm looking forward to playing the first one.

    So, for people who have never heard of The Darkness comic book or didn't play the original game, how is the Darkness 2?

    Great.

    Don't think the game is going to get unambiguous praise but it is a huge load of fun. It's a great game for people who love First Person Shooters, Occult Horror, and/or 90s antiheroes. Even for those people who hate 90s antiheroes, I'd argue the game transcends the label with phenomenally good writing.

    The premise of the game is this: Jackie Estacado is a former mafia goon turned the Boss of one of New York's most powerful crime families. He's so rich that he's got a David Xanatos-esque mansion on top of a skyscraper. He's also got beautiful women at his beck and call and a cadre of loyal goons. He just has one problem, two actually. First, the love of his life apparently died in the first game and he's possessed by Cthulhu.

    Well, not actually Cthulhu per-say but it might as well be given it's an evil from before time with tentacles. Basically, Jackie is inheritor of a nightmarish creature called the Darkness that has physically merged with his body.

     He can suppress it for a time but it gets called out whenever he's in physical danger. It's a bit like being the Incredible Hulk only with The Godfather, Doctor Octopus, and H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure.

    Interestingly, the Darkness 2 places its Lovecraftian horrors within a Judeo-Christian framework. The Darkness is apparently what God pushed back way back in Genesis' first passage. The game hints that Jackie is only making use of a much vaster and more powerful entity than we ever see on-screen.

    I like this sort of world-building and we get a plethora of other artifacts across the game with surprisingly detailed back stories (all narrated by Jonny Powell, your Renfield meets Giles-esque assistant). Sadly, you can't use any of the magical relics you recover, they're just for atmosphere.

    As much as I love H.P. Lovecraft, the Darkness wouldn't be nearly as entertaining if it was just a straight Call of Cthulhu-esque tale of occult horror. Part of the fun comes from the fact that it's also a straight mafia crime story. Jackie and his goons are straight out of Goodfellas (with some of them being a little too stereotypical). Still, the odd mix works as you see Jackie struggling to uphold the mafia code while dealing with some seriously weird s***.

    I won't spoil the story but there's at least some hints that Jackie's need to be the toughest guy in the mob isn't as glamorous a decision as he might think. Especially, of course, when it comes with being the host for an evil older than time. The Darkness speaks often during the game, in a low-guttural raspy voice.

    Basically, the writing is top notch from start to finish and it even manages to make Jackie's rather excessive angst over his dead girlfriend appealing. Still, it's not just the writing that makes or breaks a video game. How is the rest of the game? Well, that's a bit of a mixed bag.

    As a first person shooter, it's slightly above average. You do the usual thing by seeking cover, shooting things, and so on. The addition of the Darkness allows you to throw things at enemies and literally tear them apart but I'm not exactly overwhelmed. The "kill" animations are a bit too gory for my tastes and get repetitive. I would have preferred keeping them restricted to cut scenes.

    The length of the game is also something that may bother players. It's about seventeen hours and while it's much better than Homeland, it feels a bit short. The game has an additional multiplayer campaign where you play as various toughs with magical weapons but this was so divorced from the main narrative I never bothered to play it through.

    Overall, I'm satisfied with The Darkness 2. It's a fun game and a nice display of why 90s antiheroes weren't always bad. I wish they'd make a Witchblade and Angelus video game, to be honest.

8/10