Marvel's Midnight Suns was a welcome sign of relief among 2022's back half of high-profile games. Marvel remains a fan favorite, and no one will question Firaxis' pedigree with strategy games, but with titles like Gotham Knights ending up being such disappointments with players, it was good to see this game live up to the hype. The title has a season pass, and the $50 price tag gives one pause, since there are a number of times when the DLC doesn't live up to the heights of the base game. The Good, The Bad, and The Undead marks the first DLC of the season pass to hit the public, and it looks like the DLC is off to a good and interesting start.

Before you even get to the DLC, you'll need to make some significant progress through the main campaign. Without spoiling anything considering how new the game is, you'll have to get close to the halfway point and get to a milestone with a certain character before a side mission opens up that lets you meet the newest addition to the roster, Deadpool. The merc was hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve a valuable and powerful artifact, but he isn't alone. Sin, the granddaughter of Red Skull, is also on the hunt for this object, along with her army of vampyres.

The game nails Deadpool's personality quite well. Nolan North has been voicing the character in games for a while, and he has this dialed in, as do the writers of the game. One-liners and self-effacing jokes are constant. Cracks about the DLC and the player character go hand in hand with some fourth-wall-breaking. The Hunter tolerates him well enough, while the rest of the cast can't stand him, so this isn't exactly a love-fest for the character. In short, what you get here is the comic version of the character.

As a fighter, Deadpool is more toned down than what some may have expected. He's pretty much like Blade in that he uses his pistols and katanas extensively. He still cracks jokes during fights, but don't expect him to transform the game into something silly by using oddball weapons or techniques. Even if you aren't a huge fan of the character, you might want to throw him into your party for his En Fuego ability, which increases his damage output depending on how many kills are obtained. It isn't something that makes the game much easier, as the ability is dependent on kill streaks. Any damage he inflicts resets the En Fuego meter. He's perfect if your play style is to have tanks take the damage while others like him dish it out.

The vampyres aren't just reskins of existing enemies; they add tricks of their own to make fights interesting. They lengthen the battles, as they can be resurrected after defeat. They also have a bloodlust ability that lets them attack during your turn. Perhaps the more interesting move is that they almost always add bleed to your deck, so unless you're good about countering it with a cure, battles can be frustrating. You'll always burn a card on healing everyone afflicted with bleed.

As nice as this is, the big thing that people will be disappointed with is the length of the DLC campaign. Including the introductory mission for Deadpool, the DLC is only four missions long. The missions are varied enough, as you'll go against vampyres in a standard "defeat all enemies" mission, destroying the egg sacs in their nest, and going two rounds against Sin herself. The missions are fun, but it feels like it's over before it begins, even when one considers the cut scenes. The only solace is that the storyline will be continued in the upcoming DLC packs, so the whole thing may ultimately end up feeling significantly lengthy.

While the DLC-specific campaigns are short, the game tries to balance it out in several different ways. Deadpool becomes available for any mission where you can choose who goes with you. He has a full set of unlocks and costume choices, and he can also be chosen as someone you get to hang out with. In the Abbey, he introduces a food truck that lets you modify characters, so they can deal damage to reroll and move abilities. Side missions also get to have Sin and her vampyres added to the mix, and seeing this integration bodes well for future DLC.

Alongside the DLC comes a patch that implements Nvidia's DLSS 3 technology, provided you have any of the 4000 series of GeForce RTX cards at your disposal. Implementation of any upscaling technologies is always welcome, and seeing Nvidia's latest iteration alongside AMD and Intel's own upscaling techniques is something we want to see in more titles going forward. However, at the time of this writing, the option doesn't seem to work. We used the game's opening section where the Hunter awakens and travels to the Abbey for the first time as a quick test and found that at 4K with all ray tracing effects on, the game can average about 80fps with a GeForce RTX 4090, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a Ryzen 7 5800X. With DLSS 3 and frame generation on, the frame rate in that same section remained the same. The hope is that a patch comes in before the second batch of DLC drops, but for a game that isn't reliant on frame rate, your best bet is to stick with DLSS 2 or other techniques if your performance is really bad.

Marvel's Midnight Suns: The Good, The Bad, and The Undead DLC might scare off people with its $15 price tag for one new character and three new missions. The price is steep, even if the new enemies and Deadpool pop up in other side missions. The content is good and fits well with the established mechanics without getting too chaotic, and it is a nice introduction to a new story arc. For now, despite the score, you should probably hold off on this unless you already have the Season Pass or you're a huge fan of the Merc with a Mouth.

Score: 7.0/10