Deathloop is a very cool experiment from Arkane. By far the most polished and satisfying gameplay they've made to date with a lot of the familiar powers from Dishonored and the gameplay twist of having your rival invade your world as another online player is a fun idea. Colt and Julianna's dialogue steals the show whenever you get to hear it and I found myself laughing out loud on more than a couple of occasions.

I think where it falls apart a little bit is with the overall story and sadly it doesn't quite come together in the satisfying ways that I hoped. Which to be sure, I don't really blame them (I only really know one non-visual novel game that has successfully pulled off the time loop concept). What's more, by the time you are ready to finally finish it, you've been through the four areas in the game so many times you already know the optimal routes so it feels a little stale.

That all being said, there's still a lot to love. I think the loot system actually quite worked heavily in the game's favour to keep things fresh on each loop. Many of the guns, trinkets, and slab upgrades are a blast to use and collect. I also really can't overstate how fun the gameplay is and how much of a blast it is to jump into other people's games as Julianna.

Definitely recommend giving it a go if the concept seems interesting to you, but wait for a sale.

Un absoluto juegazo. Arkane no decepciona.

La prioridad absoluta aquí es que aproveches la clase de juego que hace Arkane como nunca lo has aprovechado. Puede abrumar durante sus primeras pero lo recompensa con creces al ofrecer una experiencia increíblemente fresca y única.

El diseño es nivel cerebro galaxia: es increíble todo lo que oculta y lo bien conectado que están todos sus elementos bucle tras bucle. Puede que hayan solo 4 escenarios, pero el nivel de detalle que ofrecen y la experiencia de ir aprendiendo a dominarlos como en pocos juegos a través de la repetición de los bucles es una que no olvidaré pronto. Es realmente impresionante como el juego lo hace todo para asegurarse de que salgas con la sensación de haber aprovechado al máximo lo mucho que tiene que ofrecer y todas las posibilidades a tu disposición.

Uno de los primeros grandes de esta generación, sin duda alguna. Me muero de ganas de ver a gente que sabe sacarle todo el jugo a este tipo de juegos hablar en detalle de él.

Deathloop starts out really strong, with an interesting timeloop mechanic and all the exploration and open-endedness you'd expect from an Arkane game. The characters and world are constantly entertaining and whether exploring or just pursuing the objectives, it feels like there's something new around every corner, even if that's just new lore about the world of the characters.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really last. Once the pieces start falling into place the lack of depth and, honestly, choice at the heart of the timeloop mechanic becomes apparent, and the game then kinda limps towards a pretty underwhelming ending. By the end, I was rushing to beat the game as I'd had my fill.

Despite that, it's still fun, and the Julianna invasion mechanic made for some fun times (and some frustrating ones), though I had little interest in pursuing it myself, even with the challenges and rewards or whatever.

Ultimately, it's just far less substantial than it sets out to be, and fails to live up to the potential the concept offers. Still, I can give a game a lot of leeway for an interesting premise even if the execution is, honestly, pretty flawed, and Deathloop does enough right to be a good game. Just not a great one.

Deathloop is a really fun game that is definitely a unique and cool spin on the immersive sim genre. I had a great time and was engrossed in the narrative the whole way through, while being slightly let down by the ending.

Deathloop goes all in on guns, which makes the gameplay lean more towards creative combat than the creative stealth you might expect from an Arkane game. Colt can definitely get by taking people out silently, but it is usually more effective and more fun to go in guns blazing. I didn't really even find the single stealthy ranged weapon in the game to be that effective, which seems like a purposeful choice to push you more towards the chaotic firefights that make the game more fun.
The weapons feel great to use and cover most of the bases, with a couple of flavors of shotguns, pistols, and rifles. The Heritage Gun was definitely my favorite and is on par with Destiny 2 Scout Rifles in terms of fun. I had some minor problems with the ammo UX... I found it difficult to figure out what ammo types I was using and having a loadout with two guns that take the same type feels pretty bad.
I found most of the special powers in the game to be less interesting because of this. Karnesis is the "go loud" ability, sewing chaos through the enemies, but I didn't feel like it got me more than shooting someone in the face did. Same for Aether, which is the most stealthy power, since the basic stealth functionality works well enough and shifting to combat isn't really a punishment.
I used Shift and Nexus throughout the whole game, which were both fun and interesting, but I would have liked to have been forced to make harder decisions about my loadouts.

The structure and systems of Deathloop are where it really shines. Arkane made some really great choices in limiting the number of places you can explore while also giving them a means to change (over the course of the day). This makes learning the nuances of all the levels in their various states very rewarding and also plays directly into the plot and various side objectives. Time manipulation and retention of information by Colt is used in very cool ways throughout the game.
It is very satisfying to make a plan at the beginning of the day, go to the right areas at the right times to make events happen according to your plan, and get the reward of a cool gun or furthering the plot.

The environments, art, and level design are all great and unique. Arkane always kills it in this regard, and the style of Deathloop doesn't disappoint. There is a ton to look at and explore and every part of every level is memorable, making navigation and learning of the levels a breeze. Simultaneously, there is so much to explore in each area that you will be finding new hidden and out of the way areas even on your tenth visit to a level.

The narrative is very interesting, with a lot of sci-fi magic hinting at how the loop functions and what happened in the past to get us to this point. It sort of fell apart for me in the third act though. The finale itself fell a little flat for me, though it does make sense in the context of the characters and story. There also seem to be plenty of references to Dishonored (including the slabs themselves being reminiscent of the mark of the Outsider), seeming to hint that this is some future timeline of the world Dunwall exists in, which is kind of neat.

I really loved this game. It was super satisfying and interesting to play through and I really like that Arkane is attempting to take the genre in new directions. If you like immersive sims, great combat, or interesting game structures you should definitely give Deathloop a shot.

Real G's move in silence like lasagna.

This game is everything I was hoping based on the previews:
1) It's Dishonored, but you aren't punished for killing people.
2) The roguelike structure makes it fun to replay levels, something I would have liked to be able to easily do in Dishonored.

I enjoyed this overall, but all those 10/10s make it seem much better than it actually is.

The good:
- Voice acting is chefs kiss
- The gameplay, and the general "feel" of the game, is very much like every other Arkane game. I personally like that, but ymmv.
- The concept of the game and how it plays out is cool. I liked seeing different areas at different times of the day, and planning how to navigate around them.
- Gameplay and pacing (after the tutorial) is pretty good and kept me constantly entertained, especially with different trinkets and powers.
- The world is interesting and there's little secrets to explore in different areas*
- Among Us in Deathloop (this is not a spoiler)

I finished this in 2 sessions (13 hours and 6 hours) without breaks, so that should tell you this is pretty fun.

The bad:
- *The little secrets you discover don't really reward you well for discovering them most of the time.
- My 2060 couldn't give me consistent framerate at 1440p, and even had some drops in 1080p. I ended up getting this on PS5, where it experienced a total of 3 crashes, and I encountered 2 bugs with the menus. Not a huge deal, but I wish things were better tested and optimized before release.
- The game doesn't give you a lot of freedom. It was marketed as "you'll have to explore and figure out how to kill all the bosses in a single loop", which holds true but there aren't multiples ways to do that. There's literally only one way to finish the game. Its linear, which is fine, but I will it provided less guidance and let me figure things out on my own instead of telling me exactly what to do and where to go.

I think if there was a little bit more freedom and a little less hand holding, this would have been a 4.5/5 for me.

I can't believe it's taken this long for Western AAA to learn what a time loop is. Majora's Mask came out in 2000. Moon was 1997. Fuck, Groundhog Day was 1993!

I'm glad the eventual result was turned out so well, though. Deathloop is so smart in so many ways. The interweaving of cause and effect, setting up dominoes and watching them fall, that forms the core of the main plot is as meticulously precise as one would hope. (To be honest, if you can't execute on that well you have no business making a time loop game in the first place.)

Even more impressive is the way it exists in dialog with modern game conventions: it has DNA from roguelikes, soulslikes, shooters, and of course Arkane's hallmark immersive sims (which feel almost like practice runs for this game). Plenty of games throw in the latest trendy mechanic, but what sets Deathloop apart is how integral they all feel--again, how smartly the game takes exactly what it needs from each genre and fits it into an incredibly cohesive whole.

A fine game that's not arkane's best but still fairly interesting. I really hope it sells well so arkane can have a hit on their hands for once.
The game just feels like they built it around the complaint that non lethality being encouraged despite all the weapons being built around the lethal route. Everything kills and the death doesn't matter since you aren't actually killing anyone.
Way. WAY. too easy for its own good.
Also terrible job explaining the game in advertisements.

Pros:
general gameplay design elements, how everything feels
the art style of the world, its 60s-70s feel but rundownness
Voice Actors do a great job the majority of the time
Level Design is good, especially with certain places like the art bunker and the mansion

Cons:
The difficulty is way too low for the combat to feel very satisfying. General good feeling dishonored/prey but the enemies are way too easy.
The comedic banter can get a little grating sometimes. Especially near the beginning.
The story hints at something much larger but doesn't talk about a whole lot about it. A simple story is what i've come to expect with arkane though.
melee combat is incredibly simple and a bit janky if you actually want to use it beyond just stealth.

6/10

Takes its time but the combat is really satisfying once you get the right tools throughout the game. I love how you have to constantly adapt when thinks go wrong, you gotta own up to your mistakes and find a way out of the hole you made. Level design is super endearing and fun to traverse through. Enemies are lacking in variety, intelligence, and general toughness which devolves the game into using them in numbers to create a challenge. They’re fun to mess with but lack the challenge this game needs. Trinkets and weapons feels really unnecessary after a few loops, at that point you kinda forget about the whole residual infusing or sacrificing system since everything you collect essentially becomes junk.

The worst thing that ever could've happened ended up being the 10 it received from IGN. We'll all be dead and gone before reactionary gamers stop being contrarian to games media because they're games media.

This isn't me saying Deathloop is a 10 for me, and it very very likely won't be a 10 for you either. The idea that a 10/10 game is something that is flawless is...flawed and not a realistic expectation for subjective media. The IGN reviewer enjoyed the game enough to give it a 10, and I'd much rather live in a world of games journalism where reviewers say "screw it, I love/hate this thing" and will review it as such.

Now to get on topic and discuss what *I* think about Deathloop-Its great! Deathloop offers a really nice fusion of classic Arkane mechanics, and the looping mechanic allows players to get the sensations of mastery that Dishonored is known for, but without the need to replay the game.

As is the case with the rest of Arkane's work, if you aren't interested in sneakily reading text documents to get the actual world building, you aren't going to like the narrative. Deathloop's ending is going to be received acceptably at best, and hated at worst, so it needs other aspects to do some heavy lifting. The VA work is fantastic, as Visionaries ride balances between pathetic and evil while Colt and Juliana have some performative depth. The writing itself is mostly good with some occasional self-indulgence but the true star is the world building tucked away (sorta) in audio logs and notes lying around. The story's Nonlinear progression means that pacing will be different for everybody, however unless you purposefully exploit the game to brute force through narrative gates, it all unfolds at a mostly natural pace.

Dishonored 1 is a masterclass in the way it crammed interesting secrets and world building into a tight package, but the linear nature of the games structure meant that most players would miss A LOT of the best hidden stuff on their own natural playthroughs. One of the successes of Deathloop is that it's cyclical nature means you're you're given multiple chances to actually see the cool stuff. This cycle has led to some people (fairly) finding the game a bit repetitive. I found this to be less of an issue than some people, as the way the maps changed based on time of day and what active visionaries were there were enough to keep me engaged through each loop gameplay wise

Continuing with gameplay, the gunplay is far and away the best Arkane has crafted. Guns are fun and unique, offensive abilities synergize well and are a blast to use, and the increased emphasis on action really allows the combat to shine. Not to say stealth isn't a valid option- it ended up being my favorite way to play by the end, but both felt equally good and valid.

The most common critique I've seen directed towards Deathloop is the intelligence of the AI. It's pretty dumb AI, and thusly the game is a bit easier to avoid detection in than your classic stealth game. The game would've benefited from Dishonored 2 styled custom difficulty settings, but in a game where progress can be reset, tending towards easy was probably the smart choice for wider audiences if fixed difficulty was the design decision. "Loop Stress" is a mechanic that remedies difficulty somewhat as the AI gets agressive/better as you kill Visionaries more than you die, but this difference seems to be minimal, or just too slow acting. It's not a cakewalk from start to finish, with a few visionary setpieces being specific difficulty choke points, but that's a noteworthy point to the overall package.

A single playthrough of Deathloop I think is the best "first time through" product in Arkane's catalog, and while I can't say how fresh it stays in future plays, I think it's absolutely fantastic and worth a go through

Aunque sí es cierto que hay cosillas que podrían haberse hecho mejor, Deathloop es una apuesta arriesgadísima por parte de Arkane que ha salido de maravilla.

El diseño del juego, tanto de niveles, como de misiones, como de la estructura global, es increíble y un nuevo listón al que aspirar para juegos de este estilo. Jugablemente es una delicia y dura lo justo para que la repetición no llegue a hacerse pesada.

Quizá hubiera estado mejor si en algunos puntos el juego no te guiara tanto, como es el caso del final, y hubiera que poner más de tu parte para resolver el rompecabezas completo, pero la libertad que te ofrece el juego a la hora de afrontar cada misión y cada pieza del puzzle es apabullante y compensa que te sujete de la mano en varias ocasiones.

El modo de invasiones es fantástico y le añade un toque de intensidad y peligro muy chulo cuando te invade un jugador real. Julianna se convierte en una auténtica amenaza y no solo un NPC más al que enfrentarse.

Me ha gustado muchísimo y tengo que darle mis cinco estrellas a pesar de que sé que hay cosas que podrían ser mejores, simplemente por lo mucho que me gusta que se hayan atrevido a hacer algo así.

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While it's true that some things could've been done a bit better, Deathloop is a very risky bet on Arkane's part that ended up working wonderfully.

The game's design, be it levels, missions or the overall structure is outstanding and a new bar to aspire to for games like this. Gameplay-wise it's a delight and it's long enough to avoid the repetition becoming annoying.

It may have been better if, at some points, the game didn't guide you that much, as is the case at the end, and you had to work a bit to solve the complete puzzle, but the freedom the game offers you when it comes to facing each mission and each piece of the puzzle is overwhelming and it completely makes up for the handholding at some points.

Invasion mode is fantastic and it adds a really cool layer of intensity and danger when a real player invades you. Julianna becomes a true threat and not just another NPC to fight against.

I really enjoyed it and I must give it 5 stars despite knowing some things could've been done better, just because how much I love the fact that they dared to create something like this.

Arkane Studios is known for its immersive sim games, a genre that often lets players loop around levels in any which way and come to a conclusion they see fit. But Arkane took that “looping” a bit more literally with Deathloop, a game all about a different kind of looping: time looping. This stylistic Groundhog’s Day-esque shooter has Arkane’s legendary open-ended branding on it in some ways yet is uncharacteristically limited in others.

Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1194488-deathloop-review-ps5

I've been a champion of Arkane Studios since I borrowed a friend's copy of Dishonored back in 2012, and in all that time, never once was there an overwhelming critical and commercial response that I thought was sufficient for the team behind Dark Messiah and Arx Fatalis. After mixed reception of their Prey reboot and a looming buyout from Microsoft sent nary a ripple through the online game-o-sphere, I feared that the original Dishonored was going to be the last time anyone's ears pricked up at the mention of my favorite team of immersive-sim hooligans from lively ol' France. Suffice to say, I was wrong. Deathloop is, in the eyes of many, a rousing success and a feather in the cap of Arkane Lyon. A swan song, if you will, for their time as a multi-platform studio before going on to create bigger and better things for the suits over at Bill Gates' alma mater. However, I'd be lying if I said I shared the same fervor.

Before I start dissecting Deathloop with my critical scalpel, I'm going to heap a modicum of praise on the aspects of the game that I think let it stand head-and-shoulder with some of its contemporaries in the immersive-sim genre (and to some extent, first-person shooters as a whole). For starters, Deathloop boasts an impeccable stylistic milieu that hasn't been touched upon at all in the game-o-sphere, excepting a handful of James Bond tie-ins and No One Lives Forever. The pop mash-up of disco deco and blacksploitation sci-fi is a wild, unruly direction that pays off in droves, lending each disparate style a uniformity of counter-cultural uniqueness that mixes well with the exaggerated character models and wonky supernatural aesthetics that Arkane perfected in Dishonored. Okay, yes, I am trying to sound smarter than I am here: Deathloop looks and sounds fucking cool. Harsh monochrome animatics, floating text, and gorgeous vistas swirl about in a melting pot of high-concept ideas and top-tier gunplay, and if that were the end of my analysis, you could easily walk away thinking that Deathloop is at the top of my list of artistic endeavors. Unfortunately, I'm being a bit too cheeky to let the game get away with wowing me with pitch perfect production.

Where Deathloop falls short for me is in a multitude of arenas that all happen to add up exponentially. Despite the gunplay feeling responsive and crunchy, the AI refuses to give you a challenge, making the player's victories over the armies of faceless goons an unearned, easily repeatable (scratch that, mandatorily repeatable) hinderance once you've mastered the basics on the core mechanics. Which I have indeed neglected to mention up till this point! Deathloop is, as the title suggests, a time travel game where you the player as Colt the gunslinger must complete a series of assassinations in the span of a single day lest that day be reset and you the player (as Colt the gunslinger) along with it, carrying vital information that may or may not help you complete a loop successfully. If you die, you loop. It's your standard "video-game-genre" meets Groundhog Day, which seems to be the style of 2021, all things considered. With a premise as solid as that, what could go wrong? Well, dear reader, many things apparently.

The time loop mechanic that is the selling point of Deathloop has diminishing returns in its efficacy. At the front end of the game, uncovering secrets, finding efficient modes of clearing arenas, and acquiring an arsenal of overpowered weapons is gripping, unadulterated fun. Mastery over the game comes quickly to those who've experienced Arkane's previous titles, and the game-feel compared to Dishonored and its sequels is leagues ahead. But Dishonored lives in this game's DNA, down to its lead tracking system, always marked targets, and broken traversal. Deathloop holds your hand at every turn, and even if you try to muffle its obnoxious cries, it will still find a way to ensure you will never feel stuck. Map markers tell you exactly where to go, the aforementioned floating text will always nudge you toward another prompt, and Colt will often talk to himself whenever you come across an item that will definitely be used for something later. These shorthand techniques that ensure the vast majority of players will never be frustrated makes the entire experience of exploration, discovery, and mastery as hollow as the combat. On top of that, the game is structured so rigidly, the chances to have an "a-ha" moment where the player experiments with the game to solve problems in unique ways (not too dissimilar from a myriad of immersive-sim titles) are few and far between, with the final quest of the game being a standard checklist of things you have to do in a set order before finally cutting to black. This lack of agency is in startling contrast to Arkane's previous work where the sandboxes felt like sandboxes and not obstacles on the road to completion.

And while we're talking about sandboxes, let's randomly switch gears to the game's worst feature: asynchronous multiplayer! Yes, the lauded "invasion" feature of Dark Souls fame rears its frustrating head in Deathloop. Players can take on the role of Julianna, Colt's rival, to invade other active players' games and try and cut their loops short. Seems fine on the surface, however the game has no way of balancing these encounters. Oftentimes, low-level Colts will be steamrolled by a high-level Julianna and vice versa. Rarely did another player end my run early, which made each encounter a tedious divergence from what I was more interested in doing - A.K.A. playing the goddamn game.

And now, another divergence: storytelling! Deathloop is a mystery... supposedly. It more or less fits into the type of mystery storytelling that J.J. Abrams popularized with Lost: the mystery box approach A.K.A. the "I-don't-know-we'll-figure-it-out-later" approach or, as I like to call it, the "fuck-around-and-find-out" approach. When you fuck around and find out about the secrets at the heart of Deathloop, you are left disappointed with more half-answers and bigger questions being asked than actual narratively satisfying conclusions being delivered. While the voice-acting and character writing give games like Uncharted or Mass Effect a run for their money, the over-arching narrative of Deathloop is pretty run-of-the-mill and, in my playthrough, very poorly paced. Plot revelations and key moments happen seemingly randomly in the middle of certain quests and the player doesn't get enough time to decompress or absorb any of the information, especially when the loose-science fiction elements remain consistently inconsistent, so literally any plot detail can be waved away as metaphorical or dream-like in its execution. What is Deathloop trying to say with its story? Something generic, really. Doesn't matter. It's not told that well, which is more what I am concerned with.

I'm happy that Arkane is finally getting the recognition it deserves, but I'm not convinced it deserves it for Deathloop. Plenty of other titles have come along in the last few years that handle the time-loop adventure in ways that are unique to games but also unique to the genre as a whole, and I wish Deathloop allowed players to make the adventure their own rather than funneling down a path toward an unsatisfying, derivative story. As with most videogames on the market these days, you can just buy it for half off a few months later and spend your time playing Hades instead, a game that lives up to the tagline, "If at first you don't succeed, die, die, die again."

Arkane, I still love ya, babe, but I know you can do better. Excited for Redfall!

(Please don't let me down!)

3 out of 5.

The perfect game for someone who thought The Forgotten City was too jank and Twelve Minutes was too taboo!

Sigh. I wanted so much more for Deathloop.

Let's get the first major gripe out of the way: it's too simple. Rather than force you to have to use an ounce of brainpower solving the "murder puzzle," Deathloop guides you with a heavy hand through its solutions. All it takes is finding the singular way to kill a visionary at the right time, there are no false leads, no experimenting with different combinations of solutions. There's one correct path, and the game tells you when you've found it. Much more checklist than puzzle. Finding clues is sometimes satisfying, but many times I would receive a notification that I had found another clue despite having no idea what it even was for or how I discovered it. More often than not it ended up being an NPC conversation happening just out of my hearing range but evidently within Cole's.

Much was made about Deathloop encouraging players, unlike Dishonored, to be more cavalier with their abilities and feel free to tear up the town on a murder spree if they do desire. However, I found that most of my attempts at coming out guns blazing fell flat as Cole, even with health buffs equipped, just isn't sturdy enough to take on a group of Eternalists in a straight fight. So even though I could run around the map starting fights without being scolded for it in the story, the only feasible approach in most scenarios was to skulk around Corvo style.

Thankfully the 4 maps are designed well, as you'd expect from Arkane, with lots of alternate routes and tucked away secrets for the curious to find. I really enjoyed the setup of visiting each location during the different times of day and seeing how they changed. There's a ton to find outside of the main quest line, I don't feel like I saw anywhere close to all of it during my playthrough. Save for the few times I got tripped up on some weird geometry, the level design here is top notch.

Deathloop's other biggest strength is its incredible sense of style. The art design, voice acting, and music all come together in a fantastic blend of retro, sci-fi, and blaxploitation aesthetic. It's the rare video game that really feels like there's nothing else quite like it. Arkane deserves a ton of credit for nailing the presentation. I really loved (to hate) all of the visionaries, but I do wish we got more time with each of them.

There's a lot to review with Deathloop because it has so many different parts that come together with varying levels of satisfaction. The slapped together feel of Deathloop's systems is no more evident than with the Julianna invasions. I normally love modes like this, there's something so fun about jumping into someone else's game and affecting the world in some way. The first few times my game was invaded made for some tense battles, and it was satisfying when I survived the encounter. These invasions had diminishing returns however, and the further along I got the more annoying they became. There was really no effort to balance these fights for players of a similar level, so most of the time I was either running and hiding from a way overleveled Julianna or easily taking down or escaping an inexperienced one. The benefits of killing Julianna didn't seem much better than just playing the story and taking down visionaries, so it felt more and more unnecessary the further in I got. Late in the game I had finally had enough when my game was invaded as soon as I entered an area for the fourth time in a row, so I set it to friends only.

While Julianna prematurely ending one of my loops was frustrating, I had several long runs end because of the game crashing, forcing me to redo about half an hour of progress because of the pointlessly stingy autosave system. This isn't a roguelike, these are static levels with objectives, let me save in the middle of them!

The main thing keeping me going was the story. There's a lot less to it than I'd hoped, and there is some weird pacing, but unraveling the mysteries of the island is still mostly satisfying and makes exploring its nooks and crannies rewarding. And despite my earlier complaints about the structure of the game, the final mission absolutely rules and is totally worth experiencing. I also enjoyed the somewhat brief conclusion to the story, so at least it all ends on a high note.

Much like the AEON program, it feels like Arkane had grander plans for Deathloop that never quite came to fruition. The things that Arkane has always done well are great here, but the more ambitious mechanics feel mostly unfinished and oftentimes led to baffling decisions that hurt the better parts of the game.

On one hand, I have never played a game like Deathloop, a title that asks you to, in one span of a day (divided into 4 sections), eliminate 8 targets that all have their own schedule and motives. On the other hand I've played every "Deathloop", I've played Hitman and Dishonored (arguably the two biggest inspiration for this title) as well as games like Metroid, The Outer Wilds, and Dark Souls, all of which has heavy roots in this game. Deathloop some how masterly combines these 5 games and then some to make a game that truly feels unique despite the influence. Developer Arkane Lyon has truly showed that creativity is left in the games industry and shows they know how to evolve. Taking the Dishonored formula they improve the combat in simple ways, such as adding a dedicated kick button which can save you from having one bullet screw up your entire plan of attack for a mission. It simultaneously is their only title that feels truly balanced for both stealth as well as a "guns blazing" approach, paired with Arkane's excellent level and world design and you have one of the most fun, immersive games ever created. On top of that is some of the most brilliant art direction I have seen in a game, where these messages appear to you and even you as Colt, the main character, questions why you can see them but as you progress you realize that you left those messages for yourself, to help guide you and keep you on the straight and narrow. The voice actors for Colt and Julianna (who are arguably the two protagonists) also show great chemistry and every time they have a dialogue together its always a treat.

Some gripes I do have with this game is the lack of trust the developers seemed to have with the players. Once you solve each "quest" for the visionaries (the 8 targets Colt must kill to break the time loop he's stuck in) the game straight up tells you the correct order of execution for the targets, this was a major slap in the face. This game is best expierenced with quest markers turned off and that last "quest" truly proves why. I also had to manually close the game 3 times (on PlayStation 5) due to bugs that prevented me from closing the game. This is an issue because there's is no saving in levels as to prevent any kind of "save scumming", which led me to have to restart that portion of the day.

Overall, I wouldn't say its a game for everyone. There is a lot of repeating the same tasks and visiting the same areas to learn more about the world as well as the eight visionaries. However, Arkane Lyon has something special on their hands that everyone should try, even if that does mean waiting for an eventual sale.