VERY cool idea, but the execution really falls flat imo.
It basically dumps everything on you at once after you finish the introduction, and then you just play the rest of the game on the same levels and with the same weapons for like 13 hours until it ends, which gets boring REALLY fast.
The gameplay is pretty fun and smooth, but not much of an improvement from Dishonored, and definitely not enough to make up for the monotonous levels.
It basically dumps everything on you at once after you finish the introduction, and then you just play the rest of the game on the same levels and with the same weapons for like 13 hours until it ends, which gets boring REALLY fast.
The gameplay is pretty fun and smooth, but not much of an improvement from Dishonored, and definitely not enough to make up for the monotonous levels.
Deathloop is stupidly fun, like I can't believe how much of a blast I was having playing this game. Even in the first 1-2 hours (which mainly serve as a story introduction / tutorial) I was giddy with thinking of fun ways to kill people and sneak my way through these really open-ended levels. In a lot of ways, this game really asks you to meet it halfway. Deathloop literally tells you on the box that you'll be playing through the same levels over and over again in an effort to master them, but I found that to be one of this game's key components to its success. That also runs the risk of killing the story's momentum, but thanks to Deathloop's genuinely hilarious and engaging story I was also excited for another loop since new exciting things were always being revealed.
Colt and Juliana are perfectly wacky characters to be at the center of this dark 60's nightmare. Colt's immature cursing and quick witted comebacks are a fantastic counterpart to Juliana's more cold and sinister mocking. There's a tangible history between the two before you even fully uncover the mystery that the story expertly unravels for you, and I was also excited to hear more of their interactions. The graphical style is great and stylish too, although it's worth noting that this ran like trash on my PC.
The real meat of Deathloop, the gameplay, feels like a decade's worth of honing their craft by Arcane Lyon. The comparisons with Dishonored aren't unwarranted, and it feels like the psychotic murder-spreee that I always wanted to take with those powers but was deprived of. Blackreef is absolutely your playground, and experimentation is almost always rewarded. The loop (ha) of planning out a route to kill a visionary, something inevitably going wrong, and scrambling back into the tunnels after a sloppy execution feels just as fun and engaging as a perfectly executed plan, and it's part of the reason why I found it so hard to put down Deathloop. There are a few shortcomings, notably that the arsenal system of the loop and allowing you to keep weapons between runs feeling... too forgiving. I found a silenced pistol early on in my playthrough and it never left my inventory. Likewise, I found the two slabs that I liked the most and almost never switched off them, which felt like a misstep since I never wanted to experiment because it wasn't worth not having Blink. The systems themselves aren't bad in any way, but I think Deathloop would've benefitted from embracing a bit more from its rouge-lite influences.
Also worth mentioning that my online experience for this game was... awful. Invasions went about as well as they could when I was playing as Colt, and actually resulted in a really dynamic change of plans once I got the alert that Juliana was around, but playing as Juliana is just fucking miserable in 2024. Not sure if it's the bad netcode or just the high ping since the amount of players is so low now, but expect rubber banding, inconsistent hit detection, and a healthy amount of long wait times to find a match. Thankfully, Juliana's murder tendencies seemed to be only tied to cosmetic rewards for colt's side of things, but I really wish that more of the technical issues with this mode were sorted out because conceptually it's great and the few smooth matches I had were equally tense and thrilling.
As many good things as I have to say about Deathloop, I feel like it's also worth bringing up this game's weak final 2-4 hours. Deathloop's main goal involving you killing 8 visionaries in one loop feels completely insurmountable at first, but after learning Blackreef and its routines I was starting to feel confident in my ability to pull it off. I had an actual notebook where I was planning out my perfect run and I felt like a mythical heist genius, knowing exactly how to sabotage Frank's fireworks, knowing where Fia and Charlie would be and how to take them out, perfecting my route through Harriet's complex... and then once you finally have all the pieces..! The game just spells it all out for you. It felt extremely disappointing once I found out that the game was leading you towards this exact route of taking people out, and giving you objective markers and telling you where to go next didn't make me feel smart, it made me feel railroaded in a game that was remarkably good at avoiding that feeling for it's first 15 hours. That's before we get to this game's ending, in which neither option feels particularly satisfying or conclusive, which is just a shame.
I know I got a bit negative towards the end there, but I honestly did really love my time with Deathloop. I think it's final hours falling off puts a bit of a black mark on the game in my memory, but the first 75% of this game is as good as one could hope for such a crazy concept. It certainly won't click with everyone, but if you've enjoyed Arkane's earlier works and their light-imsim style of gameplay, Deathloop will probably click with you the same way it did for me.
Colt and Juliana are perfectly wacky characters to be at the center of this dark 60's nightmare. Colt's immature cursing and quick witted comebacks are a fantastic counterpart to Juliana's more cold and sinister mocking. There's a tangible history between the two before you even fully uncover the mystery that the story expertly unravels for you, and I was also excited to hear more of their interactions. The graphical style is great and stylish too, although it's worth noting that this ran like trash on my PC.
The real meat of Deathloop, the gameplay, feels like a decade's worth of honing their craft by Arcane Lyon. The comparisons with Dishonored aren't unwarranted, and it feels like the psychotic murder-spreee that I always wanted to take with those powers but was deprived of. Blackreef is absolutely your playground, and experimentation is almost always rewarded. The loop (ha) of planning out a route to kill a visionary, something inevitably going wrong, and scrambling back into the tunnels after a sloppy execution feels just as fun and engaging as a perfectly executed plan, and it's part of the reason why I found it so hard to put down Deathloop. There are a few shortcomings, notably that the arsenal system of the loop and allowing you to keep weapons between runs feeling... too forgiving. I found a silenced pistol early on in my playthrough and it never left my inventory. Likewise, I found the two slabs that I liked the most and almost never switched off them, which felt like a misstep since I never wanted to experiment because it wasn't worth not having Blink. The systems themselves aren't bad in any way, but I think Deathloop would've benefitted from embracing a bit more from its rouge-lite influences.
Also worth mentioning that my online experience for this game was... awful. Invasions went about as well as they could when I was playing as Colt, and actually resulted in a really dynamic change of plans once I got the alert that Juliana was around, but playing as Juliana is just fucking miserable in 2024. Not sure if it's the bad netcode or just the high ping since the amount of players is so low now, but expect rubber banding, inconsistent hit detection, and a healthy amount of long wait times to find a match. Thankfully, Juliana's murder tendencies seemed to be only tied to cosmetic rewards for colt's side of things, but I really wish that more of the technical issues with this mode were sorted out because conceptually it's great and the few smooth matches I had were equally tense and thrilling.
As many good things as I have to say about Deathloop, I feel like it's also worth bringing up this game's weak final 2-4 hours. Deathloop's main goal involving you killing 8 visionaries in one loop feels completely insurmountable at first, but after learning Blackreef and its routines I was starting to feel confident in my ability to pull it off. I had an actual notebook where I was planning out my perfect run and I felt like a mythical heist genius, knowing exactly how to sabotage Frank's fireworks, knowing where Fia and Charlie would be and how to take them out, perfecting my route through Harriet's complex... and then once you finally have all the pieces..! The game just spells it all out for you. It felt extremely disappointing once I found out that the game was leading you towards this exact route of taking people out, and giving you objective markers and telling you where to go next didn't make me feel smart, it made me feel railroaded in a game that was remarkably good at avoiding that feeling for it's first 15 hours. That's before we get to this game's ending, in which neither option feels particularly satisfying or conclusive, which is just a shame.
I know I got a bit negative towards the end there, but I honestly did really love my time with Deathloop. I think it's final hours falling off puts a bit of a black mark on the game in my memory, but the first 75% of this game is as good as one could hope for such a crazy concept. It certainly won't click with everyone, but if you've enjoyed Arkane's earlier works and their light-imsim style of gameplay, Deathloop will probably click with you the same way it did for me.
Really enjoyed this one, the other Arkane games did not grab me but this one did.
Not one of Arkane's best showings, but a solid game that stays fun throughout. Don't know why it got shit on as much as it did.
I was really excited for this but I dunno it just didn't click for me
Great fun, but not as in-depth as you'd expect from arkane