I think that a good time loop game needs to have a world worth exploring, and digging deeper into in order to find out how to break the loop. I also think that a good immersive sim should have a world that's worth exploring, and fun to mess around in. Deathloop sits in the middle of that venn diagram, and plays to the strengths of both genres excellently.

The game does guide you towards how to break the loop, and that might feel a bit handhold-y at times, but the world is so fun to explore that I naturally stumbled across many puzzle solutions far in advance of the game pointing me to them. It's times like this, where the game rewards you for being inquisitive by letting you skip over multiple steps of a quest-line that I felt the most satisfied with Deathloop. That's not to mention how many little optional objectives there are that really let you dig deep into the background of Blackreef and the nature of the loop itself. Great stuff all around.

I also feel as though this is Arkane's best outing from a writing perspective. Sure, there were parts of Dishonored and Prey that were brilliant, but there were also parts that I absolutely hated. Deathloop keeps the good stuff, and is entirely devoid of the bad. As I mentioned before the worldbuilding is fascinating, but the characters are also compelling in a way I didn't expect from Arkane. The relationship between Colt and Julianna is a huge highlight for me.

Anyway, this game absolutely rips, and is one of the best games this year for sure. Oh yeah, the shootbangs are pretty good too,