6 reviews liked by Saispai
Axiom Verge 2
2021
This review contains spoilers
There is something wrong with the world of Axiom Verge 2.
I'm not referring to any malevolent force within the game. In fact, there really isn't one. Sure, about halfway through a villain will start interfering, but this game is surprisingly... relaxed compared to a lot of Metroidvanias.
No, what's wrong is just that everything feels a bit... off. The first Axiom Verge is a phenomenal example of plunging you into an alien world, utterly unrecognizable from our own world. Nothing about the environment, the native species, the characters, or anything feels like Earth. The protagonist, Trace, a scientist from Earth, is the only grounding element to be able to follow along with what's happening at all.
In this second game, despite not taking place on Earth, all the environments are distinctly Earth-like. There are other human characters this time around, there are structures clearly built by the human researchers who inhabit this place, and there are even familiar vehicles like trucks and helicopters. At certain moments, you'll forget you're supposed to be in some bizarre alternate dimension.
Though you play as a human in this game, a CEO named Indra, it is you who will feel like the alien in this world. Because the world doesn't feel like it was designed for you. This is going to be complicated to explain, because I mean that last statement in both good in bad ways.
Unlike the first game, which revolved around shooter combat, this one is mainly interested in melee combat. And yet, the game weirdly doesn't seem suited to it. The most common enemy, the tiny drone, runs completely underneath your basic swing, requiring a crouch attack. Swing speed is so slow they can usually get a cheap hit or two in as well.
Tougher enemies aren't much better in this regard, as they aren't knocked back very easily and sport attacks that are almost impossible to dodge within the typical combat range. While you do have an additional ranged option in form of the boomerang, it's pretty slow and still doesn't have particularly impressive reach, especially when it comes to flying enemies.
The choice to revolve this game around close range combat isn't inherently bad, but the execution is bizarre. I wasn't necessarily dying constantly, but I was still taking damage a lot in ways that felt beyond my control. I couldn't help but feel like every single enemy I faced would be a much more manageable and fair challenge if instead of the melee weapons or the boomerang, I had Trace's gun and its staggering multitude of attack modes. Instead, I often resorted to cheesing combat by sending out my drone to deal with foes. But more on that later.
I'm not here to claim that the clunky combat of this game is somehow good, but it's strange how aware the game felt about how little Indra's combat fit into the world. Indeed, Indra feels strangely... out of place in Axiom Verge 2. Early obstacles like grates appear, surely teasing the fairly early teleport powerup from the first game. Certain spaces begin glitching in ways that could surely only be resolved by the signature Address Disruptor... right?
You do not get the ability to teleport in this game. In fact, the grates are the last possible obstacle to bypass through an ability that lets you turn into a cloud of nanomachines. The Address Disruptor also does not make an appearance, and the glitches in the environment are there moreso as a hint system for a completely different powerup to begin with.
Similarly, on a narrative level, Indra could not be any more different from Trace. Trace was a pretty typical everyman, and was written to ask pretty much all the questions you, the player, might have about the world you've been thrown into. It was pretty clear what was going through his head at every moment.
Indra, on the other hand, isn't as curious about the world. Though she's not devoid of questions about the world, almost all of her conversations are based on things the characters know, but you don't. And no one will stop to explain. Indra has a backstory, and to an extent a knowledge about what's going on in the world that you are not immediately keyed in to. And she has a motivation not immediately revealed to the player. Indra is as much a puzzle to you as the world and all of its strange history and secrets.
So much of this game exists in contrast to the original in a way that is fascinating. Where Axiom Verge 1 zigs, this game zags. That is, with one notable exception. Fairly early into the game, you'll find the one returning powerup from the first game: the Remote Drone. One of the first things you'll do with it is send it through a strange interdimensional portal. And once you cross this threshold, the wrongness begins to take hold.
Across the portal is an entire second world to explore, only accessible as the drone. This alternate dimension looks nothing like Earth. The visuals, the music, the enemies are all completely unlike the ones you've just been exploring. In a way that feels familiar. Though the drone still uses melee combat, this side of the game feels much closer to the experience of playing Axiom Verge 1, and yet it can never be explored as Indra. Only as the drone. Indra doesn't feel right... but the drone does.
And it's not just within this alternate dimension, known as the breach, that you'll be using the drone. You'll be using it to solve puzzles constantly in the main world as well. Not to mention, its faster movement and attack, along with its smaller hitbox makes combat much more manageable than as Indra. Indra begins to feel like the burden. The character you slug around so you can keep playing as the drone. So why is she even there?
This might seem like a criticism, but this feels... intentional, because of the way the game unfolds once this feeling begins creeping in. About midway through, the game's main ally tricks Indra and steals her body, trapping you within the Drone. You'll have recently unlocked the grappling hook powerup (something Indra could never access, even before this moment) so this hardly even feels like a downgrade. The drone has already become more capable of navigating the world than Indra.
And yet Indra, the character, doesn't want to be inside of this drone. Her goal from here on out is to get back to her original body. But you, as the player, are going to be having a lot of fun playing as the drone. You'll unlock tons of powerups during this phase of the game, such as a slingshot attack with the aforementioned grappling hook, hovering, and tons of powerups that improve navigating between the overworld and the Breach. The drone becomes more fun and versatile than Indra could ever hope to be.
It's during this section that the game really begins to feel... wrong. Why have I felt more at home navigating the alien world as the robot than as the human character who most of the initial mechanics centered around? I don't think it's a coincidence that it's during this phase of the game that the connections to the first game become clear.
Indeed, as you become more comfortable with the game, the world has become more familiar as well. It's not just a few reminiscent doorways anymore, familiar enemies, sights, and sounds begin to take hold. It becomes impossible to deny at this point. Somehow, some way, the world you've been navigating is connected to Sudra, the world of the first game. This strange, alien place is more of a comfort than the world that more closely resembles our own.
I'm going to be blunt here, I don't really understand the lore of these games with any sense of authority. I can only go off of my own experiences and what my own very limited understanding of the series' lore can reveal.
That being said, one of the most blatant themes the series has explored is knowledge and power at the cost of humanity. This can be seen in the first game, whose main antagonist is an evil version of Trace who became mad with power upon learning the secrets of the universe.
This theme continues through the second game. The people of this strange alien world were turned into sentient machines to fight a pointless war. Even a young child was forced into this process, with the thought that a child's mind would be more capable of controlling this technology.
This theme also applies with the player. Encountering familiar environments from the first game runs parallel to your increasing reliance on the drone. Your early time with the drone is when you'll first encounter vaguely familiar resemblances to Sudra within the Breach. Once you become trapped inside the drone, you travel to yet another alternate dimension that looks like Sudra was ripped straight out of the first game, albeit with a slightly higher resolution.
And then, late into the game, after being stuck inside of a drone for who knows how long, you finally gain the ability to transform back into a human - sort of. Even your new "human" form is now robotic, entirely composed of machinery. Now, rather than deploying the drone, you simply transform between Indra and the drone back and forth. The dynamic has flipped. Now you'll primarily be playing as the drone, only switching to Indra on the occasions when you need her abilities that the drone cannot access.
And it's during this portion of the game that you'll enter an area that will instantly throw you back to Axiom Verge 1. No longer are the familiar sights and sounds relegated to alternate dimensions. Now, even in the more familiar, Earth-like world, the alien architecture and devices of the first game have made their presence. And it's only now, even after several other visual callbacks to Axiom Verge 1, that you'll finally hear the familiar music of the first game.
This area is filled with a sense of unease. The world of the first game almost feels like it's infecting this one. Despite being a prequel to it, explaining how the technology and architecture of that game came to be, it feels wrong. Invasive. Like it's not supposed to be there. And yet, as you progress through this area, you'll learn about how all of this familiar technology from the first game came to be and what its original purpose was. The strangeness becomes natural, understandable. It's no longer alien.
But at the same time, another realization becomes clear. You've gotten so used to playing as the drone that you have to remind yourself you even still have a human form to change back into. Playing as this machine has become natural. It's a subtle sense of dread that I didn't even consciously realize it at first, but in hindsight, it became clear: I was no longer comfortable being human.
As mentioned earlier, it feels as though this world wasn't designed for you. In truth, it never was. The reason Trace, a human, was able to so easily navigate it, is because he was unique. Some entity known as a PatternMind, capable of manipulating the world to his will. He was special, he controlled the world, not the other way around.
Who is Indra, in comparison? She was one of the most powerful people on Earth, and yet here, wealth and status mean nothing. She was trying to swing an ice pick against alien robots beyond her understanding. It's only once she becomes irreversibly integrated with the technology of this world that she has any hope of truly navigating it.
Plenty of Metroidvanias give you tools that make you better capable of interacting with the world as you progress, but I've never seen a game start you at such a low point only to drastically increase your capabilities so much by the end. You're literally at your most capable of progressing through this world when you're not even the same character as the one you started as.
I'm not trying to defend the poor design of Indra. She is undeniably clunky to play as, even at the height of her abilities. Nor am I trying to treat that poor design as a work of genius. I can't exactly give this game a higher rating than I have precisely because there are several parts of this game I can't describe as "fun" in the traditional sense. That being said, I do still believe this contrast between Indra and the drone means something more than just the gameplay aspect of it.
The first trailer for this game begins with "You are not in control. You are not yourself. You belong to us now." It truly is the most accurate description of Indra's progression through this game. Indra, and indeed all the other humans in this game, are hopeless in trying to understand the full scope of what they're dealing with. Both the technology, and the alternate dimensions this series revolves around.
You, as a human, are insignificant to the scope of Axiom Verge. It is only as you slowly integrate yourself with technology you don't understand that you begin to see the wider truth. It is only as you become more machine than human that you begin to see into more and more of these other worlds.
The game ends with Indra accepting that she'll never truly be Indra again. She can never be with her daughter again. Not just because they are forever trapped in separate realities, but because Indra is no longer herself. That part of her died with her human body. She's someone else now. No longer is she an alien to this world, now she is part of it.
I'm not referring to any malevolent force within the game. In fact, there really isn't one. Sure, about halfway through a villain will start interfering, but this game is surprisingly... relaxed compared to a lot of Metroidvanias.
No, what's wrong is just that everything feels a bit... off. The first Axiom Verge is a phenomenal example of plunging you into an alien world, utterly unrecognizable from our own world. Nothing about the environment, the native species, the characters, or anything feels like Earth. The protagonist, Trace, a scientist from Earth, is the only grounding element to be able to follow along with what's happening at all.
In this second game, despite not taking place on Earth, all the environments are distinctly Earth-like. There are other human characters this time around, there are structures clearly built by the human researchers who inhabit this place, and there are even familiar vehicles like trucks and helicopters. At certain moments, you'll forget you're supposed to be in some bizarre alternate dimension.
Though you play as a human in this game, a CEO named Indra, it is you who will feel like the alien in this world. Because the world doesn't feel like it was designed for you. This is going to be complicated to explain, because I mean that last statement in both good in bad ways.
Unlike the first game, which revolved around shooter combat, this one is mainly interested in melee combat. And yet, the game weirdly doesn't seem suited to it. The most common enemy, the tiny drone, runs completely underneath your basic swing, requiring a crouch attack. Swing speed is so slow they can usually get a cheap hit or two in as well.
Tougher enemies aren't much better in this regard, as they aren't knocked back very easily and sport attacks that are almost impossible to dodge within the typical combat range. While you do have an additional ranged option in form of the boomerang, it's pretty slow and still doesn't have particularly impressive reach, especially when it comes to flying enemies.
The choice to revolve this game around close range combat isn't inherently bad, but the execution is bizarre. I wasn't necessarily dying constantly, but I was still taking damage a lot in ways that felt beyond my control. I couldn't help but feel like every single enemy I faced would be a much more manageable and fair challenge if instead of the melee weapons or the boomerang, I had Trace's gun and its staggering multitude of attack modes. Instead, I often resorted to cheesing combat by sending out my drone to deal with foes. But more on that later.
I'm not here to claim that the clunky combat of this game is somehow good, but it's strange how aware the game felt about how little Indra's combat fit into the world. Indeed, Indra feels strangely... out of place in Axiom Verge 2. Early obstacles like grates appear, surely teasing the fairly early teleport powerup from the first game. Certain spaces begin glitching in ways that could surely only be resolved by the signature Address Disruptor... right?
You do not get the ability to teleport in this game. In fact, the grates are the last possible obstacle to bypass through an ability that lets you turn into a cloud of nanomachines. The Address Disruptor also does not make an appearance, and the glitches in the environment are there moreso as a hint system for a completely different powerup to begin with.
Similarly, on a narrative level, Indra could not be any more different from Trace. Trace was a pretty typical everyman, and was written to ask pretty much all the questions you, the player, might have about the world you've been thrown into. It was pretty clear what was going through his head at every moment.
Indra, on the other hand, isn't as curious about the world. Though she's not devoid of questions about the world, almost all of her conversations are based on things the characters know, but you don't. And no one will stop to explain. Indra has a backstory, and to an extent a knowledge about what's going on in the world that you are not immediately keyed in to. And she has a motivation not immediately revealed to the player. Indra is as much a puzzle to you as the world and all of its strange history and secrets.
So much of this game exists in contrast to the original in a way that is fascinating. Where Axiom Verge 1 zigs, this game zags. That is, with one notable exception. Fairly early into the game, you'll find the one returning powerup from the first game: the Remote Drone. One of the first things you'll do with it is send it through a strange interdimensional portal. And once you cross this threshold, the wrongness begins to take hold.
Across the portal is an entire second world to explore, only accessible as the drone. This alternate dimension looks nothing like Earth. The visuals, the music, the enemies are all completely unlike the ones you've just been exploring. In a way that feels familiar. Though the drone still uses melee combat, this side of the game feels much closer to the experience of playing Axiom Verge 1, and yet it can never be explored as Indra. Only as the drone. Indra doesn't feel right... but the drone does.
And it's not just within this alternate dimension, known as the breach, that you'll be using the drone. You'll be using it to solve puzzles constantly in the main world as well. Not to mention, its faster movement and attack, along with its smaller hitbox makes combat much more manageable than as Indra. Indra begins to feel like the burden. The character you slug around so you can keep playing as the drone. So why is she even there?
This might seem like a criticism, but this feels... intentional, because of the way the game unfolds once this feeling begins creeping in. About midway through, the game's main ally tricks Indra and steals her body, trapping you within the Drone. You'll have recently unlocked the grappling hook powerup (something Indra could never access, even before this moment) so this hardly even feels like a downgrade. The drone has already become more capable of navigating the world than Indra.
And yet Indra, the character, doesn't want to be inside of this drone. Her goal from here on out is to get back to her original body. But you, as the player, are going to be having a lot of fun playing as the drone. You'll unlock tons of powerups during this phase of the game, such as a slingshot attack with the aforementioned grappling hook, hovering, and tons of powerups that improve navigating between the overworld and the Breach. The drone becomes more fun and versatile than Indra could ever hope to be.
It's during this section that the game really begins to feel... wrong. Why have I felt more at home navigating the alien world as the robot than as the human character who most of the initial mechanics centered around? I don't think it's a coincidence that it's during this phase of the game that the connections to the first game become clear.
Indeed, as you become more comfortable with the game, the world has become more familiar as well. It's not just a few reminiscent doorways anymore, familiar enemies, sights, and sounds begin to take hold. It becomes impossible to deny at this point. Somehow, some way, the world you've been navigating is connected to Sudra, the world of the first game. This strange, alien place is more of a comfort than the world that more closely resembles our own.
I'm going to be blunt here, I don't really understand the lore of these games with any sense of authority. I can only go off of my own experiences and what my own very limited understanding of the series' lore can reveal.
That being said, one of the most blatant themes the series has explored is knowledge and power at the cost of humanity. This can be seen in the first game, whose main antagonist is an evil version of Trace who became mad with power upon learning the secrets of the universe.
This theme continues through the second game. The people of this strange alien world were turned into sentient machines to fight a pointless war. Even a young child was forced into this process, with the thought that a child's mind would be more capable of controlling this technology.
This theme also applies with the player. Encountering familiar environments from the first game runs parallel to your increasing reliance on the drone. Your early time with the drone is when you'll first encounter vaguely familiar resemblances to Sudra within the Breach. Once you become trapped inside the drone, you travel to yet another alternate dimension that looks like Sudra was ripped straight out of the first game, albeit with a slightly higher resolution.
And then, late into the game, after being stuck inside of a drone for who knows how long, you finally gain the ability to transform back into a human - sort of. Even your new "human" form is now robotic, entirely composed of machinery. Now, rather than deploying the drone, you simply transform between Indra and the drone back and forth. The dynamic has flipped. Now you'll primarily be playing as the drone, only switching to Indra on the occasions when you need her abilities that the drone cannot access.
And it's during this portion of the game that you'll enter an area that will instantly throw you back to Axiom Verge 1. No longer are the familiar sights and sounds relegated to alternate dimensions. Now, even in the more familiar, Earth-like world, the alien architecture and devices of the first game have made their presence. And it's only now, even after several other visual callbacks to Axiom Verge 1, that you'll finally hear the familiar music of the first game.
This area is filled with a sense of unease. The world of the first game almost feels like it's infecting this one. Despite being a prequel to it, explaining how the technology and architecture of that game came to be, it feels wrong. Invasive. Like it's not supposed to be there. And yet, as you progress through this area, you'll learn about how all of this familiar technology from the first game came to be and what its original purpose was. The strangeness becomes natural, understandable. It's no longer alien.
But at the same time, another realization becomes clear. You've gotten so used to playing as the drone that you have to remind yourself you even still have a human form to change back into. Playing as this machine has become natural. It's a subtle sense of dread that I didn't even consciously realize it at first, but in hindsight, it became clear: I was no longer comfortable being human.
As mentioned earlier, it feels as though this world wasn't designed for you. In truth, it never was. The reason Trace, a human, was able to so easily navigate it, is because he was unique. Some entity known as a PatternMind, capable of manipulating the world to his will. He was special, he controlled the world, not the other way around.
Who is Indra, in comparison? She was one of the most powerful people on Earth, and yet here, wealth and status mean nothing. She was trying to swing an ice pick against alien robots beyond her understanding. It's only once she becomes irreversibly integrated with the technology of this world that she has any hope of truly navigating it.
Plenty of Metroidvanias give you tools that make you better capable of interacting with the world as you progress, but I've never seen a game start you at such a low point only to drastically increase your capabilities so much by the end. You're literally at your most capable of progressing through this world when you're not even the same character as the one you started as.
I'm not trying to defend the poor design of Indra. She is undeniably clunky to play as, even at the height of her abilities. Nor am I trying to treat that poor design as a work of genius. I can't exactly give this game a higher rating than I have precisely because there are several parts of this game I can't describe as "fun" in the traditional sense. That being said, I do still believe this contrast between Indra and the drone means something more than just the gameplay aspect of it.
The first trailer for this game begins with "You are not in control. You are not yourself. You belong to us now." It truly is the most accurate description of Indra's progression through this game. Indra, and indeed all the other humans in this game, are hopeless in trying to understand the full scope of what they're dealing with. Both the technology, and the alternate dimensions this series revolves around.
You, as a human, are insignificant to the scope of Axiom Verge. It is only as you slowly integrate yourself with technology you don't understand that you begin to see the wider truth. It is only as you become more machine than human that you begin to see into more and more of these other worlds.
The game ends with Indra accepting that she'll never truly be Indra again. She can never be with her daughter again. Not just because they are forever trapped in separate realities, but because Indra is no longer herself. That part of her died with her human body. She's someone else now. No longer is she an alien to this world, now she is part of it.
Deathloop
2021
i'll be frank: this game is the epitome of a nothingburger to me. there was so much potential here and it's almost entirely squandered. deathloop promises so much, both on a gameplay and narrative level, yet it fails to deliver anything even remotely up to par for an arkane game. even death of the outsider still had moments. this? this gives me nothing to contemplate or remember.
i want to start out by saying that this game isn't a bad idea in conception (for the most part, at least). you can very easily see this same concept done better by none other than arkane themselves with prey's DLC, mooncrash. while that DLC may have been criminally overlooked, i was hopeful that it would mean deathloop would expand on the already great ideas presented in that experience. instead, deathloop shrinks itself in complexity for the worse and, as a result, ends up feeling about a quarter as mechanically engaging as mooncrash. even if you ignore the mooncrash comparisons, the sense of progression in this game is just not great. residuum almost immediately stops having any sort of value, especially when the game practically throws it at you. infusing your weapons, buffs, and powers SHOULD be this feeling of "aha! i'm getting stronger and more deadly!" but the game starts out on easy mode and never escalates. if anything, it descends precipitously once you get aether, and when you get the ghost upgrade for aether, the game might as well give a big flourish and have a "THE END" screen pop up, because gameplay functionally stops having any challenge.
but, if the gameplay isn't challenging, then what is it? well, it's. . . boring! i like the idea of exploring these four different areas at four different times each and learning how they change, but the game barely goes out of its way to make any of the different times distinct from each other. and the actual worldbuilding itself is a low for arkane, especially after prey's interconnected and realistic to-a-fault world design. in updaam, there's an apartment that just straight up has no way to enter it besides through a window. in karl's bay, people will just be sitting on rooftops that they have no ability to get up normally. i know it sounds like i'm harping on very minute details, but these things matter in an immersive sim, and, more importantly, these are things arkane has done consistently correctly in their previous titles. the world feels so video game-y, and while that can, at times, be interesting, there's very little to do in these areas besides kill enemies and collect residuum. i don't find blackreef to be an interesting place to explore because so much of it lacks a story; it doesn't feel lived-in.
as far as the narrative goes, i kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but the main twist of the game is something you could literally predict by looking at the cover, and the game basically has no tricks left up its sleeve after that moment. i think what's more annoying is how many vital questions are left unanswered. how did all of the visionaries meet? did they know each other previously or did they somehow meet up for this common goal? why are julianna and colt immune to the memory wiping effect of looping but literally everyone else isn't? that last one is probably the most infuriating because the game does draw attention to it, yet offers nothing to satisfy that question. i'm fine with open-ended "draw your own conclusion" type of mysteries, but this is a central one that borders on "i need this information to even care about the characters", if it isn't already at that point.
speaking of julianna, can i just say that whoever thought having invasions in a single player immersive sim should never be allowed to have any input on development of a video game ever again? the AI will just sit on rooftops and spam an infinite supply of grenades and sniper rifle ammo at you, and she adds nothing to the game but irritation. once i learned how to deal with her consistently (aether obliterates her AI and she is allergic to the shotgun), she stopped being even remotely interesting and just turned into a consistent time-wasting nuisance. i genuinely want to know: what positive value does she add to the game? if the rumors are to be believed, the invasion mechanic actively made the game worse because it meant that the systems had to be simplified to accommodate PVP balance (i.e. melee was going to be more varied and the player was going to have access to all powers at any time like in dishonored). you could argue she's providing the role of the horror game stalker, but a. this isn't a horror game, nothing in this game elicits fear b. her presence is always televised with "OH NO JULIANNA IS HERE OH SHIT SHE BLOCKED YOUR TUNNELS" that you would have to be not paying attention to be even surprised, no less scared by her and c. she doesn't actively stalk you, most of the time her AI will camp on rooftops. i don't mean to harp on this for so long, but she is objectively one of the worst parts of the game and i can only hope this was a publisher directive to push for multiplayer rather than a sincere attempt at something from arkane.
obligatory positives paragraph: i really liked that part with aleksis' party where he has a meat grinder that he sends any unfunny stand-up performers to via trap door (though the game's definition of "stand-up" comes off so bizarrely that it's like a cultural mistranslation. it's been suggested that this is less of a "stand-up routine" situation and more of a "let's brag about how evil we are" situation, but that's not conveyed at all considering you'll be traveling through the party and out of nowhere you'll hear the first person talk about "I FUCKING LOVE SMOKING YEAH!!!!".). i almost liked the idea of getting to know the visionaries and their patterns, and found myself endeared to a few of them. on the whole, though, they felt same-y and hard to distinguish. oh, so frank and fia are both hoity toity artists up their own ass? and egor and wenjie are both antisocial scientists who have failsafes in their bases if they get attacked? stop, the diversity here is overwhelming. i think the absolute best thing i can say about this game is that by and large i can tell this was a passion project for a lot of arkane. i can see the gears turning in the devs' heads and see them going "okay, so if you sabotage this thing, then this will happen, and if you fuck with this character, they'll do this". that sort of cause-effect relationship was probably really fun to map out and iron out the details to, and i wish the joy i could see from a development side had translated as well into gameplay.
2.0/5.0 might seem a bit harsh, but this game rarely elicited joy out of me. the comedy falls flat, the gameplay feels mechanically barren, progression isn't rewarding, the narrative doesn't deliver, and it just ultimately felt like a waste of time to play this game. i take away very few positive things from my time with deathloop, and a lot more negative ones. it's nice to see that so many others had managed to find some type of entertainment out of this, and i don't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers this to any of the prior arkane games. for me though, i prefer something with more meat on its bones, and this game just made me want to turn back the clock. audience boos and throws knives at me until i am dead
i want to start out by saying that this game isn't a bad idea in conception (for the most part, at least). you can very easily see this same concept done better by none other than arkane themselves with prey's DLC, mooncrash. while that DLC may have been criminally overlooked, i was hopeful that it would mean deathloop would expand on the already great ideas presented in that experience. instead, deathloop shrinks itself in complexity for the worse and, as a result, ends up feeling about a quarter as mechanically engaging as mooncrash. even if you ignore the mooncrash comparisons, the sense of progression in this game is just not great. residuum almost immediately stops having any sort of value, especially when the game practically throws it at you. infusing your weapons, buffs, and powers SHOULD be this feeling of "aha! i'm getting stronger and more deadly!" but the game starts out on easy mode and never escalates. if anything, it descends precipitously once you get aether, and when you get the ghost upgrade for aether, the game might as well give a big flourish and have a "THE END" screen pop up, because gameplay functionally stops having any challenge.
but, if the gameplay isn't challenging, then what is it? well, it's. . . boring! i like the idea of exploring these four different areas at four different times each and learning how they change, but the game barely goes out of its way to make any of the different times distinct from each other. and the actual worldbuilding itself is a low for arkane, especially after prey's interconnected and realistic to-a-fault world design. in updaam, there's an apartment that just straight up has no way to enter it besides through a window. in karl's bay, people will just be sitting on rooftops that they have no ability to get up normally. i know it sounds like i'm harping on very minute details, but these things matter in an immersive sim, and, more importantly, these are things arkane has done consistently correctly in their previous titles. the world feels so video game-y, and while that can, at times, be interesting, there's very little to do in these areas besides kill enemies and collect residuum. i don't find blackreef to be an interesting place to explore because so much of it lacks a story; it doesn't feel lived-in.
as far as the narrative goes, i kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but the main twist of the game is something you could literally predict by looking at the cover, and the game basically has no tricks left up its sleeve after that moment. i think what's more annoying is how many vital questions are left unanswered. how did all of the visionaries meet? did they know each other previously or did they somehow meet up for this common goal? why are julianna and colt immune to the memory wiping effect of looping but literally everyone else isn't? that last one is probably the most infuriating because the game does draw attention to it, yet offers nothing to satisfy that question. i'm fine with open-ended "draw your own conclusion" type of mysteries, but this is a central one that borders on "i need this information to even care about the characters", if it isn't already at that point.
speaking of julianna, can i just say that whoever thought having invasions in a single player immersive sim should never be allowed to have any input on development of a video game ever again? the AI will just sit on rooftops and spam an infinite supply of grenades and sniper rifle ammo at you, and she adds nothing to the game but irritation. once i learned how to deal with her consistently (aether obliterates her AI and she is allergic to the shotgun), she stopped being even remotely interesting and just turned into a consistent time-wasting nuisance. i genuinely want to know: what positive value does she add to the game? if the rumors are to be believed, the invasion mechanic actively made the game worse because it meant that the systems had to be simplified to accommodate PVP balance (i.e. melee was going to be more varied and the player was going to have access to all powers at any time like in dishonored). you could argue she's providing the role of the horror game stalker, but a. this isn't a horror game, nothing in this game elicits fear b. her presence is always televised with "OH NO JULIANNA IS HERE OH SHIT SHE BLOCKED YOUR TUNNELS" that you would have to be not paying attention to be even surprised, no less scared by her and c. she doesn't actively stalk you, most of the time her AI will camp on rooftops. i don't mean to harp on this for so long, but she is objectively one of the worst parts of the game and i can only hope this was a publisher directive to push for multiplayer rather than a sincere attempt at something from arkane.
obligatory positives paragraph: i really liked that part with aleksis' party where he has a meat grinder that he sends any unfunny stand-up performers to via trap door (though the game's definition of "stand-up" comes off so bizarrely that it's like a cultural mistranslation. it's been suggested that this is less of a "stand-up routine" situation and more of a "let's brag about how evil we are" situation, but that's not conveyed at all considering you'll be traveling through the party and out of nowhere you'll hear the first person talk about "I FUCKING LOVE SMOKING YEAH!!!!".). i almost liked the idea of getting to know the visionaries and their patterns, and found myself endeared to a few of them. on the whole, though, they felt same-y and hard to distinguish. oh, so frank and fia are both hoity toity artists up their own ass? and egor and wenjie are both antisocial scientists who have failsafes in their bases if they get attacked? stop, the diversity here is overwhelming. i think the absolute best thing i can say about this game is that by and large i can tell this was a passion project for a lot of arkane. i can see the gears turning in the devs' heads and see them going "okay, so if you sabotage this thing, then this will happen, and if you fuck with this character, they'll do this". that sort of cause-effect relationship was probably really fun to map out and iron out the details to, and i wish the joy i could see from a development side had translated as well into gameplay.
2.0/5.0 might seem a bit harsh, but this game rarely elicited joy out of me. the comedy falls flat, the gameplay feels mechanically barren, progression isn't rewarding, the narrative doesn't deliver, and it just ultimately felt like a waste of time to play this game. i take away very few positive things from my time with deathloop, and a lot more negative ones. it's nice to see that so many others had managed to find some type of entertainment out of this, and i don't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers this to any of the prior arkane games. for me though, i prefer something with more meat on its bones, and this game just made me want to turn back the clock. audience boos and throws knives at me until i am dead
Fabuloso.
Deathloop
2021
The first time I left an Arkane game just feeling empty. Coming from Prey, which was one of my favorite games in the PS4/Xbox One generation and the Dishonored games, which are equally great, this game now is honestly a disjointed mess. It has a novel idea, with the whole time loop thing going on, but doesn't really do anything with it, contrary even it ends up being the most constricted game from Arkane.
The game starts with a ridiculously long tutorial phase, lasting 4 hours, showing way too many text popups everywhere trying to explain all its systems, through which the game appears overly complicated. It suggests to the player, that there is maybe a complex experience coming up, with lots of player driven choices and urgency, because of the whole loop thing and the finite amount of time the player has to achieve the end goal... yeah no, that's not happening, instead, after that painfully long tutorial, the game funnels the player through a strictly linear wild goose chase, running to one location, being told to find a code of some sort in another location, and then coming back to further progress. Through this approach you end up going through the 4 distinct maps the game has a bunch of times, which ends up getting old fast. They try to diversify the locations through the different times of day, but that always just felt like a color swap applied to the locations, nothing more. This whole process is made worse, because to switch locations, you always have to go back to your home base, which is just a glorified menu, where the player picks their load-out, and which progresses the time of day on the current loop. This static way of handling the central time mechanic seems kinda awkward and always going back to that menu feels like I am preparing for a Call of Duty match, which is really unimmersive and makes that whole experience really disjointed. The game has its reasons though, doing things this way, and the answer to that is the PVP invasion system. Although a nice idea, I think this rather small part of the game just compromises too much of the single player side of things. The game has a lot of the same abilities found in the Dishonored games, but instead of getting progressively more options, the player here is limited to what they have at hand in their current load-out. Another part that was sacrificed are interesting enemy types. There are none, there is only one, I say it again ONE enemy type and their AI is rather limited. Not even the 7 Visionaries you have to kill to break the time loop and finish the game are anything special, they just have a bigger health pool.
And that pretty much is the bulk of the game, running to different parts of the 4 locations, fighting the same enemy over and over again, doing random things to place the 7 Visionaries in such a way, so you can kill all of them in a single day. There is no creative problem-solving to this the game has a specific way laid out for you, you just have to blindly follow it to the end, while playing a game reminiscent of Dishonored, but severely limited in the player freedom found there.
To say something positive, the banter between Colt and Julianna was great, because of excellent voice acting and I liked the soundtrack. The Visionaries were unfortunately really one-note and the story was just a nice backdrop with an unsatisfying ending. And because of the locations being artificially separated by that hub menu, I never developed any sense for the world.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't really recommend this game. If you like the roster of abilities the game has, play the Dishonored series, where you have the same and more. And if you want to creatively kill people, go play the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy, which excels in that regard.
The game starts with a ridiculously long tutorial phase, lasting 4 hours, showing way too many text popups everywhere trying to explain all its systems, through which the game appears overly complicated. It suggests to the player, that there is maybe a complex experience coming up, with lots of player driven choices and urgency, because of the whole loop thing and the finite amount of time the player has to achieve the end goal... yeah no, that's not happening, instead, after that painfully long tutorial, the game funnels the player through a strictly linear wild goose chase, running to one location, being told to find a code of some sort in another location, and then coming back to further progress. Through this approach you end up going through the 4 distinct maps the game has a bunch of times, which ends up getting old fast. They try to diversify the locations through the different times of day, but that always just felt like a color swap applied to the locations, nothing more. This whole process is made worse, because to switch locations, you always have to go back to your home base, which is just a glorified menu, where the player picks their load-out, and which progresses the time of day on the current loop. This static way of handling the central time mechanic seems kinda awkward and always going back to that menu feels like I am preparing for a Call of Duty match, which is really unimmersive and makes that whole experience really disjointed. The game has its reasons though, doing things this way, and the answer to that is the PVP invasion system. Although a nice idea, I think this rather small part of the game just compromises too much of the single player side of things. The game has a lot of the same abilities found in the Dishonored games, but instead of getting progressively more options, the player here is limited to what they have at hand in their current load-out. Another part that was sacrificed are interesting enemy types. There are none, there is only one, I say it again ONE enemy type and their AI is rather limited. Not even the 7 Visionaries you have to kill to break the time loop and finish the game are anything special, they just have a bigger health pool.
And that pretty much is the bulk of the game, running to different parts of the 4 locations, fighting the same enemy over and over again, doing random things to place the 7 Visionaries in such a way, so you can kill all of them in a single day. There is no creative problem-solving to this the game has a specific way laid out for you, you just have to blindly follow it to the end, while playing a game reminiscent of Dishonored, but severely limited in the player freedom found there.
To say something positive, the banter between Colt and Julianna was great, because of excellent voice acting and I liked the soundtrack. The Visionaries were unfortunately really one-note and the story was just a nice backdrop with an unsatisfying ending. And because of the locations being artificially separated by that hub menu, I never developed any sense for the world.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't really recommend this game. If you like the roster of abilities the game has, play the Dishonored series, where you have the same and more. And if you want to creatively kill people, go play the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy, which excels in that regard.
Deathloop
2021
Deathloop is a spiritual sequel to the Dishonored games, but set in a semi-sci-fi 1970s-style setting. It received mixed reviews, which made me really want to like the game. It also has a very strong start; within the first few hours, I was sure that this was going to be my newest addiction and that I was going to blaze through the game as fast as I could. But after the initial tutorial levels, poor large-scale design decisions, weak combat, and overall lack of polish turned this game into a slog.
Groundhog Daze
The titular loop is an in-game phenomena whereby time resets at the end of each day, like Majora's Mask or Groundhog Day. In terms of the story, this is a really cool idea. I was immediately intrigued by the loop--why does it exist? What is its purpose? Why does Colt want to break it? Why are all these people on the island trying to protect it?
Unfortunately, the loop is not only a narrative conceit, but also a gameplay mechanic. The game is divided up into four time sections (morning, noon, afternoon, and night) and four areas. You can visit one area per time of day, and the areas have different features at different times (much like Majora's Mask). Once you get to the end of the day, the loop resets and you start back at the beginning. In essence, the game is trying to be a roguelike, but unfortunately, it makes several key design mistakes.
In most roguelike games, levels are procedurally generated so that each "run" is different. This is what gives the game replay value. In Deathloop, however, levels are handcrafted rather than procedurally generated. Instead of running through a set of "randomized" levels as far as you can until dying, you instead proceed through a series of Dishonored-type levels until you reach the objective or die.
Dying becomes frustrating because the default settings give you two respawns before you get "looped." Once you are looped, you go back not just to the very beginning of the level, but to the menu screen where you select levels. So if you die during a level, you now have to go through an extra screen just to get back to the very beginning of the level rather than reloading at a checkpoint within the level.
Getting looped becomes even more frustrating due to the gear system. Roguelikes generally have two ways of handling gear. In "traditional" roguelikes, all gear is lost between runs. In a game like Brogue, for example, you start with random gear and end up with more random gear in the dungeon. Gear is meant to be expendable and easily replaceable; in fact, part of the fun of the game is finding new gear in the dungeon and replacing old gear. On the other hand, "rogue-lites" allow you to keep some or all of the gear you find during each "run." For example, in Hades, there are certain buffs that only last during each run; however, you get currency during each run that can be used to buy permanent buffs or items in the hub world.
Deathloop has a terrible system that is the worst of both worlds. All gear is lost between runs. However, you can harvest Residuum in the game, which is a resource that can be used to "infuse" your gear and make it last permanently. Thus, instead of just finding gear and then keeping it, you have to find gear and find residuum and infuse gear. This might be OK except that you lose all your Residuum upon death. If you get killed, you can recover Residuum by interacting with the spot where you died, Dark Souls-style. If you get looped, all your Residuum is gone and so are all your weapons. This means that you can easily be put into the annoying situation of getting looped and having to start the entire level over without any of the weapons or upgrades that you just got. And since the levels are all the same rather than procedurally generated, this means that if you die you will play through the same exact section listening to the same exact voice lines being piped over the loudspeakers. Have fun grinding the same levels over and over again so you can get enough residuum to get one of the powers that Corvo was given in the first mission of Dishonored.
If this was not enough, the game adds an extra level of tedium due to its mission structure. The missions take the form of investigations; in practice, this means you go to A and find out B, which means that now you need to go to C. A lot of other reviewers complained that the "investigations" were too hand-holdy and linear. I don't have a problem with this because the game is primarily a "run around and kill people" game, not an "investigation" game, and also because I don't have unlimited amounts of free time to spend trying to figure out what to do. What I do take issue with is the convoluted mission structure. In Dishonored, a typical mission might go like this: "Sneak into the Duke of Chinchilla's parlor-> find the message from the Countess of Canteloupe saying that they will meet up at Lord Featherstoneaugh's mechanized tea party -> Listen to the Outsider babble about nothing for five minutes -> sneak into the tea party and murder the lovers in cold blood." All of this would take place on the same map with minimal backtracking. In Deathloop, on the other hand, you will get to point A and find a note asking you to go to point B on a different map at a different time of day. Instead of just being able to go places and do stuff, the game forces you to constantly backtrack through its large levels and wade through its morass of loading screens and menus in order to complete a quest. If you go to Genko Cobblestone's lab in the afternoon to complete an objective, only to find out that the objective is just a note telling you to go to Adrian von Stitzlower's mansion in the morning. This means that either you have to loop yourself to continue the story arc or you have to jump over to another quest--in either case, the momentum is lost and you will be backtracking across the same huge areas fighting or avoiding the same mooks for the 20th time. I'm sure this sounded like a cool idea on paper, but in practice it seems like padding in order to make the game seem longer.
And the sad thing is, all of these flaws could have been avoided if the game were just a linear game. The loop should have been a story device, not a game mechanic. The game could have still used the idea of going to different areas at multiple times of day, but just had the player play through each area and time in a predetermined order that fit with the storyline. This would have allowed the game to be a tight and suspenseful story-driven action game like Dishonored. Instead, the badly-implemented roguelike mechanics turn the game into an unenjoyable slog.
Dishonorable
These problems could have been avoided if the gameplay was any good, but unfortunately isn't not. The game's biggest inspiration is Dishonored. It is even uses almost the exact same HUD as Dishonored. It clearly wants to be Dishonored with guns, which sounds like a good idea on paper, but isn't.
Dishonored strikes a good balance between stealth and combat because your combat options all come with fundamental limitations. Guns are unwieldy and have limited ammo; Swordfighting isn't fluid and requires some skill to master; magic attacks are powerful, but are tied to your magic meter, which can be depleted. On the other hand, you had a large variety of stealth abilities to encourage you to play the game stealthily rather than as a pure combat game. You could headshot enemies with a crossbow, put them to sleep with a sleep dart, attack them with a non-lethal grenade, choke them out from behind, re-wire a Tesla coil to fry them when they walk by, etc. In Deathloop, guns are overpowered and there are few other options. The shotgun on Normal mode is a one-hit kill, and unlike the pistol in Dishonored, there is plenty of ammo to be found even for a bad shot like me. In this regard the game is far too easy; on the other hand, gunfights tend to devolve into the game spamming mooks with laserguns, so combat feels too hard (but not too challenging). The traps and special weapons from Dishonored are either completely gone or locked behind the game's stupid gear system.
Stealth in this game just sucks. Many stealth games have enemies who zig-zag between being dumb as dirt and clairvoyant, but Deathloop has the worst example of this I've ever seen. Shooting a gun or setting off a loud noise won't lure enemies to your location; however, if one of them is alerted, he will magically summon all of his buddies to your location through clairvoyance. None of these buddies will be able to walk through a doorway, so if you survive the onslaught of ten guys with laserguns and retreat far enough you can shoot them all like fish in a barrel. Light and dark don't make a difference in this game, different surfaces don't make varying degrees of noise, and whether or not a bad guy notices you is, as best I can figure it, a matter of pure luck. It's insane to me that games like Thief and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory had better stealth games despite being around 20 years older than Deathloop.
Combat sucks too. The gunplay and movement are clearly "inspired" by Far Cry, but just like Far Cry 6, Deathloop has a healing system that screws with the battle system. In both Far Cry 3/4 and Dishonored, you are able to heal yourself mid-battle; in Far Cry 3/4 you have unlimited heals, while in Dishonored healing is tied to potions that you can collect on the map and use at any time. Deathloop, you are limited to healing items that are strewn around the landscape, as if this was Duke Nukem 3D. It doesn't work for the kind of game that wants to split the middle between stealth and action. Letting you regenerate health in some way allows you to use hit-and-run tactics on enemies. Combat encounters last longer; you can take more risks because you know a single botched encounter isn't guaranteed to wipe you out. Dishonored probably struck the best balance of all because it gave you regenerating health tied to a finite resource--it encouraged aggressive combat without removing the risk-taking, and it gave you a reason to explore the map without obligating you to know exactly where each pickup was. In Deathloop, combat encounters are frustrating because your only way of healing is running back to the last healing machine or batch of potions. This discourages taking risk and trying new strategies in combat, and also adds another level of backtracking to a game that already has too much backtracking.
The enemies are the worst I've encountered in any game. Every enemy is just the same guy wearing differently colored clothes and carrying either a knife or a gun. Dishonored had plenty of good ol' gun/knife guys, but it also had interesting enemies such as the Tall Boys and the Music Box guys who could block you from using magic. You would think that a game that was the spiritual sequel to Dishonored would up the ante with enemies, but instead the game has less enemy variety than many NES games.
The enemy behavior is as bad as the enemy variety. Enemies having two states: "walking around aimlessly" or "running toward you while magically summoning all their buddies." Doom (1993) has better enemy AI. Enemy pathfinding is terrible, and you can pretty much lose anyone tailing you by walking into a different room. Occasionally Julianna will spawn into a level to hunt you down and kill you, which sounds cool and menacing until she gets stuck on a rooftop. Level Geometry 1, Julianna 0. The enemy animations are the absolute worst I've ever seen. I am not bothered by video game-y animations, but the animations in Deathloop go beyond just looking weird. Enemies suddenly start to move at 1920s silent-film speeds, or just slide around instead of walking, Redfall-style. Sometimes enemy NPCs will just randomly "whoosh" to a place where the game decides they need to be; on multiple occasions I witnessed enemies dodge bullets with superhuman speed like the agents in the Matrix. The whole experience was so janky that, like Far Cry 6, I was never sure if what I was witnessing was a feature or a bug. It was incredibly frustrating, however--buggy animations are unforgivable in a first-person shooter games where being able to accurately aim at the enemies is an important part of the game. The worst part is that this is totally avoidable. I was watching one of my buddies play Spec Ops: The Line recently, and noticed that none of the enemy NPCs had these weird, jerky animations, and you only had the occasional soldier who would just crouch down behind cover and do nothing. Similarly enemies in Dishonored didn't suddenly start flying to where the game needed to be. Why is a 2021 game objectively inferior to a 2012 game?
Breaking the Loop
I wanted to like this game, but it gradually became a repetitive slog. All my desire to find out what happened vanished, and when I realized that I was not having fun I quit the game. Life is too short to play a bad game.
I will repeat--life is too short to play a bad game. Unless you are being paid to play a bad game in some capacity, just don't. If you think you won't like the game, then don't play it. Just let it go. You'll forget about it in a week. I see tons of people online wasting their time and making themselves miserable by forcing themselves to get through games that they won't enjoy, and for what reason? Fake internet points? Just play a different game. You'll be a lot happier.
I am glad that I have GamePass to help me dodge some of these bullets. Ghostwire: Tokyo, Generation Zero, Deathloop, Sword and Fairy, The Outer Worlds: I feel all I do on GamePass is download lackluster games from the last 5 years and then abandon them after they reveal their inner emptiness. Sheesh.
Groundhog Daze
The titular loop is an in-game phenomena whereby time resets at the end of each day, like Majora's Mask or Groundhog Day. In terms of the story, this is a really cool idea. I was immediately intrigued by the loop--why does it exist? What is its purpose? Why does Colt want to break it? Why are all these people on the island trying to protect it?
Unfortunately, the loop is not only a narrative conceit, but also a gameplay mechanic. The game is divided up into four time sections (morning, noon, afternoon, and night) and four areas. You can visit one area per time of day, and the areas have different features at different times (much like Majora's Mask). Once you get to the end of the day, the loop resets and you start back at the beginning. In essence, the game is trying to be a roguelike, but unfortunately, it makes several key design mistakes.
In most roguelike games, levels are procedurally generated so that each "run" is different. This is what gives the game replay value. In Deathloop, however, levels are handcrafted rather than procedurally generated. Instead of running through a set of "randomized" levels as far as you can until dying, you instead proceed through a series of Dishonored-type levels until you reach the objective or die.
Dying becomes frustrating because the default settings give you two respawns before you get "looped." Once you are looped, you go back not just to the very beginning of the level, but to the menu screen where you select levels. So if you die during a level, you now have to go through an extra screen just to get back to the very beginning of the level rather than reloading at a checkpoint within the level.
Getting looped becomes even more frustrating due to the gear system. Roguelikes generally have two ways of handling gear. In "traditional" roguelikes, all gear is lost between runs. In a game like Brogue, for example, you start with random gear and end up with more random gear in the dungeon. Gear is meant to be expendable and easily replaceable; in fact, part of the fun of the game is finding new gear in the dungeon and replacing old gear. On the other hand, "rogue-lites" allow you to keep some or all of the gear you find during each "run." For example, in Hades, there are certain buffs that only last during each run; however, you get currency during each run that can be used to buy permanent buffs or items in the hub world.
Deathloop has a terrible system that is the worst of both worlds. All gear is lost between runs. However, you can harvest Residuum in the game, which is a resource that can be used to "infuse" your gear and make it last permanently. Thus, instead of just finding gear and then keeping it, you have to find gear and find residuum and infuse gear. This might be OK except that you lose all your Residuum upon death. If you get killed, you can recover Residuum by interacting with the spot where you died, Dark Souls-style. If you get looped, all your Residuum is gone and so are all your weapons. This means that you can easily be put into the annoying situation of getting looped and having to start the entire level over without any of the weapons or upgrades that you just got. And since the levels are all the same rather than procedurally generated, this means that if you die you will play through the same exact section listening to the same exact voice lines being piped over the loudspeakers. Have fun grinding the same levels over and over again so you can get enough residuum to get one of the powers that Corvo was given in the first mission of Dishonored.
If this was not enough, the game adds an extra level of tedium due to its mission structure. The missions take the form of investigations; in practice, this means you go to A and find out B, which means that now you need to go to C. A lot of other reviewers complained that the "investigations" were too hand-holdy and linear. I don't have a problem with this because the game is primarily a "run around and kill people" game, not an "investigation" game, and also because I don't have unlimited amounts of free time to spend trying to figure out what to do. What I do take issue with is the convoluted mission structure. In Dishonored, a typical mission might go like this: "Sneak into the Duke of Chinchilla's parlor-> find the message from the Countess of Canteloupe saying that they will meet up at Lord Featherstoneaugh's mechanized tea party -> Listen to the Outsider babble about nothing for five minutes -> sneak into the tea party and murder the lovers in cold blood." All of this would take place on the same map with minimal backtracking. In Deathloop, on the other hand, you will get to point A and find a note asking you to go to point B on a different map at a different time of day. Instead of just being able to go places and do stuff, the game forces you to constantly backtrack through its large levels and wade through its morass of loading screens and menus in order to complete a quest. If you go to Genko Cobblestone's lab in the afternoon to complete an objective, only to find out that the objective is just a note telling you to go to Adrian von Stitzlower's mansion in the morning. This means that either you have to loop yourself to continue the story arc or you have to jump over to another quest--in either case, the momentum is lost and you will be backtracking across the same huge areas fighting or avoiding the same mooks for the 20th time. I'm sure this sounded like a cool idea on paper, but in practice it seems like padding in order to make the game seem longer.
And the sad thing is, all of these flaws could have been avoided if the game were just a linear game. The loop should have been a story device, not a game mechanic. The game could have still used the idea of going to different areas at multiple times of day, but just had the player play through each area and time in a predetermined order that fit with the storyline. This would have allowed the game to be a tight and suspenseful story-driven action game like Dishonored. Instead, the badly-implemented roguelike mechanics turn the game into an unenjoyable slog.
Dishonorable
These problems could have been avoided if the gameplay was any good, but unfortunately isn't not. The game's biggest inspiration is Dishonored. It is even uses almost the exact same HUD as Dishonored. It clearly wants to be Dishonored with guns, which sounds like a good idea on paper, but isn't.
Dishonored strikes a good balance between stealth and combat because your combat options all come with fundamental limitations. Guns are unwieldy and have limited ammo; Swordfighting isn't fluid and requires some skill to master; magic attacks are powerful, but are tied to your magic meter, which can be depleted. On the other hand, you had a large variety of stealth abilities to encourage you to play the game stealthily rather than as a pure combat game. You could headshot enemies with a crossbow, put them to sleep with a sleep dart, attack them with a non-lethal grenade, choke them out from behind, re-wire a Tesla coil to fry them when they walk by, etc. In Deathloop, guns are overpowered and there are few other options. The shotgun on Normal mode is a one-hit kill, and unlike the pistol in Dishonored, there is plenty of ammo to be found even for a bad shot like me. In this regard the game is far too easy; on the other hand, gunfights tend to devolve into the game spamming mooks with laserguns, so combat feels too hard (but not too challenging). The traps and special weapons from Dishonored are either completely gone or locked behind the game's stupid gear system.
Stealth in this game just sucks. Many stealth games have enemies who zig-zag between being dumb as dirt and clairvoyant, but Deathloop has the worst example of this I've ever seen. Shooting a gun or setting off a loud noise won't lure enemies to your location; however, if one of them is alerted, he will magically summon all of his buddies to your location through clairvoyance. None of these buddies will be able to walk through a doorway, so if you survive the onslaught of ten guys with laserguns and retreat far enough you can shoot them all like fish in a barrel. Light and dark don't make a difference in this game, different surfaces don't make varying degrees of noise, and whether or not a bad guy notices you is, as best I can figure it, a matter of pure luck. It's insane to me that games like Thief and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory had better stealth games despite being around 20 years older than Deathloop.
Combat sucks too. The gunplay and movement are clearly "inspired" by Far Cry, but just like Far Cry 6, Deathloop has a healing system that screws with the battle system. In both Far Cry 3/4 and Dishonored, you are able to heal yourself mid-battle; in Far Cry 3/4 you have unlimited heals, while in Dishonored healing is tied to potions that you can collect on the map and use at any time. Deathloop, you are limited to healing items that are strewn around the landscape, as if this was Duke Nukem 3D. It doesn't work for the kind of game that wants to split the middle between stealth and action. Letting you regenerate health in some way allows you to use hit-and-run tactics on enemies. Combat encounters last longer; you can take more risks because you know a single botched encounter isn't guaranteed to wipe you out. Dishonored probably struck the best balance of all because it gave you regenerating health tied to a finite resource--it encouraged aggressive combat without removing the risk-taking, and it gave you a reason to explore the map without obligating you to know exactly where each pickup was. In Deathloop, combat encounters are frustrating because your only way of healing is running back to the last healing machine or batch of potions. This discourages taking risk and trying new strategies in combat, and also adds another level of backtracking to a game that already has too much backtracking.
The enemies are the worst I've encountered in any game. Every enemy is just the same guy wearing differently colored clothes and carrying either a knife or a gun. Dishonored had plenty of good ol' gun/knife guys, but it also had interesting enemies such as the Tall Boys and the Music Box guys who could block you from using magic. You would think that a game that was the spiritual sequel to Dishonored would up the ante with enemies, but instead the game has less enemy variety than many NES games.
The enemy behavior is as bad as the enemy variety. Enemies having two states: "walking around aimlessly" or "running toward you while magically summoning all their buddies." Doom (1993) has better enemy AI. Enemy pathfinding is terrible, and you can pretty much lose anyone tailing you by walking into a different room. Occasionally Julianna will spawn into a level to hunt you down and kill you, which sounds cool and menacing until she gets stuck on a rooftop. Level Geometry 1, Julianna 0. The enemy animations are the absolute worst I've ever seen. I am not bothered by video game-y animations, but the animations in Deathloop go beyond just looking weird. Enemies suddenly start to move at 1920s silent-film speeds, or just slide around instead of walking, Redfall-style. Sometimes enemy NPCs will just randomly "whoosh" to a place where the game decides they need to be; on multiple occasions I witnessed enemies dodge bullets with superhuman speed like the agents in the Matrix. The whole experience was so janky that, like Far Cry 6, I was never sure if what I was witnessing was a feature or a bug. It was incredibly frustrating, however--buggy animations are unforgivable in a first-person shooter games where being able to accurately aim at the enemies is an important part of the game. The worst part is that this is totally avoidable. I was watching one of my buddies play Spec Ops: The Line recently, and noticed that none of the enemy NPCs had these weird, jerky animations, and you only had the occasional soldier who would just crouch down behind cover and do nothing. Similarly enemies in Dishonored didn't suddenly start flying to where the game needed to be. Why is a 2021 game objectively inferior to a 2012 game?
Breaking the Loop
I wanted to like this game, but it gradually became a repetitive slog. All my desire to find out what happened vanished, and when I realized that I was not having fun I quit the game. Life is too short to play a bad game.
I will repeat--life is too short to play a bad game. Unless you are being paid to play a bad game in some capacity, just don't. If you think you won't like the game, then don't play it. Just let it go. You'll forget about it in a week. I see tons of people online wasting their time and making themselves miserable by forcing themselves to get through games that they won't enjoy, and for what reason? Fake internet points? Just play a different game. You'll be a lot happier.
I am glad that I have GamePass to help me dodge some of these bullets. Ghostwire: Tokyo, Generation Zero, Deathloop, Sword and Fairy, The Outer Worlds: I feel all I do on GamePass is download lackluster games from the last 5 years and then abandon them after they reveal their inner emptiness. Sheesh.
Deathloop
2021
A cool premise from a talented developer that was poorly put together and marred by publisher influence.
The time travel mechanic is weak, many other games do it better, this is essentially a linear game where you replay the same 4 levels over and over to do objectives.
Online functionality was non functional and even if it did function now it'd almost certainly be dead. Play offline if your gonna play this at all. This functionality was clearly added in an attempt for the publisher to sell skins, backed further by Arkanes next project redfall. It's unfortunate that talented developers who make incredible single player worlds are forced to do this shit for greedy executives.
I had very few issues except a couple of crashes but I think I was lucky. Arkane pc ports have never been stellar so expect at least minor issues. Hopefully patches have fixed a lot of the launch problems since.
Gameplay feels as good as it feels to go loud in Dishonored, as stealth has been mostly wiped as a gameplay option. Guns feel good, finisher and stealth kill animations are cool. Stealth would have been a nice option as I feel Arkanes games generally play better in stealth but this still feels good.
The best part of the game is the optional puzzles and secrets, I did a puzzle on the second level that got me a legendary gun and figuring that out and getting a really cool reward was awesome. Doing side objectives and getting all the legendary and unique guns is easily the most fun the game is.
While finding the guns is cool, the rarity and trait system is a lazily done live service trend that shouldn't be in the game. If all guns where the same rarity, traits didn't exist and the side puzzles gave stronger or experimental versions of the guns we normally get that would've been better. This is hardly the worst iteration of this system as traits have minor effects and rarity is a vertical progression, so it can be mostly ignored if you want, but the game would be better without it.
A lot of people initially liked the dialogue, and I like a lot of the interactions between the two main characters but it's nothing that stands out to me, the characters are likeable, nothing more or less.
The story is bad, really bad. The Dishonored series never had a fantastic story but it was good enough. It was interesting to see who the next targets where, why we needed them gone and the affect they had in the politics of the city. Deathloop has very few questions for the player to ask and the answers are really bad. The ending is one of the biggest nothing burgers I've ever tasted.
The 60's aesthetic of the buildings on the island is nice and looks good but doesn't compare the dystopian industrialist europe vibe of Dishonored.
It sucks the Arkane have had a bad run the last few years and this was the start of that bad run. A few good ideas and Developers, artists and writers with a lot of talent couldn't save this mess.
The time travel mechanic is weak, many other games do it better, this is essentially a linear game where you replay the same 4 levels over and over to do objectives.
Online functionality was non functional and even if it did function now it'd almost certainly be dead. Play offline if your gonna play this at all. This functionality was clearly added in an attempt for the publisher to sell skins, backed further by Arkanes next project redfall. It's unfortunate that talented developers who make incredible single player worlds are forced to do this shit for greedy executives.
I had very few issues except a couple of crashes but I think I was lucky. Arkane pc ports have never been stellar so expect at least minor issues. Hopefully patches have fixed a lot of the launch problems since.
Gameplay feels as good as it feels to go loud in Dishonored, as stealth has been mostly wiped as a gameplay option. Guns feel good, finisher and stealth kill animations are cool. Stealth would have been a nice option as I feel Arkanes games generally play better in stealth but this still feels good.
The best part of the game is the optional puzzles and secrets, I did a puzzle on the second level that got me a legendary gun and figuring that out and getting a really cool reward was awesome. Doing side objectives and getting all the legendary and unique guns is easily the most fun the game is.
While finding the guns is cool, the rarity and trait system is a lazily done live service trend that shouldn't be in the game. If all guns where the same rarity, traits didn't exist and the side puzzles gave stronger or experimental versions of the guns we normally get that would've been better. This is hardly the worst iteration of this system as traits have minor effects and rarity is a vertical progression, so it can be mostly ignored if you want, but the game would be better without it.
A lot of people initially liked the dialogue, and I like a lot of the interactions between the two main characters but it's nothing that stands out to me, the characters are likeable, nothing more or less.
The story is bad, really bad. The Dishonored series never had a fantastic story but it was good enough. It was interesting to see who the next targets where, why we needed them gone and the affect they had in the politics of the city. Deathloop has very few questions for the player to ask and the answers are really bad. The ending is one of the biggest nothing burgers I've ever tasted.
The 60's aesthetic of the buildings on the island is nice and looks good but doesn't compare the dystopian industrialist europe vibe of Dishonored.
It sucks the Arkane have had a bad run the last few years and this was the start of that bad run. A few good ideas and Developers, artists and writers with a lot of talent couldn't save this mess.