Deathloop is a very fun sandbox that is perfectly designed to allow you to play it however you want to. Along with a well-conceptualized time-loop mechanic, I can highly recommend this game, despite its lackluster story and character development.
Story ★★★
Deathloop follows the actions of the protagonist Colt who is stuck in a single-day loop on a remote island along with 7 other "Visionaries" and a large number of nameless residents. Colt tries to break the loop and escape the island while the main antagonist, Julianna, tries to stop him.
You explore one of 4 different areas that is different during each of the 4 times of day, morning, noon, afternoon, night.
This is a solid foundation; throughout the game, you'll uncover tidbits of info about the project's secrecy and what the island used to be host to. Unfortunately, there isn't much more to it than that. None of the secrets you find are neither terribly revealing or terribly interesting. They took the less is more approach in storytelling but I don't feel like this is a "less is more" type of story. There are just too many questions that feel unsatisfactory to leave at "no one knows oooOOOOo" (that's a spooky ooo noise). I want to know why the loop began, why the characters are here, why the Visionaries are important, and some theories about what might happen if the loop is broken, as well as some theories as to what the loop could be used for or what potentials could be realized in the future. None of these are explored more than just on the surface (at least as far as I found) and so therefore the entire story feels like it is a tiny simulacrum of what it could be.
Gameplay and design ★★★★
Following Colt, you play a game that feels very Arkane Studios. Stealth optional, platforming(ish) FPS with powers. This is not a bad thing! Essentially you have a Dishonored-Esque game but with more modern guns. I enjoyed the gameplay thoroughly. There are 6 different abilities (called Slabs) that you can choose from, though you can only equip 2 at once. It's nice to have a decent number to choose from but I found that it really only ever made sense to use two of them. The "Shift" teleport ability and the "Nexus" ability which links foes together and causes them to share damage received. The other powers include invisibility, invulnerability, telekinesis, and an offensive poison projectile attack. The problem is that Shift is indispensable to allowing you to effectively traverse the amazingly designed levels since there is a lot of verticality that you can really only access using Shift, and Nexus is just too damn good, especially is you're trying to be stealthy. Sneak up to a group of people, link them, and headshot one. You're done. It becomes even more broken with additional upgrades that cause affected enemies to spawn new links to nearby ones. I once got around 20 enemies with one headshot. How can you say no to that?
Additionally, there are only 8 weapons types to choose from, not including a few unique weapons, and I got really good versions of a couple of them fairly early-on so I didn't really want to change them.
I really wish that the game did not limit you to just 3 weapons and 2 slabs. In Dishonored you can freely choose between any of your abilities on the fly. I understand the "realism" of limiting the number of weapons that you can carry but I wish that I could have at least been able to swap out my machete for a sidearm or something like that. I barely used it and it just sat there on the loadout screen mocking me.
I absolutely love the level design. Not only do the areas look good, but they are so great to explore too. Every area is basically a big circle, with pathways through the middle that exit to multiple different areas. So once you know the areas you can quickly get from anywhere, to anywhere very quickly. It's also really interesting to learn about how the areas change during the different times of the day.
You start with no knowledge and you must find clues about how best to achieve your goal (killing all the visionaries in a single loop). I enjoyed not using the map markers to point me in the right direction and just scouring every nook and cranny of each level to find every detail I needed. I really enjoyed that I was having to manually piece together all of the clues I found and I even had started to write down my execution plan! Then as I put the final puzzle piece in place, the game ruined my self-sufficient fun and just gave me step-by-step instructions on how to finish it. That was a bit of a bummer. So my advice to a new player is: don't rely on the map markers more than you have to! It's much more interesting to learn the ins and outs of everything yourself.
Characters ★★
I found Colt and Julianna both to be fun characters, though they were both fairly shallow. You get to learn a bit about their backstory and history but you never learn about why Colt wants to break the loop and why Julianna wants to stop it. Colt has some sort of amnesia so that's forgivable but Julianna never wants to give any sort of concrete reason to stay. She just spends her time taunting Colt. This is fun, but kind of goes into what I said above about the lack of depth in the story.
The visionaries are pretty much all douchebags in their own way and the only one of them whose involvement makes any sense is the scientist, Wenji, who is studying the loop. I would have liked to see some variance in their characters, maybe give me a reason to feel bad about killing one of them, or give me a reason that it might otherwise be a bad idea. Even though they are distinct characters with different backgrounds and professions, we don't ever get to find out what their purpose is or anything deep about them.
Character Design
I think that the enemies all wearing masks is just a convenient excuse to not create unique-looking NPCs. There is no lore-based reason that I know of for them all to be wearing masks, and if there is one that I missed I'd be surprised if it were sufficient to cancel out this complaint.
The only part where I found the masks to be interesting is during the party at night where everyone is wearing a wolf mask so you have to find a way to find your targets.
Music and sound ★★
Overall I thought the music was fine but not really worth discussing. However, I did really enjoy a lot of the sound effects and ques. I particularly enjoyed the microphone/speaker feedback sound that plays when you get a headshot. For some reason, it just worked for me and I got satisfaction from hearing it each time.
In Conclusion
Overall, Deathloop is a very enjoyable game that could have been even better. I'd recommend that anyone give it a try because I bet you'll have fun for a time. However, I don't expect that the repetition of the loop will be enjoyable to everyone and the various flaws, though fairly minor as far as enjoyment are concerned, are numerous enough to keep it from being truly great.
Story ★★★
Deathloop follows the actions of the protagonist Colt who is stuck in a single-day loop on a remote island along with 7 other "Visionaries" and a large number of nameless residents. Colt tries to break the loop and escape the island while the main antagonist, Julianna, tries to stop him.
You explore one of 4 different areas that is different during each of the 4 times of day, morning, noon, afternoon, night.
This is a solid foundation; throughout the game, you'll uncover tidbits of info about the project's secrecy and what the island used to be host to. Unfortunately, there isn't much more to it than that. None of the secrets you find are neither terribly revealing or terribly interesting. They took the less is more approach in storytelling but I don't feel like this is a "less is more" type of story. There are just too many questions that feel unsatisfactory to leave at "no one knows oooOOOOo" (that's a spooky ooo noise). I want to know why the loop began, why the characters are here, why the Visionaries are important, and some theories about what might happen if the loop is broken, as well as some theories as to what the loop could be used for or what potentials could be realized in the future. None of these are explored more than just on the surface (at least as far as I found) and so therefore the entire story feels like it is a tiny simulacrum of what it could be.
Gameplay and design ★★★★
Following Colt, you play a game that feels very Arkane Studios. Stealth optional, platforming(ish) FPS with powers. This is not a bad thing! Essentially you have a Dishonored-Esque game but with more modern guns. I enjoyed the gameplay thoroughly. There are 6 different abilities (called Slabs) that you can choose from, though you can only equip 2 at once. It's nice to have a decent number to choose from but I found that it really only ever made sense to use two of them. The "Shift" teleport ability and the "Nexus" ability which links foes together and causes them to share damage received. The other powers include invisibility, invulnerability, telekinesis, and an offensive poison projectile attack. The problem is that Shift is indispensable to allowing you to effectively traverse the amazingly designed levels since there is a lot of verticality that you can really only access using Shift, and Nexus is just too damn good, especially is you're trying to be stealthy. Sneak up to a group of people, link them, and headshot one. You're done. It becomes even more broken with additional upgrades that cause affected enemies to spawn new links to nearby ones. I once got around 20 enemies with one headshot. How can you say no to that?
Additionally, there are only 8 weapons types to choose from, not including a few unique weapons, and I got really good versions of a couple of them fairly early-on so I didn't really want to change them.
I really wish that the game did not limit you to just 3 weapons and 2 slabs. In Dishonored you can freely choose between any of your abilities on the fly. I understand the "realism" of limiting the number of weapons that you can carry but I wish that I could have at least been able to swap out my machete for a sidearm or something like that. I barely used it and it just sat there on the loadout screen mocking me.
I absolutely love the level design. Not only do the areas look good, but they are so great to explore too. Every area is basically a big circle, with pathways through the middle that exit to multiple different areas. So once you know the areas you can quickly get from anywhere, to anywhere very quickly. It's also really interesting to learn about how the areas change during the different times of the day.
You start with no knowledge and you must find clues about how best to achieve your goal (killing all the visionaries in a single loop). I enjoyed not using the map markers to point me in the right direction and just scouring every nook and cranny of each level to find every detail I needed. I really enjoyed that I was having to manually piece together all of the clues I found and I even had started to write down my execution plan! Then as I put the final puzzle piece in place, the game ruined my self-sufficient fun and just gave me step-by-step instructions on how to finish it. That was a bit of a bummer. So my advice to a new player is: don't rely on the map markers more than you have to! It's much more interesting to learn the ins and outs of everything yourself.
Characters ★★
I found Colt and Julianna both to be fun characters, though they were both fairly shallow. You get to learn a bit about their backstory and history but you never learn about why Colt wants to break the loop and why Julianna wants to stop it. Colt has some sort of amnesia so that's forgivable but Julianna never wants to give any sort of concrete reason to stay. She just spends her time taunting Colt. This is fun, but kind of goes into what I said above about the lack of depth in the story.
The visionaries are pretty much all douchebags in their own way and the only one of them whose involvement makes any sense is the scientist, Wenji, who is studying the loop. I would have liked to see some variance in their characters, maybe give me a reason to feel bad about killing one of them, or give me a reason that it might otherwise be a bad idea. Even though they are distinct characters with different backgrounds and professions, we don't ever get to find out what their purpose is or anything deep about them.
Character Design
I think that the enemies all wearing masks is just a convenient excuse to not create unique-looking NPCs. There is no lore-based reason that I know of for them all to be wearing masks, and if there is one that I missed I'd be surprised if it were sufficient to cancel out this complaint.
The only part where I found the masks to be interesting is during the party at night where everyone is wearing a wolf mask so you have to find a way to find your targets.
Music and sound ★★
Overall I thought the music was fine but not really worth discussing. However, I did really enjoy a lot of the sound effects and ques. I particularly enjoyed the microphone/speaker feedback sound that plays when you get a headshot. For some reason, it just worked for me and I got satisfaction from hearing it each time.
In Conclusion
Overall, Deathloop is a very enjoyable game that could have been even better. I'd recommend that anyone give it a try because I bet you'll have fun for a time. However, I don't expect that the repetition of the loop will be enjoyable to everyone and the various flaws, though fairly minor as far as enjoyment are concerned, are numerous enough to keep it from being truly great.