Well that was a thing. I've long ago lost the hype I had for this after seeing the absolutely glowing critic reviews, and maybe that's a good thing. Going in fairly fresh, I enjoyed my time with Deathloop even if it wasn't the stellar experience some promised.
For a game that markets itself as a kind of AAA roguelike shooter, it sure comes across as... rote? Sterile? Unimaginative? You have 4 levels that change depending on when during 4 periods of a given day you visit them. Your 7 visionary targets are in these levels at various times or just not in some levels at some times.
With this intriguing premise, what the game wants you to think is a big open-ended puzzle ends up just being a bunch of first-person shooter missions spread out that you can choose to do at any time. Pick a mission, follow waypoint, do thing or kill person, repeat. Get some in-game currency to "infuse" items, powers, and weapons so you don't lose them when you loop, and presto, that's Deathloop. It felt less like I was putting together all the pieces and more like I was given a guided tour of how the game wanted me to solve the puzzle. It's not like it has a great story or anything either, so it doesn't earn points back by being some awesome narrative experience.
That being said, the moment-to-moment gameplay isn't bad. I would still call this a fine game, and most will at least be entertained by this. Think of Dishonored and then take away most of the stuff that makes it an immersive sim but keep the powers. Add in some guns from Prey and presto, a dumbed down smorgashborg of Arkane Studios' past. You get some powers to zip around with and try out on enemies, and the gunplay feels pretty good if not exceptional. I had fun mowing down enemies, especially with some of the rarer guns you can unlock.
Having real players invade as Julianna can be a fun way to spice up things too, and if it ever gets old or keeps you from completing a mission too many times, you can just turn it off. That was how I got some of my nicer loot, including a ridiculously powerful SMG I used through the endgame. Playing as Julianna though, was not my thing. You're just so outgunned with 1 life versus Colt's 3, and you don't start unlocking more to help you beat him unless you've played a lot of missions. With the current wait times in matchmaking, no thanks.
All this said, there were other problems I had besides the general blah feeling with how they approached designing a timeloop game. The general level design was just... fine. Most levels really don't change much between time periods, though some cool areas only open up when a visionary is there. Some of the mission design too to figure out how to kill the Visionaries is infuriating. Alexis' party can sink to the bottom of hell, that portion is infuriating to do every time.
What doesn't help it or most of the rest of the game, is the absolutely janky AI. NPCs have two modes in this game: dumpster fire dipshit level intelligence and "I can see through walls and am going to telepathically tell all my friends where you are hahaha die". Stealth is a joke in this game outside a couple spots where you can use verticality to totally bypass some enemies. When you do get caught, which you will, the two modes of bad AI make it either A) a drag to fight them or B) Utter hell trying to escape and get back into stealth. Not to mention all the glitches both visual (dead bodies go brrrrrrrrrrr) and functional (oh hey my select menu is frozen and now I have to exit the game and redo the mission yaaaaaaaaay). From what I've heard it was way worse at launch, but there's still some jank here that's not fun to see.
Presentation-wise, there's mostly nothing to write home about either. The menus and art are cool, but then it makes you use a pointer to select everything even when playing with a gamepad. Why do AAA devs think this is a good idea? The graphics are fine, it tries to go with a somewhat stylized look like Arkane's past games, except it doesn't do much draped over so much grey, overcast, industrial locales. The music is underwhelming as well though the end credits theme is a banger. I guess the highlight would be the voice acting? There are some pretty great performances here, though it just makes me with they were in a better story.
In the end, when I really got into a flow bouncing between levels, I quite enjoyed Deathloop. It's just that so much about it could have been SO MUCH BETTER. There's nothing truly exciting about this timeloop game, which is a shame as we've seen other recent examples like Outer Wilds pull this off so spectacularly. More organic design that had the player solving the game instead of being guided through it would have gone a long way. It seems Arkane wanted to make this the culmination of their catalog with a neat twist on it. Instead we got an incoherent mess that took the most boring route to designing a timeloop game.
For a game that markets itself as a kind of AAA roguelike shooter, it sure comes across as... rote? Sterile? Unimaginative? You have 4 levels that change depending on when during 4 periods of a given day you visit them. Your 7 visionary targets are in these levels at various times or just not in some levels at some times.
With this intriguing premise, what the game wants you to think is a big open-ended puzzle ends up just being a bunch of first-person shooter missions spread out that you can choose to do at any time. Pick a mission, follow waypoint, do thing or kill person, repeat. Get some in-game currency to "infuse" items, powers, and weapons so you don't lose them when you loop, and presto, that's Deathloop. It felt less like I was putting together all the pieces and more like I was given a guided tour of how the game wanted me to solve the puzzle. It's not like it has a great story or anything either, so it doesn't earn points back by being some awesome narrative experience.
That being said, the moment-to-moment gameplay isn't bad. I would still call this a fine game, and most will at least be entertained by this. Think of Dishonored and then take away most of the stuff that makes it an immersive sim but keep the powers. Add in some guns from Prey and presto, a dumbed down smorgashborg of Arkane Studios' past. You get some powers to zip around with and try out on enemies, and the gunplay feels pretty good if not exceptional. I had fun mowing down enemies, especially with some of the rarer guns you can unlock.
Having real players invade as Julianna can be a fun way to spice up things too, and if it ever gets old or keeps you from completing a mission too many times, you can just turn it off. That was how I got some of my nicer loot, including a ridiculously powerful SMG I used through the endgame. Playing as Julianna though, was not my thing. You're just so outgunned with 1 life versus Colt's 3, and you don't start unlocking more to help you beat him unless you've played a lot of missions. With the current wait times in matchmaking, no thanks.
All this said, there were other problems I had besides the general blah feeling with how they approached designing a timeloop game. The general level design was just... fine. Most levels really don't change much between time periods, though some cool areas only open up when a visionary is there. Some of the mission design too to figure out how to kill the Visionaries is infuriating. Alexis' party can sink to the bottom of hell, that portion is infuriating to do every time.
What doesn't help it or most of the rest of the game, is the absolutely janky AI. NPCs have two modes in this game: dumpster fire dipshit level intelligence and "I can see through walls and am going to telepathically tell all my friends where you are hahaha die". Stealth is a joke in this game outside a couple spots where you can use verticality to totally bypass some enemies. When you do get caught, which you will, the two modes of bad AI make it either A) a drag to fight them or B) Utter hell trying to escape and get back into stealth. Not to mention all the glitches both visual (dead bodies go brrrrrrrrrrr) and functional (oh hey my select menu is frozen and now I have to exit the game and redo the mission yaaaaaaaaay). From what I've heard it was way worse at launch, but there's still some jank here that's not fun to see.
Presentation-wise, there's mostly nothing to write home about either. The menus and art are cool, but then it makes you use a pointer to select everything even when playing with a gamepad. Why do AAA devs think this is a good idea? The graphics are fine, it tries to go with a somewhat stylized look like Arkane's past games, except it doesn't do much draped over so much grey, overcast, industrial locales. The music is underwhelming as well though the end credits theme is a banger. I guess the highlight would be the voice acting? There are some pretty great performances here, though it just makes me with they were in a better story.
In the end, when I really got into a flow bouncing between levels, I quite enjoyed Deathloop. It's just that so much about it could have been SO MUCH BETTER. There's nothing truly exciting about this timeloop game, which is a shame as we've seen other recent examples like Outer Wilds pull this off so spectacularly. More organic design that had the player solving the game instead of being guided through it would have gone a long way. It seems Arkane wanted to make this the culmination of their catalog with a neat twist on it. Instead we got an incoherent mess that took the most boring route to designing a timeloop game.