a power fantasy version of thief but with guns this time is apparently even less of my thing

and there's really only so many times i can entertain thinking "huh, maybe there's a sneakier, secondary entrance besides this front door" before it starts feeling played out, especially when it gets as reductive as displaying that as cutesy internal monologue from your character physically over these things. dishonored 2 improved on this pattern with inventive level design in its second half, and i know prey does from what i've heard of it (and i should really give it a second chance), so i'm not sure why this seems to go backwards. maybe that changes as it goes on? we don't get imm sims often, so i'd hate to end up slandering this, but deathloop's first few hours are just so weak that i couldn't be bothered to find out

unfortunately, it also has severe frame pacing issues unless you can maintain 60/120 fps, and that's hard to manage with dips in performance anytime the AI starts doing anything besides standing around. another problem was that playing as julianna is marred by the game seemingly not trusting your client at all: the few matches i played were nearly unplayable as i'd rubberband with every step i took. i'm guessing this is a kind of rudimentary anti-cheat for a game with a light multiplayer component, but it definitely hurt my experience since it's such a core part of the game. i'd maybe wait for patches before playing if you're not a huge arkane fan