A game so intrinsically focused on failure that I even fucked up this review multiple times, scrapping entire paragraphs and infusing certain sentences with copy+paste residuum so that I could use them again on my next attempt. Why is this game so difficult to nailgun to a wall? I guess because it’s trying and often failing to do a lot of things at once but still somehow remaining a supremely fun time, a wild and wacky rollercoaster that fluctuates between terrible trial-and-error tedium and top-tier thrills; novel FPS game design that suggests a dangerous playing-with-knives solution to Quick Save and Quick Load, the imsim’s natural predator.
andihero described DEATHLOOP best when he said Arkane have had to walk a tightrope of intentional repetition and actual repetition here, a balancing act they’ve more or less pulled off with only a few broken bones - for every frustrating long-term retry of a stealth section or battery puzzle, you’re probably gonna get a dozen moments where you effortlessly finesse an action set-piece to the point where you’re basically a teleporting Terminator vis-a-vis Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, blinking in and out of a terrifying existence (shift ftw) to fuck up a horde of drugged-up millennial wasters (my personal justification for the AI issues) while on your merry way to the next wall of inscrutable emails or scientific memos. The gunplay delivers satisfaction fast, and develops out in 60s sandboxes that more or less enable whatever variant of the FPS power fantasy appeals to you personally - though I don’t know why anyone would wanna go silent here when you can chain dudes together and kick them into the ocean.
The story’s Whatever. The bullet-points are salient - corporate-government exploitation of physical phenomena, abasement of those in acute positions of class and race, our obsession with eternal youth and pleasure-pursuit - but their presentation is backgrounded in ways that fail to bring the ideas to real life, set-dressing on primary-colour shooty-bang playgrounds. I get that Arkane are constrained by budget more than most “big” developers, but delivering almost all the game’s exposition in these little UNATCO email terminals or post-it notes just doesn’t feel right when you’re in the middle of meat-grinding zoned-out zoomer zombies with a ten-chambered chrome shotgun; I often amused myself by imagining Colt putting on little bloodstained reading glasses to decipher cryptographic cyphers and shipping manifests. The text dialogue between the Visionaries is densely dull (does anyone really wanna read a recreation of Discord banter in a sexy James Bond thriller?), and no amount of hasty last-minute “I’m building a factory… for child slavery!!!” dialogue can make them compelling villains worth hunting over and over again; Elon Musk character-shorthand no longer elicits feeling, and we must try harder.
Julianna, however, is a strong beating heart who keeps Colt/Player’s blood pumping through all the game’s channels, even those turgid tutorials and repeated visits to Fia’s hideout from hell. I can’t think of many games where the banter’s been this alive - there aren’t many cutting one-liners, but those that Colt/Julianna land on each other are often followed up with a smug-satisfied-or-surprised “aaaAAAAH HAH!”, which is endearingly lifelike and helps sell these time-turning sicko-superhumans as real people instead of right hands holding disembodied guns. The Big Twist is even handed with appropriate lack-of-care, a cack-handed backhand aimed in the general direction of the other first-person narratives that DEATHLOOP might be pastiching with its grindhouse style. Nothing’s too serious here, and I like that.
In that regard, DEATHLOOP’s a resounding success - a low-budget exploitation classic that homages and hitmans the games that it took inspiration from, a blending pot of JC Dentons and Agent 47s and SHODANs and the 451 other games where guards like to stare in the opposite direction of the door you’ve just opened. But that’s why we like these things, right? We want to be the only intelligent being in the room, again and again and again. Don’t invade my space or offer me a way out.
andihero described DEATHLOOP best when he said Arkane have had to walk a tightrope of intentional repetition and actual repetition here, a balancing act they’ve more or less pulled off with only a few broken bones - for every frustrating long-term retry of a stealth section or battery puzzle, you’re probably gonna get a dozen moments where you effortlessly finesse an action set-piece to the point where you’re basically a teleporting Terminator vis-a-vis Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, blinking in and out of a terrifying existence (shift ftw) to fuck up a horde of drugged-up millennial wasters (my personal justification for the AI issues) while on your merry way to the next wall of inscrutable emails or scientific memos. The gunplay delivers satisfaction fast, and develops out in 60s sandboxes that more or less enable whatever variant of the FPS power fantasy appeals to you personally - though I don’t know why anyone would wanna go silent here when you can chain dudes together and kick them into the ocean.
The story’s Whatever. The bullet-points are salient - corporate-government exploitation of physical phenomena, abasement of those in acute positions of class and race, our obsession with eternal youth and pleasure-pursuit - but their presentation is backgrounded in ways that fail to bring the ideas to real life, set-dressing on primary-colour shooty-bang playgrounds. I get that Arkane are constrained by budget more than most “big” developers, but delivering almost all the game’s exposition in these little UNATCO email terminals or post-it notes just doesn’t feel right when you’re in the middle of meat-grinding zoned-out zoomer zombies with a ten-chambered chrome shotgun; I often amused myself by imagining Colt putting on little bloodstained reading glasses to decipher cryptographic cyphers and shipping manifests. The text dialogue between the Visionaries is densely dull (does anyone really wanna read a recreation of Discord banter in a sexy James Bond thriller?), and no amount of hasty last-minute “I’m building a factory… for child slavery!!!” dialogue can make them compelling villains worth hunting over and over again; Elon Musk character-shorthand no longer elicits feeling, and we must try harder.
Julianna, however, is a strong beating heart who keeps Colt/Player’s blood pumping through all the game’s channels, even those turgid tutorials and repeated visits to Fia’s hideout from hell. I can’t think of many games where the banter’s been this alive - there aren’t many cutting one-liners, but those that Colt/Julianna land on each other are often followed up with a smug-satisfied-or-surprised “aaaAAAAH HAH!”, which is endearingly lifelike and helps sell these time-turning sicko-superhumans as real people instead of right hands holding disembodied guns. The Big Twist is even handed with appropriate lack-of-care, a cack-handed backhand aimed in the general direction of the other first-person narratives that DEATHLOOP might be pastiching with its grindhouse style. Nothing’s too serious here, and I like that.
In that regard, DEATHLOOP’s a resounding success - a low-budget exploitation classic that homages and hitmans the games that it took inspiration from, a blending pot of JC Dentons and Agent 47s and SHODANs and the 451 other games where guards like to stare in the opposite direction of the door you’ve just opened. But that’s why we like these things, right? We want to be the only intelligent being in the room, again and again and again. Don’t invade my space or offer me a way out.