Deathloop - Ishvii Reviews

Deathloop is a puzzle game disguised as a first person shooter. It takes a while to realise that, and it falls into a strange niche between genres that I find difficult to place. Primarily, the game is a timeloop split into 4 times of day. There are 4 locations, and each of those locations can be visited at each time of day (mostly). The overarching goal is to work out how to kill 8 main characters all within the same day, by manipulating events to force them into certain places so you can take them all out. Alongside that, it looks beautfil, has great stealth and combat mechanics, a decent array of weapons, and some super powers that come from the Dishonored universe.

Notes

The reason I find it hard to categorise is because it's very much marketed as an FPS. You can kind of play it like that, but the real goal behind the game is the timeloop puzzle. You can stealth your way through the game or go in loud - but you're always looking for clues about how to progress the puzzle. The game will happily guide you from one marker to the next, which takes all of the mystery out of it - but if you choose to turn the markers off and try to work it out yourself, you quickly find that the game will only allow you to progress certain goals if you've already "met the exact requirements", even if you know how something should work.

I think the game is incredibly well made and clever. I spent the first 20 hours with the markers off, exploring everything myself and gearing up. However, once I was fully kitted out in powers and epic weapons, I suddenly lost interest and couldn't be bothered to finish it.. so I'm not really sure what that says. I'll probably revisit it to finish it, but I might also just read about how to complete the puzzle on YouTube. Either way, I definitely think it's worth playing - but for 30-40 euros, not 60.

Pros

Great dialogue
Beautiful
Well optimised
Very clear tutorial
Basically Dishonored 3
Nice audio clues when you discover something
Killer soundtrack. The music really is excellent
I LOVE the art style. Everything feels very much like modern Bioshock (it's probably all the people in masks)
If you die, time and the mission reset to the beginning of the day and you lose the gear you picked up. If you survive and complete the mission, time advances and you keep your gear (once you've unlocked that mechanic)
Unusually, there are bits of text floating all over the place - I think they may be thoughts of previous versions of Colt, such as "wrong way" and "maybe don't go in loud"
The same areas are available at 4 different times of day, which have enemies in different places
There are a ton of ways to get to places. Turret in the way? 90% chance there's a route above or around it. Or hack it.
You can inspect and tag enemies to see where they are through walls, and what they're carrying
You unlock special powers. The first one I got was identical to the teleport ability from Dishonored, which is amazing
The time loop is more than just a gimmick. You can learn things that happen in the morning (or change them), then go back later in the day
The game gives you pointers on what to do next to advance. Aside from main story leads, there are also Arsenal Leads, which you can follow to find better weapons
The laser gun is awesome
Each visionary is bunkered up in their own special area, which have unique challenges - some might nullify slabs, or have lots of turrets. This gives you a reason to change out your favourite trinkets for specific areas
There are technically two game modes. The main campaign, and the version where you can play as the antagonist, invade a player's game and try to kill them... which I immediately disabled

Cons

Doesn't cope well with alt-tabbing
Although the UI design is generally excellent, there's a few places where hovering with a mouse is glitchy
Although I get that a lot of people will need some hand holding, there are actually way too many tutorial messages in the mission start / loadout screens. I was still getting explanation popups 5 hours after starting the game
If you want to stop playing, you have to escape the map or lose progress
Maps could have been a little larger
My only major criticism is that it's too easy, because the enemies are complete idiots. They don't see you until you're right in front of them, you can one-shot most of them easily, they take ages to sound the alarm, and once they're on alert they go back to being passive after only a few seconds
You can't view your loadout during a mission. So if you find a cool new gun you want to keep and you're not sure which of the guns you're carrying are infused or not, you have to guess

Bugs

Sometimes shots don't register on enemies if you shoot them while they're doing something like climbing a ledge or falling over
Sometimes once you've already infused an item, it still shows as "infuseable" on the loadout screen, but without a cost

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