Deathloop - Full PC Game Critical Review

In Summary: I’d give Deathloop a “maybe” recommendation; I finished it and don't hate it. It’s a laudably innovative game, with mostly great elements: unique fictional setting and aesthetic, great voice acting, polish, interesting combat build variations, etc… But! I REALLY struggled with a couple of core game mechanics, which I’ll explain in more detail further down.

As someone with ADHD (and slow information processing) these issues prevented me from enjoying the good aspects; Deathloop is far less approachable than either Dishonoured (1, 2, 3, reviews on Steam) or Prey (which I loved). All made by Arkane. Deathloop was hard work to get into, with an overwhelming number of UI screens, clues, loadout settings, etc, to read tutorial notes for and then navigate. Totally breaking the flow, immersion and addictiveness, for me.

Then the unexpected multiplayer element was brave, but in practice just meant getting randomly griefed, as a new player. Unwelcome during an otherwise single player chill-out game. Together, these issues, and other smaller design choices, made it tough to explore different loadout customisations for fun. Or to find much freedom or escapism.

(1) Less accessible: 

The previous Arkane games quickly launch into the action and almost immediately begin to flow. While Deathloop felt like being taught an overly complex board game for hours on end.

There seemed like an unending supply of menus and sub-menus, different loading screens and game mechanics to understand and use. Written explanations popped up overlaid atop the menus, looking kinda ugly and a little confusing. The game does an OK job of stringing all this out over time. But the result was that I didn’t feel like the game actually got going until I was about 7 hours in!

The maze of tabs: discoveries, clues, visionary leads, arsenal leads, documents, etc, to wade through and keep in mind (plus people and place names and symbols) when trying to figure out where (and when!) to go next… And to recall when picking things back up next day… I’m sure many will take all this in their stride, but it was *work* for me. Very daunting for a story game.

Sooo many screens, every new one with a mini-tutorial to read!

The loadout menu layout could have been more condensed, too: e.g. you can’t  discard, or infuse your accumulated guns from the menus where you equip them, only from the separate “Infuse” menu, which feels like a duplicate. Then there’s no easy way to discard the many duplicate character trinkets you pick up later on, or even easily see which are duplicates. And the weapon trinkets can’t be sorted by function, so it’s a chore to hunt down through a random list to see if there’s another spare to avoid having to unequip one from another weapon, etc.

(2) Constrained creativity:

The gameplay action is basically Dishonoured + Prey with a load more gun options. But unlike those games, you can only equip 2 of your powers and 3 of your weapons, selected before entering a map.

I felt trapped with a fairly obvious selection of slab powers, passive trinket buffs and weapons. What I’d picked up quite early seemed like either the most powerful options, or just annoyingly inconvenient to ditch. I always wanted “Shift” for mobility and removing double jump felt wrong, like a missing limb. Survivability/healing buffs felt necessary to avoid getting chipped down or burst too fast. Then the super-shotgun for blasting the steam of attackers as they come through the door, after inevitably cocking up, aggro-ing a whole area.

Got the two best guns in the game early on, now what...?

It took me, perhaps, 30 hours to build up enough good gear to potentially start experimenting properly with fun synergy combinations, anyway. But it was tediously off-putting to try stuff out. There was the overly involved menu system for selecting loadout; the lack of quantitative information on buffs, etc; the time punishment of having to restart an entire loop if the combo doesn’t work out. Or if failing part way through, potentially losing progress and loot from the previous time periods. 

So I was near the end of the story, ~35 hours in (of 50h total), by the time I really started getting into it. Only enthused after making a Reddit thread to ask for suggestions and finding a few fun gimmicks. But nothing more stable and effective than the melee life steal, high survivability build I’d already tired. With what I had…

I didn’t get the invisibility slab upgrade that made it viable until very late (“Ghost”). And the options for stealth are very limited to start with, too (nail gun and bear hands). When I tired stealthing half way through (for Fia’s bunker), it immediately went wrong, feeling too prone to failure. It seemed like the game wanted you to just shoot everything in the face, anyway, given the all you can eat gun and ammo buffet. Even if the basic enemies tended to lock on and aim really well.

I didn’t find any solid use for dual wield. Half the guns were just horrible to aim with, verses the often jerky movements of the eternalists, and the more conventional shotgun seemed weaker compared to the “50/50” super-shotgun I took from Charlie, early on. Equipping a second gun means not having a power on right click either. You can with a double-handed weapon, and these have plenty of stopping power, with more sane ammo use and only 1 reload to do. Dual wielding is left/right reversed on the mouse buttons, too. Which I could just *never* get an intuitive handle on.

(3) Demotivation:

Being given, from the start, a good idea of what the story ark is roughly going to involve. That distant marker of having to figure out how to kill all 8 visionaries in one loop. Knowing that made it more like ticking boxes and jumping through hoops, than really discovering the unexpected new shape to things. Combined with being able to travel to all of the maps and times. It felt like having a big Gantt chart laid out before me. 

I see where we're going...

It felt like relatively little changed with my actions, aside from the prescribed visionary location toggles built into the plot. Like, there’s no moral options, really. Except as a extra-difficult Steam achievement. There are no non-lethal take-downs, just full stealth. But then it doesn’t matter when all your kills get revived at the start of the next loop anyway. I guess that’s the joy of the plot setup, to let players enjoy their guns and gore without feeling like they’re actually a mass murderer..? Shrug.

Minor [spoiler] aside - it's funny how trusting all the eternalists are, about dying, considering they all think it's still the first day of the loop. I mean, they've not experienced anyone resurrected yet, so it's basically indistinguishable from a suicide cult festival.

Anyway, your main friendly/frenemy banter comes over the radio with Julianna, at the start of each map. Because every character you encounter instantly tries to shoot on sight. So basically there's no getting to know anyone up close, to build rapport. Or even to catch the extra lore tid-bit voice lines the visionaries might shout at you, because I'd usually get the jump on them. Close-up assassination action was pretty smooth, though.

(4) Multiplayer BS:

Immersion in the story campaign, where you  “Break the loop” as Colt, was kind of shattered by getting randomly farmed by an expert griefer “Protect[ing] the loop” as Julianna…

The game made a big point of saying I could disable this seemingly core feature, by simply switching to offline mode. So I did, because why would I choose to subject myself to random bouts of the worst aspects of online gaming, while just chilling in my own little campaign world?

The AI Julianna is a total idiot the first time you meet, so there’s no preparation for the real thing. And I find it very demotivating having to set the difficultly level in games. It’s like pointing out that the optimal option is always to just not play in the first place.

Having largely avoided promotional materials, I wasn’t expecting online PvP, at all. Starting in, I imagined getting to play both sides as single player, maybe in sequence. But the campaign is Colt only while Julianna only gets to invade other people’s games.

It’s a bold experiment, within an otherwise single player game, from a studio that’s only made single player games before. The plot works this in in well, in theory [SPOILER!]: it turns out (it took me a long while to be 100% clear on this) that Colt and Julianna are unique in being able to remember many thousands of loops. Hence it makes sense that they would have refined their skills and knowledge to the point were they are uniquely dangerous threats to each other.

But the difficulty cliff is brutal for new Colts (heh, named for a baby horse). Canonically it makes sense to get massacred by Julianna initially. But I didn’t expect it, game play wise. And it’s not fun to start all the way up at the deep end when you are least well equipped for it (gear and knowledge).

The problem is, I think, that only the determined, experienced Julianna players stick with it at all. So all the human Julianna’s are ridiculously good. My first came out of nowhere, immediately immobilised me in mid-air with fully upgraded Karnesis and 3 shot me with a shotgun. 3 times in a row, ending my loop abruptly. Making me rage quit...

Multiplayer interaction was not very interactive; can't even "gg".

Yet when *I* tried to play as her, I got the most basic level guns (which can  jam up) and 2 slabs that were unusable; the Colt it pit me against was taking out Egor at The Complex, so no eternalist grunts around (that I might have disguised myself as). Not knowing what to expect, I gunned down a distant character who suddenly appeared with human-like movement. But to my dismay I found this was the visionary Colt was hunting. I served it up for him on a plate, only figuring it out as the player turns up and guns me down. I’m not even able to heal, as there’s no items left around.

This miserable failure yielded basically no XP points, so no upgrades, I believe. I’d probably have needed 3 consecutive kills to actually win, too. Screw trying to grind that! Which is, I expect, what most new players think..? Although most won’t screw up as badly as I did! Lol.

Maybe if the devs had forced it, I’d have come back and made more effort, as Colt, to try and take out the old pro Julies. In principle you only have to get one kill per loop. But given that they made it optional, screw that. It’s too distracting with all the other information and considerations to deal with. I would also have felt the need to have a safe loadout specialised only to deal with human Juliannas. Until I’d killed her. But *then* not want to take any chances thereafter having won a free rest-of-the-loop.

(5) Conclusion:

Maybe you don’t find any of my experiences off-putting. Great! Absolutely go enjoy this game. Great studio and interesting product here. The ending options are pretty underwhelming too, though. Definitely not worth replaying the whole thing, not even the final loop, well, not for the alternate ending(s) alone. Maybe the devs are setting things up for a sequel or expansion? I’m not sure how they’d work that, though...