Deathloop (PS5 / PC)

[Isslander]

Another game getting rave reviews but little love in here it seems. Or maybe more people are in the same position as I am and simply don't have a PS5 to play it on.


Currently has a score of 88 on metacritic, there was some talk of issues on the PC but it doesn't seem to have affected the score which is the same as on PS5

 

[Isslander]

Time to get loopy.

As someone who never got into Dishonored, this game more more of a "next gen game to try" for me when I bought the PS5. I liked it from the off, it is a curious mix of Arkane Games style games (Dishonored, Prey) and the Hitman series.

There is an Island, where a bunch of rich dickheads are stuck in a time loop, where everything resets after a day, Groundhog Day style. It is by choice though, they want to live forever and do what they want. They have a bunch of followers with them as well.

The Protagonist, Colt, is trying to find ways to break the loop and be free. It seems that the way to do so is to kill all the rich assholes, 8 I think in total, So he goes about gathering info on how he can kill all of them in one day. I imagine the final "level" of this game will be exactly that.

Going through each day (or, the same day) you gather clues, kill the "Visionaries" (rich assholes) and their followers, and scour for better gear. But there is a catch, all your shit goes bye bye at the end of the day, so you have to get it again next time. Unless...

Unless you gather special material called... I forget what it's called now, but you get it from certain objects and dead Visionaries. You can infuse your loot with it, and then it becomes available forever after that. You also loot Slabs from dead Visionaries, special abilities that will be familiar to Dishonored players. Those can be infused as well and kept. This makes you stronger as you go along, but the levels get harder as well, so you probably don't want to just farm shit to upgrade yourself.

Oh and there is this lady called Juliana that pops up regularly and tries to kill you. She has fun conversations with Colt all the time through the radio and so far she has always announced she is coming, so that's nice I guess.

If any of this sounds confusing, you don't know the half of it. This thing has a learning curve to it, in the gameplay, especially before you have the ability to keep your loot, but more in the menus, it took me an age to figure out all the systems. But once you get them, they don't seem hard at all. It's almost like learning a tricky board game, once you finally understand it, it's the simplest thing in the world.

Again, the gameplay is quite Hitman-y, so unless you like to replay things, this may not be for you. But they shake things up in very clever ways, there are four different times of day, and each time enemy numbers/position and even weather changes. I have been many times to the same places without realizing it until late in a level. You can approach things your own way and although the footsoldiers (Eternals I think they are called the Visionary followers) are not terribly tough, they can overwhelm you with numbers. The Visionaries also have a lot of them around sogetting to one is always thrilling. You get 3 tries in a level, and if you die at anytime, you get kicked back to morning. But the story and different objectives keep things interesting and I was having a tough time quitting the game last night after a marathon session.

If there is anything bad to say, I suppose the game doesn't exactly scream next gen, it looks good but certain things like the Eternals wearing masks all the time just makes it look like you are murdering manequins. I also repeatedly find myself being spotted by someone I simply could not see before. They also seem to have an annoying ability to see trough certain walls The layout of a level can be confusing and they will have you walk on mines and stuff that you had no idea was there. As I said before, it has a learning curve and some of the menus are confusing, also some of the objective markers seem to make little sense.

But as a next gen experience, I am quite impressed with it and absolutely recommend it.