Deathloop - Review

Deathloop is a time-bending, 60s inspired, next-gen FPS with a great emphasis on crude humour, ethnic diversity and representation and pure carnage and brutality. Is this Arkane Lyon’s new magnum opus, or does it fall short?

Deathloop starts off with a brutal cutscene that sets the over-arching tone of the story, Juliana non-nonchalantly and ruthlessly murders Colt. Next thing we know, Colt is waking up very hungover on a beach and can’t remember almost anything except that he was killed by Juliana. Deathloop is VERY confusing at first. It pounds you with this idea that you have all this knowledge and understanding, and you feel as clueless as Colt explains himself to be.

This is very intentional, by the time you finish the tutorial section of the game after an hour or two, you’ll understand why. The game bombards you with information, because almost everything is available to you from the word go. The idea, however, is that with each loop your own knowledge grows, and in turn you begin to understand the world better and better. Blackreef is chaotic, confusing and wild, just like Juliana is chaotic, confusing and wild and the same can be said for Colt, as he is chaotic, confusing and wild; Hopefully you get what I mean.

Before I get into the exciting parts, I want to talk about something that for me really sold me on enjoying this game on next-gen, particularly the PlayStation 5. I am a big fan of what Sony allows developers to do with the DualSense controller, the haptic feedback, the trigger mode and the speaker in the controller, Deathloop takes full advantage of what the controller offers to you. There is vibration when walking on certain surfaces that gives you the feeling of the steps in your fingers, trigger mode makes firing any weapon, feel responsive, and gives it nice feedback. The slight resistance that comes alongside this just really adds an air of engagement with the gameplay and the content that cannot be achieved with mouse and keyboard or the Xbox control.

Finally, the speaker in the controller is used amazingly with this game. The Wii used to have games where some communications in some games would only play through the speaker on the Wii remote. In Deathloop whenever Juliana speaks to you through the radio, her voice plays through the speaker on the controller. There is a unique audio option for this, but the default is sufficiently loud enough. It’s small touches like this, that make my purchase of a PlayStation 5 feel validated, because this game made use of almost all the features they could.

Let’s talk the good stuff, Deathloop is hilarious to play, Colt and Juliana’s interactions with each other are dry, vapid and exactly what you’d expect, with Colt and Juliana talking and behaving exactly how you’d expect from 60’s, super cool and kind of psychotic assassins. Colt in particular has this great dry humour, but even the overall theming of the game lends this touch of comedy, that doesn’t detract from the story. The tutorial when it teaches you to melee, describes it as “press R3 to ‘Kick some ass’”. Even the interactions between NPCs on “lore expose” computers, that develop the world around you and further elaborates on the backstory of the visionaries you have to kill. These interactions are comical and highlight the absolute psychosis that Blackreef is full off.

The visionaries are all crazy, unique, and they all interact with each other in different ways, plus they will appear only at certain points in the day. They all have their own abilities, with Wenjie having 30 copies of herself running around, and you having to work out which is the original, to Egor being completely invisible and trusting no-one, so he is completely isolated between his hundreds of death traps. The visionaries feel incredibly unique from each other, and this lends a real air of light to the game. It makes killing them feel important and discovering more of about the history of them all more meaningful. The lore is enlightening and entertaining to find, because the characters are so gripping. It’s not just a 2 man show, but a 9 man show. Juliana and Colt are far stronger than all the other characters, but they aren’t overshadowing of the other visionaries who are CRUCIAL to the core concepts of Deathloop.

Talking about core concepts, I’m in two minds about the guns of Deathloop. There is 4 levels of weapons, Grey, Blue, Purple and Orange, typical looting system of colours. Problematically for me, was the lack of gun variety. There was maybe 2 to 3 of each style of gun, and overall, this amounts to about 10 or 12 guns. There is unique abilities to them depending on the colour, and there is plenty of add-ons that you can get, via the games use of charms, to give them better reload speed, or aiming speed. But for a game that I feel really could have benefited from a wider variety of guns, there seems to be a real lack of them. Perhaps I just wasn’t observant enough to find more, but I was somewhat let down, in regard to the gun variety.

Overall gameplay however, is fantastic, the sheer amount of ways to approach the game feels almost limitless, with certain visionaries only appear in certain areas at certain times of day, or they may change their behaviour depending on other actions made. You can go in guns blazing, employ some stealth, mix in a bit of both. It’s entirely up to you, and you can trek through an area in so many different ways, using prior knowledge to get item drops to make getting through the area easier. There’s an infinite feeling methods of gameplay, and there is so much variety that no loop feels the same.

I was very pleasantly surprised when I chose to “Protect the Loop” which is the mode that lets you play as Juliana and invade other players to try and ruin their day and “protect the loop”. I was surprised, because I was able to actually experience this, prior to game release. There was other people playing online, and this meant that I got to try out the multiplayer of the game. At early play, it is far more skewed towards Colt’s success. Depending how well the person has been playing, you’ll need to kill Colt about 3 times to succeed as Juliana. The upside being, you can set traps, and get very strong guns, almost instantly playing as Juliana. As you play more, and succeed more, you’ll level her up, and get more perks and weapons unlocked to make it easier to succeed as Juliana. This I found, was a great way to break up game sessions, and I found enjoyment in just playing some Juliana before going back to Colt or ending the session.

Thankfully, alongside the gameplay are some really interesting powers that you unlock along the way when you kill a visionary for the first time, these do vary in usefulness and enjoyment. My favourite of these was definitely Shift, which allows you travel short distances, like a blink or teleport. This was super handy when trying to get inventive with terrain traversal, or to get quickly behind an enemy to get a quick stealth kill. There is some lacking abilities, which are relatively niche, but do have their effective moments. Nexus and Havoc being the least enthralling. Havoc effectively acting as a absorb shield, that then reflects the bullets back. Nexus links several enemies together, so that they all take the same effects. If one dies, they all die essentially. Aether can be fun if you want to be real slow and stealthy, I found it really useful on Juliana. Aether allows you to go almost completely invisible, making it impossible for enemies and turrets to see you. As someone who enjoyed stealth, I found myself often using Aether and Shift together to move through areas.

Karnesis is the most iconic of abilities, and one you will experience in both cutscene and the game itself. It allows you to manipulate enemies, by pulling them, lifting them, or throwing them. This can let you shove them off buildings and ledges, slam them onto walls, or throw them into the air. It’s one of the most fun abilities in the game, and if you’re going in guns blazing, you’ll definitely enjoy having this one at hand.

Deathloop is an experience that needs to be played to truly appreciate. There is so much to this game, that takes some of the better aspects of Arkane Lyon’s other games and accentuates them even further here. Roguelike elements added into a loop style game really tickles me in a positive way, and I found myself really enjoying my time with Deathloop. It is a game that I can see myself coming back to regularly, that has almost limitless replayability with different ways to play. Deathloop is a game that I feel is best experienced on PlayStation 5, just with the small additions you get with the DualSense controller, that just further enhance the game itself.

The Score

9.5

Review code provided by Bethesda

The Pros

-Great humour

-Fantastic setting and themes

-Almost limitless replayability

The Cons

-Lack of gun diversity

-Juliana invasion’s is very skewed towards Colt