Deathloop is a paradox where time is both infinitely and rapidly running out. The protagonist Colt Vahn is stuck in a time warp and is desperately trying his best to leave the cheerfully nihilistic island of Blackreef. The rules for breaking the time warp seem simple: kill eight targets in 24 hours. Paradoxically, this feat is a complicated clockwork of planning, preparation and execution that at first feels impossible. It all culminates in one of Arkane Studios’ best games yet.
Deathloop begins in the media when Colt is murdered by a mysterious woman named Julianna Blake. As soon as he dies, he wakes up on a strange beach without knowing who he is or how he got there. Julianna soon gets in touch, explains his situation and with it the rules of the game. Colt is on Blackreef, where time is stuck and murder is the only way out.
The game indulges in its nihilistic world; Dying doesn’t mean anything on Blackreef so why don’t you do what you want? Death, murder, and all sorts of horrific things are treated casually, adding black humor to the whole experience. This type of storytelling could have gotten youthful in the wrong hands, but Deathloop’s writing style is strong and I enjoyed seeing how it played with the time warp imagination. Colt and Julianna’s interactions – full of bickering and argument – are almost always entertaining and humorous, and the two are now some of my favorite video game characters of the year.
Blackreef is divided into four large districts, each with their own pointers on how to proceed, access to goals, and storylines that advance the main storyline or serve as ancillary content. Each borough has a unique flair – from the town center hosting a huge party to a sprawling research station near the coast – and arriving at different times of the day changes everything from where guards patrol to who and what is available. You can explore a district at four times of the day: morning, noon, afternoon or evening. I enjoy the way you plan your routes accordingly.
Chasing leads all over Blackreef quickly became my favorite part of Deathloop. I loved exploring, seeing how the world opens and how my options change over the course of a day. It takes a while to get to the bottom of every mystery in Deathloop, but the game does a good job of paying you back your time with fun new ways to play, such as: B. Access to new powers, better weapons, and upgrades for both.
Compared to Arkane’s previous immersive sim series Dishonored, Deathloop encourages players to shed as much blood as they’d like. no punitive or moral system will punish you for using all the cool weapons and powers available to you. Many of these powers are very similar to those in Dishonored, including teleporting through levels and lining up multiple enemies so that killing everyone in the chain kills everyone. From the start, these powers seem like updated versions of the ones in Dishonored, which means that Deathloop is effectively a huge power trip. As I honed my skills and memorized the various levels, I loved charging and tearing through an environment in minutes – especially when combined with the game’s great arsenal which includes a nail gun for quiet headshots and a reloadable SMG contains when shooting after a non-stop bullet spray. An in-game currency allows weapons, powers, and upgrades to be carried between the loops, which is a helpful touch for mitigating the death penalty.
The last trick up Deathloop’s sleeve is its online component, where players compete against each other. Where the single player focuses on Colt, players can also jump into a mode where they play as Julianna. The former tries to achieve its goal, while the latter invades other players’ games and tries to hunt and kill them. This mechanic can be turned off, but I’ve found these invasions add a bit of tension and spontaneity to the runs, especially when playing with a friend who I can talk and laugh to. My best plans were useless when Julianna showed up, and the dangerous cat-and-mouse game that followed always made me nervous.
The further I got, the more satisfying it became to put all the different pieces of the puzzle together until I finally had a finished plan. I had built dozens of routes to get through my final day, assembled an arsenal of perfect weapons, and selected the right powers to kill all of my targets. And then I botched everything at the last second. But that ever-building sense of knowledge and accomplishment that was present throughout the game immediately led me to start a new game, keep experimenting and exploring. In Deathloop, dying is fun, killing is even better, and I can’t wait to see what the game throws at me next.
