Deathloop (2021)

I was excited to pick up my next time loop game, loaded up Deathloop on the PS5, went through the tutorial and then realized "Returnal" is shorter than "Deathloop". I mixed 'em up! I need to stick closer to my spreadsheet.

The one takeaway I had was that this immediately felt like Dishonored but with a retro-modern aesthetic that made me much less afraid to play (believe it or not, I couldn't play Dishonored out of fright and just watched speedruns). Even though I'm sticking this one back on the shelf for a bit, it made a good first impression. Also, I'm prepared to be let down by the ending but am going in spoiler-free on the story, ready to find out just how bad it is.

Wow... I decided to get this, friends were telling me to check it out back in september. I waited a bit and I must admit, I'm pretty baffled by how much atmosphere and style this game has.

The music and setting are absolutely incredible. Really something else. The game just opened up to me but I'm already a lot more invested than I was with Dishonored 1 or 2. Curious to see where this goes.

So. I'm not sure how I feel about this one!

I've played about 8 hours, finished a few of the leads, doesn't seem like there's that much left to do. I like the vibes but everything just isn't clicking for me, the game feels... clunky? to me. Controversially, I'm including the world design, storytelling, characterisation etc. in that. I've found plenty of the documents and audio-logs but these characters are so paper thin? ​This is further compounded by the fact that the whole time I'm thinking damn... I wish I was just playing Dishonoured!

Ik its passé to make that comparison but if Arkane didn't literally lift so many things directly from Dishonoured (and make them slightly less cool) then maybe I wouldn't be saying that.

Anyways, I think we can mostly all agree the multiplayer is unsustainable and pretty dire in its current state

sidenote: I have a conspiracy that they'll release an actually good version of the game next year for the Xbox... because I can't help but feel the version we have is some kind of beta build

While I had a lot of fun playing it, aside from some down times in between, towards the end it kinda just... fizzles out. Surprises are over, anything interesting character or story wise is always gonna happen off-screen and be summarized in a 2D animatic, and the only difficulty ramp up is "there's more enemies in this one place tho"

I unlocked a whole bunch of leads and hints that I never needed (or wanted) to use because they were more trouble than they were worth. Overall, good experience, amazing voice acting and charismatic characters, but it feels a bit... lacking. I for one will never complain that a game is short, but I do think the ending, or ending stretch at least should bring it all home, and this one sure didn't.

I took a break from this but was still drawn back to it. I had to concede that the stealth had a lot of flaws but the game was still fun regardless.

What really drew me back was two main characters and the dialogue between them. Very well written and there was so much going on with it behind the words. Ultimately I loved the snarkiness, one of the reasons I like the Uncharted Games, and it kept me amused until the end.

The ending was not very satisfying, I had warning of that from reviews I read, so I wasn’t disappointed just wishing for a bit more.