Deathloop Review

"Over & Over"

Campaign

September 13, 2021 at 6:01am
By Jason Stettner

This is a rather unique in premise concept, being a tad weak in terms of the execution. The just of Deathloop is that you’re playing as two deadly individuals that are directly locked in a time loop. You primarily play as Colt Vahn, an individual that is slowly remembering things. Opposing him, is Julianna and you take on that role if you’re invading another player’s world. I’ll touch upon that more later however.

With that, as Colt you’re trying to figure out what exactly is going on in an attempt to break the loop that has you trapped in this unique environment. You’re given a mountain load of information right off the bat in terms of pop-up notes and it honestly feels overwhelming. They could have trickled that out better quite honestly.

Everything does start to make sense after awhile, but I can see how folks might feel that the start is a bit intimidating in terms of the ideas it’s presenting and just how many things you need to get the hang of right off the bat. It does smooth out, and is relatively easy to grasp as it progresses.

As mentioned you’re aiming to break this time loop and you do so by gathering information. This info will allow you to figure out how to take out various key figures, and when to do so. It’s the most convoluted linear game attempting to be open world that I think I’ve ever seen.

Regardless, you get a few areas that I’d describe as medium sized with lots of depth where you’re set to freely explore. You can do so at four times of the day which includes morning; noon, afternoon and night. The world changes, it gets snowy and cold. Where your foes go changes too, and you figure that out through very guided missions.

I was hoping for more freedom in this regard as it’s basically a structured linear narrative that you’re discovering as you play. Everything falls into place, and I would have liked more choice in how that comes together. You’re free to explore the areas, but I really didn’t see much of a point since later missions basically push you through each of the places on the maps. You are free in how you tackle scenarios which is wonderful, but it felt limited in terms of a narrative stand point.

Julianna (Multiplayer)
This is the multiplayer component of the game, which can be turned off if you so choose. Basically as you play there are moments where this character can attack you. This becomes more frequent as you progress in the game. This character has their own set of loadout options just like the main character, and a unique style of going after either friends or the regular open online community.

Players can either eliminate this character, or disable the array on the map and run into the tunnels that are present. This was a neat addition, but perhaps also not necessarily a needed one. The idea is interesting for sure, I just wonder how much this will be used. Past that, it takes some progression to be able to play as Julianna.

Gameplay

This is basically a combination of Wolfenstein’s shooting and Dishonored’s environmental movement. It feels really good when it comes to the gunplay and the ways you’re able to traverse the environment. As mentioned, the areas aren’t massive but they do change environmentally based on the time of day and in how you venture through them. It’s really cool to see an enemy fortified area, and then discover multiple ways to enter it. Using either stealth, or just going in guns blazing.

You get to make those choices, and upon revisits you may notice extra ways to get into places which is neat. That aspect does feel somewhat repetitive though, as you do revisit spots multiple times. Sometimes for somewhat mundane reasons too as the story wraps up. I will also make a brief note that codes for unlocking things or similar stuff is random for everyone’s playthroughs incase you were hoping for quick answers on things when searching online.

Getting back to what I was saying, it really does feel cool to play. The abilities you gather are awesome, and do some major damage. The weapons are really satisfying to use, same with the melee options. You also just get a massive range of unique items to use. You get a loadout you build by destroying items to collect a special substance, or you can alternatively gather that substance by regularly playing and interacting with unique items. This can be used to keep your tools through various days, as you build up an arsenal.

It’s not just guns, you also gather special trinkets that can modify your abilities in many ways. Going back to the environments, this game looks great. It’s quite aesthetically appealing coming across immediately as a Bethesda title. Alongside that, are numerous bugs and performance issues too. Quite a shift there, but yes there are some fairly noticeable issues. I noticed many menu getting merged with gameplay scenes that required me to restart the game losing progress, and a couple crashes.

Past that, some performance issues and other NPC related things. I also wanted to briefly mention it’s weird how NPCs can hear you move through walls or ceilings, it’s strange. The NPCs are also insanely dumb in this, some key enemies just stood there as I slashed them many times. Anyways, I want to talk about performance and split it between the graphical modes of which there are three here.

The first is performance and by far the best choice. This provides a dynamic 4k resolution at 60fps. There’s HDR support for all of these modes by the way. This has minimal issues and largely plays fine. The next is a high quality mode that aims for a truer dynamic 4k resolution at 60fps and this does not run well. It notes some frame drops, but it’s quite rough and I don’t suggest it. This is more of a future console mode is what I’m getting at. The last mode is ray tracing, this provides a 4k resolution at 30fps with shadows and ambient occlusion being the targets.

The Conclusion

Deathloop has a rather unique premise to it, but it misses the mark in the execution being littered with numerous issues that plague an overall solid experience. The number of smaller bugs just added up to become too common of a thing and that was annoying. It’s also not necessarily as long as I would have hoped for since it feels light on overall content.

The multiplayer component is really neat, but not something I see players taking advantage of in the long term. I also imagine many players will just turn these invaders off, which is fine. I liked the design of the world, they nailed the gunplay and it feels immersive to explore. I just wish there were more reasons to explore. I had fun playing this, I thought it was different.

At the same time it’s not necessarily anything too groundbreaking in terms of narrative, and I wish the structuring was more open in terms of how things can end up going. I had higher expectations for this one. It’s lacking in a number of areas, and those just pile up to lessen what could have been really special. A final note is that I loved the banter between the lead characters, wish they had that with the surrounding cast too.

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Deathloop Review on Playstation 5
Review Code Provided by 47

Rating Overall: 6.8