Deathloop is a thrilling stealth and shooter game with a fantastic setting, even if it might be a little too complex for traditional FPS fans to love.
Want to know the coolest thing we’ve done in Deathloop so far? There’s a power in this game called Nexus – using it on one enemy means that if anything happens to them, the effect is repeated on any linked enemies in close proximity. We snuck into a party at night in the Updaam area of the game, followed a walkway around a busy room and cast Nexus on a large group of guards dancing below. With a careful, silent headshot from one of the game’s nail guns on just a single enemy, the entire room of guests died quietly at once. It was murder on the dancefloor, and it felt amazing – but it took a while to get to that point. When you start in Deathloop, your character Colt wakes up on a beach with nothing, and is stuck living the same day over and over again. Your journey in this game is a slow accumulation of powers, weapons and information. It’s a f irst-person shooter built around a stealth system, mixing things up with supernatural abilities. It’s a game of messy firefights, experimentation and eventual moments of punch-the-air satisfaction, with a potentially long-lasting multiplayer invasion mode waiting for you in its endgame. Colt’s overall goal is to execute eight targets – called Visionaries – on Blackreef in a single day in order to break the loop. At first, this seems insurmountable. Over time, as murdering each of the targets becomes routine and you start figuring out shortcuts, you slowly piece together how you’re going to get this done. Deathloop divides each day into four periods, and the island’s four regions change depending on what time you’re there. Guard placements are altered, and some locations will only be accessible at certain times of day – encouraging you to return on the next loop at a time when a certain door might be open, or a bridge is accessible. Progress through Deathloop is understanding that you’re not exactly playing a game that starts again each time Colt washes up on the beach, ready to relive the same day. You can carry weapons and powers between loops with a resource called Residuum, so you’ve got a permanent arsenal for when the day starts again. It helps, too, that Colt remembers what happens between loops – so the story and your journey as a player is functionally linear, even if the world around you is repeating. Instead, you’ll start thinking strategically about the many clues in your objectives menu, and piece together shortcuts on how to deal with each of the Visionaries. As an example, there’s a house in the Updaam area of Blackreef that’s burned down by the evening – but maybe if you return earlier in the day, you can stop it from catching fire and explore the space. Many breadcrumb trails like this make the act of unraveling Deathloop’s final murder puzzle feel compelling. Deathloop is a hard game to categorize. Like Dishonored from the same developers, it seems like a stealth game at its heart – you start each level without enemies knowing where you are, and you can sneak up on them with a machete for a stealth kill. But unlike Dishonored, this game gives you a lot of guns, explosives and powerful abilities to use in open combat, and you sense that the developers want you to get your hands dirty. The enemies are pleasantly disposable, with an odd mannequin or crash test dummy-like look to them.
