Deathloop Review

Like Groundhog Day but with more guns

Stuck in a time loop, Colt finds himself starting every day waking up, hungover on a beach with no memory of how he managed to get there. After some exploration and finding messages, he seemingly left himself, he finds out he can escape by assassinating the 8 Visionaries who rule the island of Black Reef in one day. So, his journey of violence and discovery begins!

In Deathloop when you die, you restart at the beginning of the day. You do automatically have a power that rewinds time three times after a death preventing small mistakes from being overly punishing. But if you make too many- tough luck, you need to replay the loop again. 

Deathloop is at its heart an immersive sim in the same vein as games like Hitman and in particular Arkane Studio’s previous outings with the Dishonored series. This genre is best replayed to experience different solutions to missions. The clever part of the time loop design is no longer is exploring levels something that is relegated to a second playthrough, but now a core part of Deathloop’s design DNA. Missions can be easily replayed by looping back around and you’ll be exploring each map extensively over the 15-hour run time.

Equipment and upgrades you find in the world can be saved between loops by spending a currency called residuum. It encourages players to save as much as possible meaning that you will always be improving your arsenal with better guns and upgrades.

The game gives you missions so you are not walking around blind. Visionary leads allow you to learn more information about the 8 targets and their behaviours in the loop leading to a perfect day- a loop where you manage to kill all 8 of them. There are also arsenal leads that encourage Colt to find unique guns or assassinate the visionaries to steal their slabs (more on this later.)

Following these leads often involve exploring different facilities and dungeons that the visionaries may lurk in, however, the implementation is rather on the nose. By default, you can follow mission markers that point a massive diamond over where you need to explore. These can be turned off, but the level design is not smart enough to subtly nudge the player in the right direction without a serious risk of them getting very lost. It is a hard compromise and I wish Arkane found a solution to helping the player find the correct path without blunt signposting.

I also would have liked to see a more open approach to the perfect day. Arkane’s whole design philosophy is allowing players the freedom to choose their own approach to certain missions. However, there is only one solution to killing all 8 visionaries in one loop and it requires you to do a specific set of objectives in the correct order- and it just surprises me there is no more flexibility to this structure seeing as the gameplay has so many potential routes for finishing objectives.

The visionaries are well realised and very expressive. They’re over the top with distorted outlooks on the world and loop. All of them are egomaniacs and by encountering them a few times you do paint a picture of what their personality is like through clever dialogue. There are also numerous text files and audio messages you can find from them scattered around the world.

The voice acting is also extremely well performed across the board with phenomenal performances by Jason E. Kelley and Ozioma Akagha for bringing the main characters of Colt and Juliana to life.

Whilst the characters are exciting and well written, the main plot is over clouted and poorly told. Some important plot reveals take place in audio files and messages, and I did read them, but it took me a while to fully grasp the story there were trying to tell. I am not ashamed to say that I watched a plot summary on YouTube afterwards and there were chunks of the plot I just missed, and I would love if they had a clearer, more cohesive and cinematic approach to storytelling. 

Despite this, the world is simply gorgeous as it takes inspiration from 1960 art deco mixed with bold, psychedelic colours. During gameplay writing appears on the walls around the player, sometimes giving clues, occasionally referencing nearby characters, or simply taunting the player. Whilst it isn’t explained until later who is writing these messages, they do help give the game designers a unique opportunity to play games with the player and subvert expectations.

The level design is also very flexible with many ways to complete the same objectives. I did feel like I wanted to explore more locales though. Rather than including a classic campaign, Deathloop features four maps that can be selected at four different times of the day. Each time period will feature different visionaries and areas however they are still smaller than previous Arkane games. I wanted a more explorable area

This is heightened by a part in the late game, where you are required to go to a powerplant and restart a generator to reroute the power to the other three maps- however you can only reroute the power once per loop, so you are required to play the same section with the same objective three times. I stopped playing for a month simply because I got bored of the repetition (but I did come back)

The core gameplay of Deathloop combines stealth and gunplay. Unlike other immersive sims, a more violent approach is a valid option. Gunplay is fast and fluid and they feel fantastic to use especially in conjunction with the haptic feedback on the Dualsense. If you want to take a more passive approach, you are not punished for being spotted. It is possible to organically take out the enemies without the entire map being turned high alert.

Deathloop also has Slabs that can be stolen from dead visionaries. These are powers, and some will be extremely familiar if you have played Dishonored. Shift is a short teleport that is used for navigation and stealth, Nexus allows you to link enemies for quick offensive take outs or to clear an area of guards and my favourite is aether, which allows Colt to briefly turn invisible to navigate past crowded areas. These are a great addition and each one feels incredibly useful.

Deathloop also features a multiplayer mode in the form of the ‘Protect the Loop’ mode. Here you play as Juliana, one of the visionaries who randomly enter a map when Colt is near a visionary. When she invades the entrance and exit is automatically locked requiring Colt to go out of his way to enable his escape. When playing as Colt, she is a chaotic element and demands the player think on their feet. She is even more threatening when controlled by a human and there is a huge reward if Colt manages to take her down.

I did find with my time playing as Juliana that she is extremely fun to use and taunt the other player with, but occasionally it is difficult to track down Colt as his objective is unknown. Colt also has a serious advantage due to his ability to retry three times before death, whilst Juliana only has one life.

It is a great idea, and I would love to see this sort of invasion multiplayer in more typically single-player games. If being tracked and assassinated by another player in your single-player game sounds like a living nightmare, it is possible to keep the game in single-player mode where Julianna is controller by a computer AI or have her invasions set to friend only.

Overall, I did really enjoy my time with Deathloop and working through its missions was a joy. There is great level design with some stand out heroes and villains here. The gameplay is flexible and fun to experiment with however some clumsy storytelling, obvious signposting and lack of locations does bring down the experience somewhat. Despite that, Deathloop is still one of the best-designed games in years and I am fully anticipating a sequel which irons out some of these flaws.