Deathloop

You know how you can tell Deathloop was very much a game of the late twenty-tens? Its rogue-like influences ooze out of the game. Live-die-repeat as the primary gameplay mechanic was still pretty hot around the time of Deathloops creation. But by the time Deathloop came out, it had fizzled out. That could explain it underperforming sales wise. Or maybe the premise of having to do the same thing, over and over again, to beat the game wasn’t easily marketed enough to hit it off with the average gamer – you know, the kind that actually buys brand new 60€ games, and don’t just play the same 5€ indie rogue-lite over and over. Either way, it’s been a few years since Deathloop came and went, and while I was a little late to the party, Deathloop managed to make some kind of impression on me. I’m just not sure what that is.

The core feature of Deathloop – the time-loop mechanic – is either gonna make or break the game for players. If you’re into it, you’re into it, if you don’t like it, there’s just no getting around it. There are gamers who absolutely hate having to do the same thing twice, so much so that some players swear off entire genres because they have you walking down the same corridor more than once (see any metroidvania-like). And you know what, for them, having to play Deathloop would be some kind of purgatory. I can see that.

For me, however, I was willing to take a stab at it. I’m the type of smooth-brained moron who will play the same pointless game over and over anyway, so why not experience something different in the process? And being such a big dope-fiend fan of Dishonored and Prey, also from the Deathloop studio, it just seemed like such an obvious choice. And boy am I glad I went for it. Sort of.

Being put in the shoes of Colt (our hero), this guy who lives out the same day over and over, and also happens to have amnesia, and for some reason a disposition for murdering motherfuggers, is downright confusing as hell in the beginning. I imagine it’s not too different from how Colt himself feels. And maybe that’s the point. Slowly you figure out what’s going on. You gotta break the loop by killing everybody. Very neat. Unfortunately for you, the people you gotta murder are all located at different places, and traversing between these places progresses time – time which you both have very little and an infinite amount of. So it all comes down to you having to coordinate for these idiots to somehow all die within a day.

That’s such a fun task. In theory. If only it was as liberating as it sounds like it should be. What it comes down to is just following a map marker to various points over and over until you’ve aligned everything in your favor. It’s not too dissimilar from Dishonored to be honest. Another game (or game series) that parades around its versatility in mission completion, when in reality it’s just a matter of following the arrow on the compass. If you can follow instructions that are pointed out to you with giant arrows, you can beat Deathloop.

And so I did. And it was perfectly OK. I neither liked nor disliked Deathloop. It’s not Dishonored, which I adore in spite of its flaws, because it has so many other things going for it that make up for the dumb. No, Deathloop is just fine. Everything is just fine. Visually it’s fine. It’s got an aesthetic it lays into pretty hard, but it’s honestly pretty unremarkable. Characters are memorable, but not interesting. I mostly just remember them because I had to fight them so, so, so many times. Whatever world-building it has going on is largely hidden away through optional reading, which just doesn’t leave much of an impact. And the story is fine. It’s got enough juice to be interesting, but doesn’t really sell itself very well, and by the end, I felt like I gave 0 shits about what was going down.

I was quite literally just going through the motions. Go to place A, kill character A. Go to place B, kill character B. Et cetera. Et cetera. Moving as quickly as I could through the levels to get it over with, not even enjoying the use of my magical powers, my giant arsenal, and all that jazz. Oh, did I not mention the magical powers? Yeah. If you’re familiar with Dishonored, you know what you’re in for – if you aren’t, think teleportation, damage absorption, double jumping.

So to summarize it all, Deathloop had potential. So much potential. It could’ve been Dishonored 3: Now with time travel. But instead it’s this other thing that tries to be something larger than it ends up being. While it no doubt provided me with enough moments of enjoyment that I feel confident enough to recommend this to people who are interested, I don’t think I’ll ever try to sell it to someone who is on the fence, or has never even heard of it. Honestly, I’m glad to have played Deathloop, but I’m even more glad I broke out of this loop, if you know what I’m saying.