Deathloop

[K]

1 hour ago, Onze said:

@K

 

I don't think that's the case. 

 

If you drop an infused weapon and leave the level without it it will only then be available again after the day resets. You'll only get it back in the morning.

 

That's fine - I was just wondering if it was worth ditching your weapons at the end of the day and grabbing new ones so you can sacrifice them.

[Harsin]

I am growing to detest the invasion mechanic in this. Before anyone says it, I've already set the game to single player mode which at least stops you having to go up against 12 year olds carrying the best kit in the game with the reflexes of a mongoose. But the main problem isn’t that they're difficult, she's fairly easy to get rid of, it’s that it’s repetitive (especially then having to hack the antenna each sodding time) and crucially stops you playing the game the way you want and blows your sense of immersion. There have been occasions where I've spent time milling around the level just so I can get rid of her before doing what I want. What’s the point in spending ages taking a sneaky approach if chances are it'll turn into a firefight anyway when she blunders in at a crucial point. I get the impression they want you to mix things up, but frankly I think the shooting is bad with floaty loosey goosey controls (on Xbox) and guns that feel like water pistols. While I am enjoying it, having recently replayed Dishonered 1 and 2 and all DLCs and Prey, this is probably my least favourite of their games. Their next project being a straight up shooter doesn’t fill me with confidence.

[Stanley]

I began to dislike them, but then I realised it’s also an easy way to pick up slabs. With effective fire power she’s pretty easy to put down, again in single player, fuck that online invasion thing. 

[Harsin]

Also, devs if you’re going to insist on putting out a game without regular checkpoints then please don’t make it as crash happy as this one.

[Steve McQueef]

On 27/09/2022 at 13:09, Stanley said:

I began to dislike them, but then I realised it’s also an easy way to pick up slabs. With effective fire power she’s pretty easy to put down, again in single player, fuck that online invasion thing. 

All of the Visionaries are a piece of piss, head-on. 

 

It's the amount of Eternalists that get thrown at you, that can be a bit tricky. 

 

Fia's the only one that requires some precision, as she can blow the fuck out of the entire island if she spots you. 

 

 

[pinholestar]

Hammered this over the past week and completed it last night. I think it's tremendous.

 

Huge fan of everything Arkane do (easily one of my top 5 developers) and although it may not quite reach the heady heights of the Dishonored games at their very best, Deathloop's still a brilliantly designed and distinctively quirky take on their immersive sim formula. The superfly twist on a groovy alternative 60s setting, inhabited by grotesque hedonists and soundtracked with the swinging sounds of that era make for a uniquely stylish combination.

 

I love the giant interconnected puzzle box concept of it all, and discovering and interlocking more and more of the cogs that with each turn of the loop will open up more and more opportunities with each run is very compelling. All the systems are quite overwhelming at first but once you get a grip on how it all works it's great fun choosing how to spec your Colt with slabs, trinkets and weapons before emerging from the subterranean tunnels and causing absolute mayhem across Blackreef.
 

The combat is secondary to the exploration and puzzles but it's still wonderfully chaotic and punchy (if not a little too easy to just annihilate everything in your path) and led to some frantic cat and mouse scrambles on both sides of the multiplayer too. It's very clearly a response to the criticism of Dishonored's propensity to shuttle you down a stealth-only approach that punished you hard for cock-ups and prompted a lot of quick-saving and reloading whenever things went tits up. Here there's no real penalty for going loud when you feel like it and it's all the better for it, enabling you to be liberated and set free to enjoy the full gamut of the combat options at your disposal.  

 

I don't agree that it's just a case of following the objective markers in rote linear fashion at all. If you just want to 'beat' the game and declare it conquered then I guess you could do that, but it's very much a case of getting out of it what you choose to put in, and there's huge scope for experimentation with loadouts and approaches and a shit load of hidden puzzles and off the beaten track mysteries and things to find. Prodding and teasing out all the possibilities buried within each level has been a joy and when I finally closed the loop I had around 40 hours on the clock.

 

In an age when many lament the formulaic, design-by-committee and risk-averse approach of the vast majority of big budget video games, I'll always be thankful for the likes of Arkane who are out there ploughing their own distinctive furrow and creating experiences that stand apart and dare to do something different. Long may they continue because there aren't nearly enough developers like them. For my money they're the crown jewel in Microsoft's first-party stable of recent acquisitions and if the financial security they're now afforded enables them to continue doing what they do better than anyone else then I'm all for it. Really looking forward to Redfall next year.

 

 

[K]

I don't quite understand the complaints about it being linear either. It's no more linear than Dishonored was; if anything, it's less linear, as in Dishonored you went through each level in sequential order, whereas in this you can handle them however you like, even to the extent of doing the afternoon of a level first. The levels are smaller than Dishonored's, but there are so many different ways to do each one. Killing a visionary with the standard machine gun & machete loadout is very different to coming back to do it with a nailgun, shift, and nexus.

 

If anything, this game encourages you to experiment more.

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, pinholestar said:

Hammered this over the past week and completed it last night. I think it's tremendous.

 

Huge fan of everything Arkane do (easily one of my top 5 developers) and although it may not quite reach the heady heights of the Dishonored games at their very best, Deathloop's still a brilliantly designed and distinctively quirky take on their immersive sim formula. The superfly twist on a groovy alternative 60s setting, inhabited by grotesque hedonists and soundtracked with the swinging sounds of that era make for a uniquely stylish combination.

 

I love the giant interconnected puzzle box concept of it all, and discovering and interlocking more and more of the cogs that with each turn of the loop will open up more and more opportunities with each run is very compelling. All the systems are quite overwhelming at first but once you get a grip on how it all works it's great fun choosing how to spec your Colt with slabs, trinkets and weapons before emerging from the subterranean tunnels and causing absolute mayhem across Blackreef. The combat is secondary to the exploration and puzzles but it's still wonderfully chaotic and punchy (if not a little too easy to just annihilate everything in your path) and led to some frantic cat and mouse scrambles on both sides of the multiplayer too. It's very clearly a response to the criticism of Dishonored's propensity to shuttle you down a stealth-only approach that punished you hard for cock-ups and prompted a lot of quick-saving and reloading whenever things went tits up. Here there's no real penalty for going loud when you feel like it and it's all the better for it, enabling you to be liberated and set free to enjoy the full gamut of the combat options at your disposal.  

 

I don't agree that it's just a case of following the objective markers in rote linear fashion at all. If you just want to 'beat' the game and declare it conquered then I guess you could do that, but it's very much a case of getting out of it what you choose to put in, and there's huge scope for experimentation with loadouts and approaches and a shit load of hidden puzzles and off the beaten track mysteries and things to find. Prodding and teasing out all the possibilities buried within each level has been a joy and when I finally closed the loop I had around 40 hours on the clock.

 

In an age when many lament the formulaic, design-by-committee and risk-averse approach of the vast majority of big budget video games, I'll always be thankful for the likes of Arkane who are out there ploughing their own distinctive furrow and creating experiences that stand apart and dare to do something different. Long may they continue because there aren't nearly enough developers like them. For my money they're the crown jewel in Microsoft's first-party stable of recent acquisitions and if the financial security they're now afforded enables them to continue doing what they do better than anyone else then I'm all for it. Really looking forward to Redfall next year.

 

 

Brilliantly put, and I totally agree about Arkane. In that high end AAA space there are so few developers making really original  games. 
 

I love those messages that appear around the levels, one said something like “this is your sandbox” and it really is, it’s so much fun exploiting all the various systems and gadgets and just trying stuff out. 
 

I was a bit wary about their next project being a multiplayer Left4Dead alike, but this being Arkane I can’t imagine it will be as straightforward as that. 

[BitterToad]

2 hours ago, K said:

I don't quite understand the complaints about it being linear either. It's no more linear than Dishonored was; if anything, it's less linear, as in Dishonored you went through each level in sequential order, whereas in this you can handle them however you like, even to the extent of doing the afternoon of a level first. The levels are smaller than Dishonored's, but there are so many different ways to do each one. Killing a visionary with the standard machine gun & machete loadout is very different to coming back to do it with a nailgun, shift, and nexus.

 

If anything, this game encourages you to experiment more.

I think it's the fact that the time loop game they were selling isn't always the one you end up with. Or at least plot wise it's very linear to start with, incredibly free and interesting in the middle then it slowly squeezes down and down into a bottleneck for the climax. I don't necessarily think that's a problem, just a bit of a shame as the game steadily reveals more and more that it isn't the "work out the way you specifically are going to achieve all of these things in one day" game you thought it was. It's much more ticking off the objectives in a Goldeneye level than actually using a lot of the immersive sim elements to do something interesting for the last few hours. 

 

Now that wasn't a huge problem for me once the game clicked and I could see what it was doing. Much like Dishonoured before it there's an absolute boat load of immersive sim fun to be had in Deathloop. I had an awesome stealth build and an awesome loud build and both were fantastic fun to use across the campaign once I'd got everything I needed for them. I just kind of felt that by the time everything had clicked into place and I knew what I was doing across the many stages, I was a few hours too late and already hurtling into the quite linear end game. 

[Strafe]

Stealth is good in this game but usually unnecessary. The enemies are so thick you’re rarely in danger unless you get mobbed.

 

I applaud that they crafted a storyline where everyone is off their tits so they didn’t have to do much work on NPC AI, though. That’s genius.

[K]

The AI really is terrible. I love the in-universe explanation for it, but it's even worse than the AI in Arkane's previous games (which was pretty bad) and well below average for games in general. It's not even bad in the way that stealth games have bad AI (i.e. guards saying "huh? Must have been the wind" after they've stumbled across a dead body and then gone back into a non-alert status), it's just chaotic. Enemies pretty much run around at random.

 

The game is designed around the awful AI, so it's not a big a problem as you would think, but it does make me think what the game would be like if the enemies were as responsive as the ones in, say, the Last of Us II. Or even the Last of Us I, come to think of it.

[pinholestar]

4 minutes ago, DualSense said:

@pinholestar have you played as Juliana, it’s great fun and good use of all your level knowledge. It’s also a great way to explore the levels without the eternals  bothering you,

I have played as Julianna yeah. Tended to do a few runs as her at the start of each session and had a lot of fun. It can be a bit of a lagfest and having only 1 life to Colt’s 3 can seem a little unfair at times, but if you get a good match with someone of similar skill there’s some brilliant cat and mouse mayhem to be had.

[Majora]

Really liked all of Arkane's previous stuff but I'm struggling a bit with this. Combat is easy to the point where I'm not sure where the reward is in trying to go stealthy when it's relatively easy to just gun everyone down and then explore the levels at your leisure. Which isn't to say that there aren't harder areas but stealth feels a bit like a self-enforced difficulty level than anything.

 

When you're making your way through levels for the first time and reach an objective which then tells you to leave the level but you can explore if you want but you'll come back anyway so do whatever the hell you like...Is it still worth exploring? It feels very much like the game is saying it doesn't matter at this stage but I don't want to miss big chunks of stuff.

 

That's if I don't bounce off the game entirely first though. It really just isn't grabbing me which is annoying as I assumed I'd love it.

[pinholestar]

3 hours ago, Majora said:

 

When you're making your way through levels for the first time and reach an objective which then tells you to leave the level but you can explore if you want but you'll come back anyway so do whatever the hell you like...Is it still worth exploring? It feels very much like the game is saying it doesn't matter at this stage but I don't want to miss big chunks of stuff.

 

You’re quite safe to leave a level the first time the game suggests it, as you’ll be returning to each of them multiple times and you can’t miss anything, as such.

 

It’s best to just follow the objectives until you’ve completed one loop and obtained a certain slab/ability, and then you’re free to do as you please.

[spanx]

I wasn’t sure about this after a couple of hours, felt a bit aimless and empty. Of course I was just wandering around the first area for ages wondering why I couldn’t open anything like an idiot. 
 

Having embraced its nature a bit more and just blasting through areas to complete the story objectives…

Spoiler

And just unlocking infusion, which cleared up the glowing stuff mystery

 

…it has finally clicked a bit this morning. Game pass does make it super easy to skip over things if they don’t grab you right away, but I’m glad I gave this a bit of an extended shot. 

[Majora]

1 hour ago, spanx said:

I wasn’t sure about this after a couple of hours, felt a bit aimless and empty. Of course I was just wandering around the first area for ages wondering why I couldn’t open anything like an idiot. 
 

Having embraced its nature a bit more and just blasting through areas to complete the story objectives…

  Reveal hidden contents

And just unlocking infusion, which cleared up the glowing stuff mystery

 

…it has finally clicked a bit this morning. Game pass does make it super easy to skip over things if they don’t grab you right away, but I’m glad I gave this a bit of an extended shot. 

 

I'm in the same position. I was wasting a lot of time wandering around the levels after completing the primary objective on the first loop and it all just felt very empty and like there wasn't much to see or do. Once I realised that the game really does just want you to leave the level after you finish the objective I started enjoying it more.

 

It's very overwhelming at first and I'm still never entirely sure I'm playing it 'right'. I know technically there's no right way to play it I guess, but when you get spotted and it all goes to shit and you end up taking out a whole building because the AI are just running at you like nutters, it feels like I've cheated the game somehow. Unless I do manage to take everyone out stealthily, or the majority at least, it feels vaguely unsatisfying, like I'm exploiting crap AI. 

 

It has started to click though. I'm not 100% sold but I'm getting there.

[Monkeyboy]

I'm early days with this, but I think I decided this is my type of game when...

 

Spoiler

...the message appears saying to jump out of the window, don't worry, you'll be fine. Then when you get rescued by yourself, I got flashbacks to Timesplitters Future Perfect. So I'm in. Can't wait to play more.

 

[spanx]

Fuck fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuckarse fuck…

 

Spoiler

Killed the dude who gives you the shift slab… then fell off a building on my way back to the exit and died. Loop ended. Grrrrrrr

 

[footle]

7 hours ago, Majora said:

 

I'm in the same position. I was wasting a lot of time wandering around the levels after completing the primary objective on the first loop and it all just felt very empty and like there wasn't much to see or do. Once I realised that the game really does just want you to leave the level after you finish the objective I started enjoying it more.

 

It's very overwhelming at first and I'm still never entirely sure I'm playing it 'right'. I know technically there's no right way to play it I guess, but when you get spotted and it all goes to shit and you end up taking out a whole building because the AI are just running at you like nutters, it feels like I've cheated the game somehow. Unless I do manage to take everyone out stealthily, or the majority at least, it feels vaguely unsatisfying, like I'm exploiting crap AI. 

 

It has started to click though. I'm not 100% sold but I'm getting there.

You eventually end up speed-running the levels, at which point the crap ai makes sense. I enjoyed this a lot last year (was recovering from an illness) but it does become quite linear at the end. 

[Hodge]

Been playing this loads since it's hit Gamepass. For me this is Arkane's best game to date!

 

Loved Dishonored series, hated Prey. But Arkane have really nailed it with Deathloop.

 

Like the direction they went with the 4 areas, getting to know them and become very memorable as the loops go on.

 

Love the banter between Cole and Julianna as the game progresses. The visionaries are ace in this, especially the messaging that goes of between them as the game progresses. Aleksis has to be my fav yet.

 

 

Don't get me wrong, there is alot of trial and error in this game, but you end up learning by your mistakes getting to know the game abit better each time round. 

 

Been playing on PC with PS5 pad as it supports haptics natively, along with Series S in another room. Quite surprised how well the Series S port holds up, as I don't really feel like I'm loosing anything switching between the 2. Have to say I love the haptics with the PS5 pad though, with the resistant in the triggers. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Majora]

After giving it a few more hours I've decided to bail unfortunately. I've stuck with it a LOT longer than I would most Gamepass games I wasn't quickly enjoying, mainly because of Arkane's pedigree and the idea that, on paper, this is something I should love.

 

But I don't. Really like the theory but strongly dislike the execution. I don't feel like I'm really figuring anything out for myself, everything is just being handed to me. And honestly, that would be fine if I liked the core aspect of getting from A to B but I don't. I don't find either the stealth or the combat enjoyable. The stealth is unpredictable due to the flaky AI while the combat is floaty, weightless and incredibly chaotic. When each combat encounter has finished I just feel relief that the mayhem is over but little sense of accomplishment.

 

The art direction is very good but even then, I find 2 of the 4 locations quite boring. The only one I really like is Updaam. I appreciate the effort going into making 4 different versions of each location but I don't find most of them interesting.

 

The tipping point for me has been taking out several visionaries and feeling nothing. No sense that I really instigated anything myself or achieved much personally.

 

I'm glad Arkane are around, that they're still taking risks and that other people are enjoying it but for me it's a significant step down from Prey and Dishonored.

[macosx]

When you first start playing this is seems immensively complex and free form, but after a few hours you release that every step you need to take to progress is a just case of checking a menu and following the checkboxes and matching to the time of day all the way to the finale.
I’d agree that the visionaries are pretty lacklustre and offer less challenge that the dumb Ai goons, which are only a problem by sheer weight of numbers. The

Spoiler

party

level is pretty egregious for this.

 

By the end it just felt a by the numbers chore rather than a huge unravelling a wool ball of a time loop mystery. Agreed not up there with Prey and Dishonoured the art direction carried a lot of this game.

[K]

I'm enjoying this a lot, but the stupid AI is spoiling it a bit. It has that Dishonored quality, where you sometimes complete an objective by accident, without realising what you were supposed to do. Like, last night I killed Aleksis for the first time without really understanding what was supposed to happen. I assumed taking him on would be a kind of sniper battle, but he never seemed to fire a shot. I used the shift power to close the distance, ran round the back of his bunker, and found him crouched facing the wall with his back to me. So I just killed him with my machete.

 

I'm sure it'll be more interesting if I do it again, but it was pretty anticlimactic. The other visionary fights have been a bit underwhelming too, given that they just mill around like bots in a multiplayer game. They aren't terribly interesting to fight, as their behaviour is pretty random. If ever there was a game that needed enemies to react to you in the same way they did in Goldeneye, it's this.

[Harsin]

I couldn’t even tell you what most of the Visionaries even looked like until I watched the new ending they added in a recent patch on YouTube (I got one of the other endings in my game rather than what is obviously meant to be the ‘proper' one).

[K]

Yeah, that's another thing. The character design is really imaginative, but you never really see it because the other characters skitter about unpredictably and disappear when they die.

[Don Wiskerando]

2 hours ago, K said:

I'm enjoying this a lot, but the stupid AI is spoiling it a bit. It has that Dishonored quality, where you sometimes complete an objective by accident, without realising what you were supposed to do. Like, last night I killed Aleksis for the first time without really understanding what was supposed to happen. I assumed taking him on would be a kind of sniper battle, but he never seemed to fire a shot. I used the shift power to close the distance, ran round the back of his bunker, and found him crouched facing the wall with his back to me. So I just killed him with my machete.

 

I'm sure it'll be more interesting if I do it again, but it was pretty anticlimactic. The other visionary fights have been a bit underwhelming too, given that they just mill around like bots in a multiplayer game. They aren't terribly interesting to fight, as their behaviour is pretty random. If ever there was a game that needed enemies to react to you in the same way they did in Goldeneye, it's this.

I've finished the game and still do not know what you are referring to here.

 

Spoiler for my Aleksis fight.

Spoiler

I turned off the valve to his favourite chocolate beer and then shot him in the back of the head when he came to the cellar to investigate.

 

[K]

Aaah, my fault - I meant Egor, rather than Aleksis.

[Benny]

I just started trying to play this on PC, but it's an unstable mess apparently, hard crashing to desktop just when changing some video options. The spoonfeeding intro section with constant pop-ups is extremely boring as well so I'm not really feeling it having to repeat it with this constant crashing.

[spanx]

@Benny I’ve been playing a few days and the only issue I had was one episode where it started stuttering horribly and needed to be restarted. Seems fine otherwise. 

[Anne Summers]

Yeah, playing this on PC here too, been playing for a few days and no crashes for me.