Deathloop

[Kayin Amoh]

Curious seeing the reactions here. I loved the writing, but back when I played it on PS5 I was super burned out on it by the end.

 

I will say though, the absurd tone and murder happy theme was delightfully freeing. When I played Dishonored I couldn't play around with most of the skills because they kill people and lock you into a bad ending. In this there's none of that restrictive nonsense, kill anyone you want and they'll be back in the morning. 

 

Colt and Juliana are pretty cool leads. Colt's kinda dumb, but he's fun to listen to. Kinda wish they'd done more with Juliana, and as @Benny says the endings kinda suck with none of them having a satisfying outcome, but I have fond memories of the game as a whole even if I wasn't in love with it.

[Hass]

Played 3-4 hours or this and thought it was great. The artwork and music is great wit hi some nice set piece locations (Charlie's place is beautifully done). 

 

 

[Hodge]

Finished it last week, overall loved it. Well except for the ending maybe that didn't really explain much.

 

Loved how it all came together at the end though and applaud Arkane for allowing you to go guns blazing. As I'm terrible and impatient at stealth these days. Probably put it as my goty and my favourite Arkane title yet.

 

Only thing I struggled with, was the last day when it took me 3 attempts as I kept failing in the evening time when you take the majority of them out and have to start from the beginning again 🥵

 

Wasn't to fussed for Arkane next title Redfall, but after playing Deathloop looking forward to it now.

 

 

 

 

[Benny]

Towards the end I was just cheesing the whole lot with

 

Spoiler

A suppressed SMG and the Nexus Slab with the upgrade that makes it jump onto nearby enemies. Simplified basically everything and made the final loop a doddle, because fuck doing all that again twice.

 

[K]

I think if you charted my level of enjoyment with this game, it'd describe the classic bell curve. I was absolutely enraptured with it about halfway through, with all the different powers and weapons, but by the end of it I just wanted to get it done.

 

I love the idea of repeatedly playing a big, complex area with loads of different loadouts and potential approaches, but the areas in this aren't quite big or varied enough to support that approach. I'm sorry to keep bringing this back to Dishonored, but I would have loved to have seen a level like the disused hospital in Dishonored 2 or Kaldwin's Bridge in the original game - a huge self-contained structure that you can explore and approach from  any angle. The Updaam level in this got closest to that, with the party and Charlie's game-mansion, but even then, they're a bit small and repetitive.

 

Plus, having different time periods for each area is a great idea, but they really didn't differ that much. I was intrigued by the idea of the being able to change events, but it feels underused. You can open a door in one bit, or stop a shop from blowing up, but not much else. I was hoping you'd be able to blow up a dam in an earlier time period, or collapse a building, or save someone's life who goes on to be vitally important later on. I spent a lot of time trying to 

 

Spoiler

save the mask-maker's life in Harriet's area, thinking he'd be able to make me a mask so that I could infiltrate the party undetected. The game heavily hints that you can do that, so it was incredibly disappointing that this doesn't happen. You save him, and you get access to a shop dummy that gives you a flipping trinket or something, which is pointless and hugely underwhelming. In fact that felt like quite a common problem with the game - you'd solve a puzzle or a questline, and you'd end up with a trinket or some residuum or something, which doesn't really satisfy.

 

It's a shame, as the production design, setting, story and humour were all great, and the game is a tonne of fun when you're in that sweet-spot where you're trying out approaches and playstyles, but that well ran dry. I love the idea of the game, and I bet they could make an amazing sequel (it doesn't seem to have done that well, so I sort of doubt this will happen), but I found this a bit limited. I wish it'd been a lot shorter.

[macosx]

@K yeah that really annoyed me as it was messaged hard that that was the way to infiltrate 

Spoiler

The oarty by getting the mask. Would haven cool. I think I eventually just mowed all the stupid Ai down after trying changing the music a few times and dieing.

 

[HarryBizzle]

I had to stop playing this for a bit because of life stuff but am back in and I feel like I finally get it. I've finished quite a few of the visionary leads now and am sort of beginning to put together a way to take them all out, but I guess I might have to decide on one set of things or another.

 

I'm not sure how much I like it, though. It doesn't feel like as good of a game as either Dishonoured. And now it's starting to feel a bit repetitive as I try to unlock each Horizon bunker.

 

 

That HALPS laser is also massively OP. Has way too much ammo and a charging point in every map. Poor Juliana just gets instantly vaporised every time I see her.

[Pob]

I started this last night and am already well into it. I only did the first objective in the first district but already I'm getting Dishonored feeling of hopping around the rooftops of a dense and expertly-designed areas.

 

There are SO many options in the menus though! Anyone got any tips for things I ought to change or turn off? For example, I always turn off the on-screen objective markers in Arkane games, so that's gone. But then there's some kind of dynamic difficulty system. Is that the only way to set the difficulty? I usually plump for 'Hard'.

[HarryBizzle]

I think I’ve basically figured out how to kill everyone but not sure I can actually be bothered to do it, especially given people are saying the ending is disappointing (which is annoying, because Dishonored 1 and 2 both had terrible endings, too).

 

I can appreciate what this game was trying to achieve but I think it’s a colossal failure in comparison to something like Dishonored. The world just isn’t that interesting - it’s so light on detail in comparison to anything you find in Dunwall, and the ways in which you are supposed to kill the Visionaries are all very prescriptive in the sense that you have little to no hope of stumbling across something and putting 2 and 2 together yourself. It doesn’t feel like I figured anything out for myself, really.

[Pob]

I'm really enjoying this. I've done a few loops and infused Shift and Karnesis, and a couple of purple guns. Last night I tried Dorsey Manor for the first time and got that great Dishonored vibe where you encounter a large multi-faceted building ripe for exploring. I didn't really understand the clever way I was supposed to kill Alexis (I killed a couple of rooftop guards then got a lead saying 'enact the plan' and something about coaxing him to reveal himself - I'm sure I'll figure it out) and I inevitably ended up in a giant shootout. I got trapped on a little ledge on a sheer cliff and was flinging goons into the sea using Karneses and shooting them over railings with a massive hand cannon while trying to figure out how I was going to escape with my loot. I failed, and in a final cruel twist Alexis himself fired the fatal shot.

 

I'm not sure how much it's affecting my experience, but I switched the HUD objective marker off before even starting the game, as I always do with Arkane games. Although I'm finding that the mission objectives that pop up infer things that I would never have guessed at from the in-game artefacts, the fact I still have to find the thing / area being referred to does make me feel in control of working things out. I expect if I had a HUD marker to each objective it would feel much more like I was simply being lead around the maps without knowing why. The fact that the maps are dense rather than sprawling, and the speed with which you can move, means zipping around trying stuff out is pretty quick.

 

It does feel a little lightweight compared to Dishonored but I really do like the structure. I think the idea of really learning a place is underutilised in games, which are either based around moving through areas once, or set in open worlds so large you never really get to learn your way around. There's a reason the newer Hitman games call the progression system 'Mastery', as it really does feel as though you are mastering a map. Zooming around somewhere you know like the back of your end can be much more fun than blundering around it for the first time.

[Pob]

Argh, seems I've come to this a few weeks late, as no-one is talking about it any more!

 

I love it. It does a whole load of things that I like from a structural and mechanical point of view, namely:

• does away with the whole linear 30-hour story thing, which I've often thought is a poor match for branching immersive sims. If you want to see where Deus Ex or Dishonored goes if you take a different approach you have to play the whole thing again or make use of tactically-placed saves just to quickly what happens if you do A rather than B. Deathloop takes the Hitman approach of baking repeated attempts into the structure, allowing for much easier experimentation.
• it ditches saves and checkpoints for a lives system that actually makes you take care, meaning you have to roll with things when they go tits up. It's generated a whole load of tense situations and exciting situations. If I've fucked it up, which I have done plenty of times, it's always down to me being too greedy or careless.
• the 'repeat attempts' thing means you get all those good feelings from researching, planning, executing and then adapting on the fly. I love that you can tailor your loadout to your plans and then have to stick with it as there's no mid-level inventory. It forces you think and commit, and if it goes awry you need to scavenge from the battlefield.
• related, to the above, Deathloop solves the Dishonored/Prey issues of how you juggle a whole load of powers, weapons and gadgets without an overloaded radial menu (Prey's item wheel turns into a spiral once you collect enough stuff!). Because you have to chose a loadout for each mission, you don't end up with 30 different items to scroll through. The fact that Deathloop has a multiplayer element means they had to come up with a realtime selection method that doesn't interrupt play, and it's brilliant. I can flick between weapons, powers and pull out a second handgun all smoothly without stopping movement or interrupting the game. Love it.

I saw some people saying they found it very easy. I've found the difficulty to be really well-balanced. I've lost plenty of juicy pickups and fully died a fair few times. Another thing I love is games where both the player and the enemies have a small health pool. You can tear through enemies but it's very easy to get swamped or cut off from the exit and they can chew through your own health bar very quickly. I think the decision to have a rapidly-regenerating power bar, like Death of the Outsider, but pickups for the health bar, is genius. It focuses the player on self-preservation strongly incentivises ability usage, not least so that you can survive.

 

I do agree that the objectives that pop up when you make a discovery often perform logical leaps ahead of the player. Hitman does this better - you get people standing around saying "wow, this lighting rigging is a deathtrap. Let's just hope no-one loosens this nut" which makes it pretty obvious what you're supposed to do. It's also set in the real world. Deathloop's kooky dialogue and weird science could easily obfuscate what the hell the player is supposed to do, so the objective screen does become a crutch. That said, with the objective markers left permanently off I still feel like I'm doing a decent amount of detective work.

 

I'm really addicted to it and can't wait to play it each lunchtime and evening. It's certainly not outstayed its welcome yet.

[Pob]

I half-unexpectedly completed this a couple of nights ago. I did the final piece of the puzzle for Egor, and then realised I was already 50% through the perfect day, so I decided to try to wrap it up on my current loop.

 

None of my carefully-imagined plans for assassinating the others went to plan. I tried to use Fugue + Nexus on Fia and Charlie to get them to kill each other but as soon as I deployed Fugue they went on alert and saw me, so yet again I got locked in, drowned in the flood and respawned outside and waited for them to drown as well. Lame. Dorsey Manor was going relatively well. I did the chocolate beer setup for the first time on Alex, shot him in the head and Shifted out of there before the horde descended. But then disaster struck just after I killed Wenjie - I hard my first hard lockup in my entire time with the game! Luckily I just had to restart the the evening session but this time it was rubbish. Every assassination was an unsatisfying clusterfuck, the nadir being hacking Alexis to death head-on as he stood in the beer cellar, his health bar depleting before mine did. I then did the ending, during which I chose not to shoot my daughter, and it all came to a close pretty abruptly. I was a bit deflated to be honest.

 

HOWEVER - last night my wife decided to go to bed early, and God of War Ragnorok was still a few hours away so I thought fuck it, I'll run though it again, just for fun. It was SO MUCH better. This time I knew exactly what to do and was playing much looser. Instead of creeping around using Aether, fearing for my life, I took Nexus into every level and mixed up stealth and violence for a laugh. This time, I killed Charlie and Fia with a single bullet and avoided the flood for the first time! Then on Dorsey Manor I quietly drop-killed Alexis in the cellar, and Nexus-linked Egor and Wenjie on the roof for a sniper kill. I had a great rooftop battle with Juliana, and killed a bunch of Eternalists on the way out because why not?

 

This time I wasn't even paying attention during the ending. When I was given back control, I simply sprinted towards Juliana, firing my pistol at her head, killing her before I even triggered our conversation. Then I jumped off the edge of the anomaly thing to my doom just to fuck with the game. To my surprise, I was then presented with a much longer and more satisfying ending! It dawned on me that Colt was also a Visionary, and so had to die to break the loop.

 

In a way, I felt that this final loop played out exactly as Arkane intended. They want the player to have fun, mix up the powers, and use their mastery of the environment to whip through it in super-quick time. Then I did a very Arkane thing of trying to break the game by killing a critical character before she even had a chance to speak and then committed suicide to see what happen. My reward, I felt, was the true ending. "You played the game as we intended", Arkane was saying. You did it your way, you had fun, you pushed the boundaries, and in doing so you broke the loop.

[Pob]

Also, can anyone who mainlined this tell me how long the little ditty that accompanies the suicide bombers took to leave your head? Thx

[thesnwmn]

Not sure if this is crazy low or not but this is currently 67% off on Steam. So £16.47.

Obviously on Game Pass so that's a cheaper way to play but for oddballs who want to own something.