I might have most of the games developed by Arkane: The studio behind the Dishonored series. Specifically, the action-RPG Arx Fatalis, the reboot of the Prey series, and most recently, Deathloop. The newest addition to the French portion of the studio’s catalog is a retro-futuristic disfigured 70s art-deco sci-fi title that, on the surface, would be my ideal game. Typically 7 out of 10 games that explore an interesting idea with a hint of ambition are my comfort spot: The Just Cause series, Dying Light, the later two Watch_Dogs games, Dishonored, Saints Row (2022), Days Gone, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Black, Killzone: Shadowfall, and so on.

Yet, despite the stylization working overtime to please me, Deathloop falls out of the orange portal and smacks the pavement in that thud only a lack of a blue portal will give you. This is to say, at a speed at which you’ll never sell much ice cream. It is far from a bad game, but Deathloop feels like the first draft of an idea of a game; a Chibnall special, if you will. Asynchronous multiplayer aside, four (main) levels with four time-frames and a lack of urgency results in a world that feels flat. As a single-player exclusive kind of player, that’s not very fun.

At the end of each level, and in fact, during most levels, I ask myself why I’m not just playing Dishonored instead. The world is deeper, there are more levels, and I don’t feel as if I’m being lied to in an effort to shout about a USP that isn’t very unique or special. As the name implies, there is a loop that means death isn’t all that important, a bit like a Rogue-like game. Though unlike a Rogue-like or any game that would make death something at least of a minor nuisance, Deathloop eschews sensible ideas in favor of catering to the multiplayer audience alone.

The anti-Dark Souls, that’s what I think it is that Arkane Lyon aimed for. It is a game with no difficulty settings, but I wish it did, at least for those of us who hate people and want to play more of Arkane’s games. Death is simple for you but it is also very easy to kill everyone else, making the challenge of getting around the levels (all four of them) about as existent as a former prime minister’s chances of lasting 50 days in office. Once you kill Corvo and pinch his tattoo and powers, you can tell your parents that yes, you’ve won the game.

With AI about as observant as a champion racehorse at the grand national, cataclysmic falls, leaps, and yes, even massive explosions like the guts of their friends on the other end of my shotgun don’t alert the Eternalists unless they are three feet away. Even then, it is a question mark if the many goons you’ll mow down by the hundreds are questioning the smashed bottle or gunshot you made or what they actually hit. It is like playing a one-on-one deathmatch with someone who’s got a field of view of about 3 and their headphones just broke.

The game constantly drones on about the death of Colt (your character) and how much enemies enjoy being stuck in an endless loop of standing about banging on about the death of Colt. The enemy and a majority of the plot feel like it has less intelligence than a Doctor Who villain, a really stupid one at that. That isn’t to degrade Ozioma Akagha or Jason E Kelley, as their chatter voiceover is probably the best part of Deathloop. It is just the conceit in the lack of autonomy and intelligence throughout the story and game world.

In terms of design, Deathloop isn’t a game about exploration, solving a puzzle, action, or anything aside from the story of Julianna and Colt. You can have a look around the levels, but there is nothing really there to expand on the world and pull you deeper into it. You explore to find ammo and health, and both are everywhere.

Since death is straightforward on both ends, there is nothing particularly visceral or cathartic to it, making it little more than something you are forced to interact with but don’t really care for. So if you have the right weapon, with the objective marker always on screen and directing you, you can B-line directly to the goal and be done in 10 minutes.

Stealth isn’t the purpose here (unless it is forced). You are supposed to be wielding a shotgun, running and sliding in, and placing someone’s lower jaw somewhere around their frontal lobe at high speed. Deathloop is designed to be an arena shooter for a one-on-one deathmatch that just doesn’t happen when you are playing single-player and offline.

Right about now someone is saying, “well why don’t you play online?” my question to you is, why is there a single-player element at all then? If the game isn’t balanced for that and there are no difficulty options to allow for rebalancing, why use all the stealth pedigree?

You have two main abilities from the Dishonored franchise, this time called Shift and Nexus, or Blink and Domino in the tale of Corvo and Emily. There are others, but Aether makes you invisible in a game where you can slap Jim Carrey around the ears in his green mask until Alan Cumming shows up as Loki, rendering it useless.

Havoc increases your damage in a world where a shotgun has the same redesign plans as America had on Nagasaki. Then your final base power is Karnesis, once again useless as your kick ability is as destructive as Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta. Meanwhile, the Goldenloop DLC slab Fugue deafens and blinds enemies more than they already are.

This is what I mean when I say Dishonored is always on my mind. This game evokes the game that sometimes wasn’t treated quite as well as it should have been. Sure, in comparison to Garrett sounding like he’d eaten his morning bag of gravel the world of Dishonored was as easy and streamlined as Call of Duty campaigns to its obvious inspirations, but it was a solid game. 

Deathloop is taking all those elements of the Dishonored series down to pinching half the gameplay and assets. At the same time, it wants to be something completely different from that concept from the ground up. It would be like taking the Grand Theft Auto engine and creating a table tennis game, but expecting it to be played similarly.

The truth is, I don’t know if the AI is being stupid in specific moments because it is a joke or if they are so poorly coded that they’ll walk off rooftops on their own. That’s a genuine moment that I continue to question many hours later. Moreover, if I hear that happy-clappy Far Cry 5  religious cult “you complete me” song one more time, I’ll rip the hands off of the arms of the writer and slap them silly. There is a lot to Deathloop that is plainly frustrating, and though they are flys to an elephant in comparison to what’s good, they stand out.

Colt and Julianna are the stars of this world, not just in a literal leading role sense but in that they make the world bearable. She’s over the top in all the fun ways that make her a villain I can’t wait to hear more from, while Colt is similarly disinterested in spending time with these enlisted goons as I am.

Unlike Tolkien’s tower of terror in the shade of Mordor, the otherwise nameless goons are lacking something interesting. The Orcs of lands between wars felt interesting because they’d talk about their tax returns before I cut them up. If it isn’t Julianna talking, it is something superficial about my endless murder.

The core loop revolves around magical revolvers that need “residuum” to keep you going between loops while figuring out who to kill and in which order. It seems like there would have been an effective challenge in place here. No, the biggest challenge is talking about residuum without having someone stop you to ask how that is spelled. The truth is, your magic bucks would be more effective if they meant something of a curve but just aren’t, especially when you can pick up endgame rifles that would make a howitzer feel inferior and ammo is spread like a stripper’s legs.

After the first boss, I became the man with a golden silenced sniper-pistol delivered from Russia with love, with near-infinite range and headshots were almost a guarantee. In the very next level, I found a similarly powerful pepper mill rifle that makes everyone on the noisy end about as thick as tracing paper. If the weapons weren’t randomized this much and you didn’t have end-level weapons on day 2 of your loops, there would have been more challenge to your quest to kill the gang of super-nerds. Yet you can find the easiest routes in just a few short hours.

The rest of your time is suffering the loops to finally figure out the precise order in which your day is supposed to go to kill the super gang. You see, that’s the point of Deathloop, to break the cycle. In the end, it feels like we’re spinning our wheels here. The energy goes once you’ve gotten your link and blink powers matched with whatever weapons drop that break any sense of challenge. The immersive stealth sim element goes out the window like many of these goons go off cliffs when I hit V the second you realize a shotgun has an effective spread similar to that of the plague.

What Deathloop needs to do is go along the road of yellow bricks, find the man behind the curtain, and ask him for some brains. The heart is there, the concept of this beautiful and strange twist on A Clockwork Orange stylized world is absolutely there, the character is there, it is just the rest of it that is trying to shout about how new and fantastic it is after we’ve seen Dishonored, The Outer Wilds, and even Far Cry 3 if you want to stretch it to villains that are well characterized. Deathloop ultimately falls through the orange portal to another time, but there is no telling if it went through the blue one and continues to go on or if it smacked the ground at high speed.

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Deathloop

$59.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• A beautiful and twisted world of retro-futurism.
• The character writing throughout.

Cons

• A complete lack of challenge for single-player players.
• AI as smart as the latest hot new artist.
• A lot to cater for the multiplayer players to the discredit of solo players.