Deathloop review: A groundhog day you’ll love being stuck in
By Jordan Middler // Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ The Social contributor // 13 September 2021
Deathloop is a game about doing the same thing over and over again. That may sound on the surface like something that would get old, but through a blend of genius storytelling, brilliant world design and a cast of villains you’ll fall in love with, Deathloop manages to keep a world you’re stuck revisiting, fresh.
Deathloop review
A groundhog day you’ll love being stuck in. Jordan Middler reviews the latest from Arkane.
The game begins with the player, Colt waking up on a beach with little memory of his past, or why he’s there. He’s soon antagonised by a voice he recognises, but is unsure why. This is Julianna, another inhabitant of Blackreef, and someone it’s clear you have a history with. However, just what that history is, is up to you to find out.
The island of Blackreef is stuck in a perpetual loop, every time Colt dies, or a day ends, he’ll wake up back on the beach. That means you only have four times of the day, morning, noon, afternoon and evening to work out how to break the loop and move on with your life.
Key to breaking this loop is killing the visionaries. A series of assassination targets that occupy the various districts of Blackreef. These include a deluded artist with a temper issue, a tech-mad inventor that’s turned his castle into a deadly game show, and a cult leader who loves nothing more than watching her followers dunk themselves in a pit of noxious gas. These visionaries are the real highlight of the game. In order to take them out you first have to investigate them, find out their motivations, where they’ll be at a certain time, and when it’s best to stick a bullet through their head.
It’s here where Deathloop shows shades of the modern Hitman games. You’re presented with options as to how to take the visionaries out, but unfortunately in reality the “proper” way of doing things turns out to be the only way, as breaking the loop requires you to end the loudmouths in a very specific order. This is fine and adds to the feeling that you’re pulling off an epic heist, but I wished that the illusion of creativity and variety in the kills presented in the early game was a viable option for finishing it.
The only area in which I feel Deathloop lets itself down is the gunplay. While the game is a first-person action title and you’ll spend plenty of your time shooting things, you’ll soon notice that guns aren’t quite as precise as you’d like. This led me to focus much more on the various powers, such as cloaking myself, warping around the world, or chucking people off the sides of cliffs like I’m Darth Vader. Towards the end of the game, if you complete the various ‘arsenal leads’ you’ll find guns that make the process of blowing people to bits much more fun, but even then, I didn’t feel like the shooting held up to the rest of the game.
Deathloop is a fantastic game full of style, humour and intrigue. Blackreef is one of the developer Arkane’s best worlds so far, and the visionaries make for some of the best villains in recent games. While I wish the shooting was better and that the ending had a bit more room to breathe, it’s a game I keep thinking about, and a loop I keep revisiting over, and over, and over and over again.
