DEATHLOOP

Game doesnt really work in its current state, optimized poorly and crashes regularly. The multiplayer is a mess with the peer to peer system and locks the character outfit customization behind playing it.

The online doesn't work anymore, so there's no way to get all the achievements.

当时看了铺天盖地的媒体高赞宣传才入坑的，完了一会儿就玩不下去了，无聊至极。现在才反应过来这是欧美媒体搞多元化政治正确的早期作品。以现在的经验不会再上这种当了，看封面搞两个有色人种就知道又是个政治正确大便。

в семье не без уродов

I really really wanted to like this game. Several genuine attempts/restarts since it came out in 2021. Ultimately I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Pros -Interesting soundtrack with some fun 60s spy fiction music and some great vocal tracks. -Rich artstyle that employs a lot of color and fine detail while remaining stylized. -Sound design is stellar. Your movement steps, gunshots, the ambient dialogue when exploring all hit a high mark of quality. -Voice acting ranges from good (the visionaries) to stellar (colt and julianna). -The multiplayer is an interesting idea Cons -Genuinely there is only 1 enemy type that is a complete push over. Even on "max" loop stress, 99% of encounters are solved with a headshot from a silenced smg/nailgun -Powers are underwhelming. Even those they bring from Dishonored don't feel that good. -Story goes off the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rails and felt too aimless for me to even want to continue. -Enemy AI is piss poor. Easily funneled into hallways/doorways for easy handling. -You become overpowered extremely quick, meaning that repeating the loop to get more story/find the "golden loop" is just an exercise in tedium. -Not enough variations between times of day in a particular level to really give the randomness a good feeling. I really wanted to like this game. I think that Arkane's other work on the dishonored and prey games is fantastic. The audio visual design and premise of this game feels top notch, but the actual gameplay and mission structure underneath is extremely gamey. I could not really immerse myself once I started speeding through levels headshotting every npc to just read a note/listen to a voice recording then run back and go the next level. I don't know what critics were smoking in 2021.

I have been a major fan of Dishonored series and my playstyle was 100% stealth, non-kill, pure order runs. I loved it. The AI was decent and the hook was imminent. Here? Not so much. You start barebones and the rpg elements are just here to overcomplicate things. Loadouts, 3 retries per level and then soft game over, AI super stupid and "tiered" weapons with different rarity feel like a huge mashup of borderlands, bioshock, dishonored with some unique elements sparkled over. Don't get me wrong, I love all the aforementioned games but each one of them were UNIQUE and distinctive. Deathloop tries very hard to find that uniqueness but honestly it tries so many things at the same time that it feels extremely shallow. Melee is average, shooting again average, level design is chaotic and even if it has way too much obstacles for cover, you can’t vault in or something. Just lean left/right and that’s it. The enemies are super basic (until up to my point) with the same weapons (SMG,rifle,melee) and the level goes as follows. You move, you find 3-4 guards doing things, you defeat them, go for the next checkpoint with guards, defeat them, find a clue, next checkpoint yada yada, you finished the level. The cycle continues. The audio/visuals are beautiful and the aesthetics of the game are truly unique. The story is way too overcomplicated for my taste on this game genre (but that’s opinion) Denuvo is denuvo and even my 4070ti takes some FPS drops for no apparent reason. Regarding bugs, I have been stuck twice in the menu during a mission to pause and then I couldn’t unpause because why not and that had me to replay the whole level as I force closed the game. Overall, I appreciate the effort of this game and I tried it twice but the game just couldn’t click for me. If you are like me, either try it on gamepass or pass it entirely.

Latest update removed DLSS and DLAA. Absolute scenes by Bethesda

You won't see anything new in this review Because despite a conceptually interesting timeloop component, you won't see anything new in this game. It just doesn't have it, I'm not sure how else to explain it. Like it feels like "bioshock but more generic, without the storytelling, and the abilities are less interesting and setting less iconic". I don't hate it at all, but games these days have to excel to be worth your notice, and deathloop is competent, but is missing the special sauce that makes me want to play more.

♥♥♥♥ Denuvo, and ♥♥♥♥ the publisher for forcing it on.

I've liked or loved previous Arkane games like [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/205100/Dishonored/]Dishonored[/url] and [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/480490/Prey/]Prey[/url], and I'm a sucker for the time loop genre, but Deathloop was something of a disappointment. It's not an atrocious game or anything, but it's also not good enough to be worth playing, given all the other superior entertainment out there and Deathloop's not insignificant playtime (30h for me). Briefly, how this game works is that you visit one of four areas at one of four times of day (morning, noon, afternoon, evening) on the repeating First Day, try to accumulate knowledge and the few kinds of gear that persist between loops, and you're reset early if you die thrice in a single map and time of day. The immediate objectives are to find out how the loop works and to kill individual visionary bosses; whereas to escape the loop, you need to do particular things in all four maps on a single looping day. Meanwhile you're being hunted by Julianna, an either AI-controlled or (unless you opt out) multiplayer-controlled looping antagonist who can show up any time a visionary is on a map. There's much to enjoy in the basic gameplay loop: the confusion of being thrown right in the middle of such a weird setting; the various setpieces; gaining knowledge and making use of it to make future loops easier; etc. Julianna's hunt also adds some exciting tension to runs. However, the design has a bunch of flaws that ultimately make the game fall far short of its potential. For instance: [list][*]Disorientation: there are collectable in-game maps for each of the four areas, but nothing like a map overlay or compass or current-position marker on the map. As a result, it took me forever to gain some familiarity with the maps, and I was constantly disoriented. That seemed like a huge missed opportunity. [*]Missable collectables: Dishonored had an issue where the "best" way to play the game, at least for completionists like me, was to constantly use the Dark Vision ability, an ability which tints the game in a garish orange and which highlights all interactable objects and enemies, even through walls. Deathloop has no such mode but nevertheless features collectables that can be super easy to miss among all the samey non-interactables. I definitely missed stuff because of that. [*]Reused art assets: related to the two issues above, all AAA games have some form of the problem where art assets are so expensive to make that they need to be reused over and over. As a result, many interiors here are filled with the same kinds of objects. This is not only not particularly pretty, but also causes genuine gameplay problems with navigation and with one's eyes glazing over and thus missing collectables. In comparison, I have no such problems when navigating byzantine metroidvania maps in pretty 2D games like [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/367520/Hollow_Knight/]Hollow Knight[/url] or [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1030300/Hollow_Knight_Silksong/]Silksong[/url]. [*]Unplayably laggy multiplayer: the asymmetric multiplayer is a genuinely interesting and unique concept that gets utterly ruined by the technical implementation: namely, multiplayer is peer-to-peer, Colt always hosts and thus never experiences any lag, while Julietta can be all but unplayable if the connection is bad enough. Like, the few times I tried to play her, I was unable to leave my spawning area because rubberbanding was so bad that any time I moved, I was immediately rubberbanded back to my previous position. [*]Underwhelming ending: it's not terrible, but in terms of gameplay, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/865670/Prey__Mooncrash/]Prey: Mooncrash[/url] (also by Arkane, albeit Arkane Austin) had a better take on a final, super-tense mission to escape the loop. Here it's not all that interesting. And in terms of narrative, all the game leads up to there being a difficult choice of whether to break the loop, or this coming at a huge cost or something, and then the game somehow doesn't really justify that buildup. It's genuinely weird. [/list] Overall verdict: Not recommended.