A review of the roguelike game Deathloop
This game is a representative of the difficult and not-so-often-used immersive sim game genre. With it, the Arx Fatalis studio literally burst into the relevant segment of the game market. Moreover, the developers’ “first pancake” turned out to be not a bad one, but, without exaggeration, almost a masterpiece. The game abounds in various innovative and simply interesting solutions.
Storyline
The game’s plot is briefly as follows. A man named Colt wakes up, realizing he has a terrible hangover accompanied by complete amnesia. He finds himself on the coast of the fictional island of Black Reef. It soon transpires that the island is an anomalous place.
All people staying there get caught in a time loop: they live the same day over and over again and so on from year to year. The task of the protagonist is to break this loop. And he must not only find a way to do it, but also not to be killed by the so-called “ideologists”, that is – permanently living on the island people, who are quite happy with a temporary anomaly as an opportunity to do anything and do not bear responsibility for it.
The leader of the “ideologues”, Julianna, is a very, very mean lady, from whom the protagonist has to expect a lot of very unpleasant moments.
The advantages of Deathloop
A perfectly written scenario is one of the advantages of this game. The authors skillfully and talentedly show how and why a world of irresponsible, eternal pleasure can turn into a nightmarish dystopia.
The playing time of each day is divided into morning, noon, lunch and evening. For each day the main character is given 4 sorties, after which the day is restarted. But during each of the next twenty-four hours the skills and resources gained by the hero are saved.
The Deathloop co-op component
One of the positive moments of the game is that the antagonists are not particularly dangerous. After all, according to the scenario, these are the scientists who discovered the time loop. They don’t have much cunning or any scary fighting skills. With the exception of Julianne. She’s a particularly dangerous adversary who will be a constant nuisance to the protagonist.
And as Deathloop game is multiplayer one, not only the AI can play as Julianna, but also the second human-player. Although we should keep in mind that, apparently, not wanting to overshadow the main character, the developers didn’t invent Julianna a full-fledged storyline, and she is no more than a minor character, but a very sinister one.
Location design and combat mechanics.
The game’s undeniable merits should include excellent visuals and praiseworthy level design. The game space is so well designed that the details are perceived equally realistic regardless of the time of day or night.
The gameplay gives the player maximum freedom of action. In particular, enemies can be eliminated quietly, or you can take a shotgun and arrange a grand tram-ta-ra-rama. There is also a place for magic in the game. You can use it to give your character the ability to literally “knock down” enemies with one hand.
