LogFAQs > #961477093

47. Deathloop (2021) - PC

This game sure got better over time! My biggest initial frustration with the game was the crashing. I played on PS5 two months after launch and had three hard freezes in the first day after starting the game, two of which lost me a fair amount of progress. I only had one freeze after that, but it's still pretty inexcusable. I lost more time to Deathloop freezes than I did to glitches in Cyberpunk. It also spends a LONG time in tutorial mode. This isn't uncommon for games nowadays, but it feels extra long because of how many options the game feels like it has vs. how limited you are. The game's not that fun before you get any powers either. Even right after getting out of the tutorial mode I wasn't having that much fun with it, since it felt like there was an overwhelming amount of stuff to do and doing it wasn't that much fun due to being powerless.

Once I got more powers and guns it got much more entertaining, thankfully. The invisibility power-up is fantastic and makes stealth feel way more attainable (I got an augment for it that makes it last forever if you're standing still which makes it very useful for hiding). The other powers were cool too, though I didn't use all of them. It feels like you can pick and choose depending on the playstyle you want to go with. Probably the coolest one is Nexus, which connects enemies - you can connect a close enemy to a more distant enemy, stab the close enemy in the back, and have both of them die. It's great. The game's all about assassinating specific targets, and it feels like you have a bunch of options to do so. I ended up killing all of them more than once and usually used different methods when doing so (since it's a time loop game). It never really felt like I was playing the "wrong" way, so that was nice.

I wasn't as into the characters, unfortunately. The setting of the game is cool, and finding out about its background is great (if esoteric - there's a lot of lore I had to look up after finishing). The general arc of the story is cool, with you having to kill all the Visionaries (the main targets) in one day, and figuring out how to get them to the locations where they need to be. But the characters themselves are mostly boring? The main character, Colt, is a decent player avatar, but his motivations mostly feel half-baked. The rival, Julianna, has even more ridiculous motivations, and most of her lines are ridiculous when you think about them. Most of the Visionaries don't get enough development. I wanted to know more about them, so that I could either like or hate them. Outside of Wenjie, who I felt like I got to know relatively well (having a role in the tutorial helped), most of them got barely any dialogue/screentime. Kinda takes the wind outta the game's sails.

I ended up mostly enjoying my experience, but I wish those things that took me out of it weren't there. I liked it a lot more than Dishonored at least.

Next game hint: this doesn't deserve to be its own entry, but I made it one anyway because of when I played it.