Late To The Party: Deathloop

Deathloop came from the makers of Prey and Dishonored, both games I liked quite a bit. So I had a some high expectations for this one!

It was also well reviewed on launch so I had some high hopes!

Those hopes were...sort of met? 

There was a lot that was very entertaining about Deathloop. They did a good job of making the central concept-the Groundhog Day 'play the same thing over and over'- pretty compelling and changing up the areas just a little bit, depending on when you visit. 

There was also a great deal of freedom involving how one might approach play, with powers that accent melee builds or ones that would help with long distance or sneaking. 

I really liked the protagonist, too: Cole is a fun badass to listen to and hear his interactions. All the characters were well written, actually and I got an excellent sense of the place I was gaming in.

However. Because there are some howevers here. 

First, this game did the thing were you could die in a locked room and then just not get back into that room until the game reset. Which is a problem because as with many modern games, if I die in a spot, all my currency stays with the body. This feels cheap and it happened more than once. If I can't get my treasure back because I screwed up that's fine but when the game locks me out of it, that's not fine. 

Second, there didn't seem to be a lot of reward for changing things up or exploring. For example, once I found out that as part of winning the game it was always best to go to the area of Karl's Bay first, that's just what I always did. I wasn't rewarded for exploring another area, unless it was part of a quest. Since areas change depending on the time of day you visit-certain doors are only open at certain times of day-there were avenues of Deathloop that I never looked into. I never ventured into Karl's Bay at night.

Why should I? There was no piece of candy for me to acquire. 

Third; sometimes brute attrition > puzzle solving. One boss in particular had a tell I was supposed to use to pull them from a crowd at a party. 

Why do that? Just murder everyone. There's no penalty for just murdering all the people. Eventually, the alert will trigger telling me I got the right character and I can skip out. 

Fourth, the ending. So stop here if you don't want spoilers for it. 

Cole wants to break the loop. He wants a life again, one that has meaning and matters. 

Julianna wants the loop to continue. She...is looking to save something? I actually don't know why she wants to protect the loop, beyond wanting to do that. Cole is just the asshole who is fucking up her day-a day she would happily return to, if he'd quit breaking things. 

These positions are constant: Cole doesn't have any self doubt about what he's doing. Julianna doesn't have any sympathy for him. It's hinted at that the world outside has a problem but we're never shown anything that suggests this is the case. 

When the final confrontation comes to Cole and Julianna, the player suddenly gets to make a choice about how the end will play out-will Cole continue on the path he's been at all game or not? Except that moment wasn't clear to me-it came right after a cutscene where I did not have control and without the HUD that suggests that I have agency. 

So I didn't make a choice and the moment to do so passed, the game accepting my "input". 

But that wasn't what I wanted! It certainly didn't seem to be what Cole wanted. Which means I got an ending I didn't ask for. 

That sucked. 

Which was a big letdown, because a great deal of what I was doing was fun. 

So while I enjoyed Deathloop, I also came away from the game feeling disappointed in it.