Deathloop

[Whiskey_chaser]

I got given this for free (yay - deluxe edition) and have put a couple of hours in so far. Where to start?

Initial impressions - it's cool as fuck. Your character - Colt - wakes up on a beach with no idea who he is and a very angry female antagonising him from the offset. Your character says 'mutherfucker' a lot. It seems to balance the fine line between being edgy and well written quite well. Overall feeling is it reminds me a hell of a lot of Bioshock. The island feels very much like a super stylised James Bond set from the 70s, and graphically it looks a lot better than it ever came across on the presentations I saw.

The game is still opening up a lot of it's mechanics but it seems pretty standard Arcane fare so far. The twist is the whole time loop thing. You're essentially re-living the same 24 hours of the day throughout four different areas. Each area isn't particularly big, but it's very intricately designed and is incredibly open. Arcane have literally given you the keys to do approach things however you want. I found about five different routes through the first objective.

You're given a 'slab' (special abilities that you customise for your load-out at the start of an objective) that essentially gives you three revives before your kicked out of the current objective and have to start again, minus the equipment and discoveries you made on the way. So far the objectives have been fairly quick, taking between five and thirty minutes to complete so it isn't particularly a roguelike (unless the game suddenly reveals a whole new mechanic). You're just trying to do the objective, explore a bit then get back to the exit with whatever you've managed to unlock. 

The neat thing is different things happen at different times of the day in each area, the clues of which you can discover from terminals, or overhearing in conversation. A good example is early on there's a locked gate that someone leaves open by accident later on, unlocking a whole new path through the level.

There also seems to be a souls like PvP option that unlocks when you hit a certain point, where you can play as the female assassin, trying to kill other Cole players.

So, as said, early days, but the story and premise seem really intriguing so far. The music i've heard has been excellent and it's nice to play a game that utilises the haptic feedback/triggers so well.

I think it's safe to say, that if you've ever enjoyed Arcane's previous output and/or Bioshock, you'll have a great time with this.

[Whiskey_chaser]

So - a bit more time with this and the whole concept has opened up a bit more. If you die, you lose all the weapons you've gained and are back at the beach at the start of it all. But there's a way to lock your slabs, trinkets and weapons so you start with them on the beach. You're essentially playing through the same 24 hours and can visit any of the four areas at each of the four times of the day.  Different leads have to be followed up at certain times, for instance, there was a pretty cool encounter at a lab that only happened in the afternoon.

This is basically Groundhog Day, the game. You're playing through the same day over and over, just finding out things that help you progress further and further through the game and unlocking new abilities along the way. I'm really digging the story as well. Cole is a great main protagonist and the back and forth he has with Julianne and the rest of the islanders is brilliant. 

[Maf]

1 minute ago, Whiskey_chaser said:

This is basically Groundhog Day, the game. You're playing through the same day over and over, just finding out things that help you progress further and further through the game and unlocking new abilities along the way

 

This is why it sounded like Majora's Mask to me. Where you lose money, consumables and things like that but you keep key items/weapons. Is this the same or the opposite? 

 

[Whiskey_chaser]

13 minutes ago, Maf said:

 

This is why it sounded like Majora's Mask to me. Where you lose money, consumables and things like that but you keep key items/weapons. Is this the same or the opposite? 

 

Confession - i've never played Majora's Mask. Basically, the way you keep hold of weapons is a process called 'infusing' - you pay for the process by collecting something called 'Residium' that you get from dead enemies and glitches in the world. If you die you lose it, but if you die using one of your two 'reprives' (the extra lives granted by a slab power) you can go back to the spot where you were killed and collect it again, a la Dark Souls.
 

[Maf]

Hmm not really like MM at all in the items/weapons department. Not sure then. Sounds interesting. I ordered my copy yesterday so hopefully be here this week. 

[one-armed dwarf]

One problem I've heard with PC with the invasion mechanic is the invader can be M&K, so if you're trying to live that comfy dualsense life (cause the PC version has dualsense features, interestingly) you might have it turned upside down on you from people with ninja fast reflexes.

 

I wonder what the reception to that mechanic will be long term, it sounds sorta annoying unless you just use it to fuck with your friends rather than randos

[Jimboxy]

@one-armed dwarf
isn't that technically, potentially an issue for anyone that plays games on pc though? (Minus the duelsense haptics I guess)

[one-armed dwarf]

I guess, it just stood out to me a bit cause this is sort of supposed to be a SP game really but you could have a very disrupted experience with the PC version if you opted into the invasion system but didn't want to sit at a desk (eg, if you WFH you might not want to be on M&K all day)

 

I tried this a bit but went and got a refund and will stick to my original plan of waiting for a more nuanced take on what this game is rather than risk putting a ton of time into it myself. A thing that struck me as annoying is if you turn it off on a 'loop' there is no checkpointing, it just starts you at the beach. Which is why I got the refund. I might buy it in a few weeks, even at its current pricing, but the reviews don't give me enough to know what to think. I tried it cause I saw it get compared to Outer Wilds but I didn't get that feeling at all from it (cause OW is a puzzle game, this is action)

 

And by 'nuanced' I mostly mean that there'll be more varied perspectives on the game when more people play it, cause I really think game critics self select a bit with these kinds of games. 

[Whiskey_chaser]

It's definitely a puzzle game, just with a ton of action. Once the quest opens up a bit you have to tackle a number of set objectives in a day (i'm being intentionally vague here - because spoilers).

The puzzle is working out how/when to efficiently get to the objectives. Good example is yesterday I found a hint about generators on the island not working. I found them, powered them up and that let me open up a load of security doors throughout the rest of the areas, whilst also engaging some security features that weren't operational before.

I've also been invaded three times (beat two of them, died to the third) and have invaded a few people as well. It's actually really fun, and the perk you get from killing Julianna is worth the risk. 

This is one of the most intriguing/unique game experiences i've had in a long time. It's not without its faults, and i'm not sure if it's for everyone but It's easily Arcane's best game. It's properly got under my skin - one of those games you're thinking about when you're not playing it.

[Whiskey_chaser]

I'm unsure what to make of the invasion mechanic on this, I had three times where I was consecutively invaded trying to do the same objective and it was by three people who knew what they were doing, trapping the antenna you need to unscramble to unlock the escape points and then dashing over really quickly to the level entrance where I was still picking off enemies.

I managed to kill one but died at the same time but the other two were really good, so I just hid from them until they got bored and quit. There is an option to switch it to friends only, or disable it all together but I can't see the invasions happening that frequently then and the reward of a free slab upgrade for killing Julianne is a good one.

The AI in this is all kinds of fucky as well. You can stab someone as they stand right next to another npc without reaction, or you can have someone spot you from halfway across the map and literally everyone in the area suddenly becomes an elite squad of hitmen that hunt you down in a pack.

Still having an absolute blast with this though. Each area is a joy to explore, and the game just oozes style.

[DisturbedSwan]

I can see myself turning off the invasion mechanic to be honest, I love invading and being invaded in general (ooo er) but by the time I get round to playing this folks will be super good at it, know all the intricacies of the map and I'll still be stumbling about so may just stick to the AI Julianna until I get to grips with it.

[spatular]

you guys playing on ps5, any crashes? 

 

i might have gone for the wrong version with the pc one, it's already crashed twice, not a big problem in a game where you can save or it regularly autosaves. but here you could easy play this for an hour or more without it saving. having said that i'd learnt the route to where i needed to go and did it again really quick after the crash. and my friend said it crashed for him on ps5 too, so maybe all the versions are affected. the crashes are making me not want to explore too much, do the objective and get out quick.

 

there's some odd graphics stuff going on in the pc version too, switching off v-sync in game and turning it on in the nvidia control panel fixes it though.

 

the environments/graphics look great, really impressive, and the stealth is fun - these parts are very dishonoured like. but i'd usually save and try stuff out, can't save here so i'll be doing a lot more fighting, it's weird, see how it goes.

 

 

 

 

[Whiskey_chaser]

14 hours ago, spatular said:

you guys playing on ps5, any crashes? 

Only issues i've had so far on PS5 is a connection error to their servers which reconnected pretty quickly and a weird glitch where Colts hands juddered continuously.

[DisturbedSwan]

I have heard the PC version has some issues. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The PC version has a weird frame pacing thing where if you don't run it at 60 it feels pretty bad. You can't really play the game with VRR, you have to lock it to 60. It also didn't look as good as you would expect a game to look considering what it takes to run, but from what I've seen it's still the better version of the game. If only for the fact you could change the FoV because it has that weird kind of camera movement that can make you feel sick.

 

I've not played enough of the game to share real impressions but I can share impressions of that side of things at least. Even when a PC version is 'bad' it's rarely worse than the console version, Resident Evil VIII excepted (that was really bad)

[Whiskey_chaser]

This is precisely why I cannot be fucked with PC gaming. I can see why people prefer it, but it's all about convenience for me. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I mean it goes both ways, if you get motion sickness from strict FoV you might not be fucked with the console version. 

 

I didn't think the PC version was especially bad in the time I was playing it, you just have to turn vsync on. 

 

Digital Foundry are working on a PC version video I think, I'll throw it on the news thread when it comes out

[spatular]

44 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

I didn't think the PC version was especially bad in the time I was playing it, you just have to turn vsync on. 

 

turning vsync on in the game causes graphics glitches for me, had to turn it off - and use vsync in the nvidia controls.

 

i'm only playing in 1080p but think it looks amazing, that's the style of it that i like though, i'm not as bothered about the technical side of things

 

pc gaming i don't know, it's got better over the years but you still have to mess about with stuff sometimes, the game was ~£10 cheaper though

 

edit - although that's something that's changing too, pc games seem more expensive these days

[spatular]

Just finished this, overall really enjoyed it. 34 hours it took. Im sure it could be done a lot faster, i went slowly be because i was trying to do it stealthy, which often failed, so it could have taken much longer as well. I did quite a bit of optional stuff too, but not everything.

 

its a bit like dishonoured crossed with the outer wilds, but you dont have to really work anything out yourself, well not in the main story, and the stealth is maybe a little broken. I dont like it as much as dishonoured but its cool that its different and that isnt a big put down because i really really like dishonoured.

 

i really enjoyed creeping around taking people out without being spotted, and sometimes everything went to plan and it was great. More often it does not go to plan, sometimes because i havent been careful enough, and sometimes the game does odd things, like an enemy spots you from miles away or through a wall or whatever. And it can be pretty easy to die if theres a lot of people around when you get spotted as you die pretty quick, but you have to die 3 times in one stage to die properly which was quite easy to avoid, you can get upgrades to make you harder to kill but i was using stealth upgrades instead. And the combat could be pretty fun too so its not all bad when you get spotted. I didnt really like the aiming controls on a pad but it has snap to aim stuff which makes the aiming a lot easier so that was good. You can get some cool guns too like a sniper 

Spoiler

That causes explosions, or a gun that causes gas clouds

 

the roguelike nature of it doesnt come into play very often really, i dont think i was very good at it but i only died properly once or twice. And if you die you go back to the start of the day but im pretty sure you dont lose any progress on objectives and so can just skip back to the time of the day/location you died at, or if youd already done the objective there you can skip past it.
 

the timeloop stuff was pretty cool how everything fits together, its all laid out what to do next in missions so you dont have to work anything out, i think in a way thats good but also would have been cool to work some stuff out myself, but its a fine line where that could be annoying though and i think the way its done here is fine. Some of the optional stuff youre left to work out yourself. Ive still not used a delivery point thing - read a spoiler though and think theyre for 

Spoiler

Sending yourself objects in different times/locations/days or something like that.

theres some stuff i might go back to do so might not be finished with it yet.

i got a trinket that lets me hack 

Spoiler

From much further away

But accidentally scrapped it and never saw another one so maybe theyre rare? 
 

They could have made the infusion stuff easier by marking duplicate trinkets (duplicates are useful for the gun ones mind)

a good tip is when youre hacking something you only need to be looking at it to start the hack, you can hide for the rest.

 

no more crashes since the first day playing it, so thats good.

 

as ive already said i really like the graphics. And the music is great too.

 

oh and i havent tried playing the invasion mode, and turned the online off in my game so was only ever invaded by AI. It sounds interesting though so might give it a go.

[DisturbedSwan]

So I've been working away at this for awhile now, from just after finishing Psychonauts 2 at the end of last month. I think I'm probably about 20 hours in but haven't looked at the profile data on PSN to know for sure.

 

The first 4 sessions I had with this - which were each about 2 hours in length - I got a migraine afterwards. Which is obviously not a good sign. Not many games have ever given me migraines and I very rarely have them so to get two in quick succession the morning after playing this was a 🚩. I was playing on the Raytracing mode which is 30FPS I believe and I think that's what did it. Despite these setbacks I was very slowly getting into the game but then went away on holiday and when I returned struggled to motivate myself to fire it up again. 

 

When I did finally muster the motivation to fire it up again the first thing I did was switch it to the Performance mode as I really couldn't be arsed to deal with another migraine and thankfully I've not had one since so that seems to of done the trick. Now I'm done moaning about migraines we can finally focus on what I actually think of the game itself I guess?

 

Firing it up I can honestly say it is one of the most confusing, bewildering experiences I've ever had in games, I just felt like such a duck out of water and had no clue what was going on whatsoever. Slowly but surely I made my way though, started to understand the game and its many different systems more and more, bit by bit and that bewilderment faded completely to the point where I understand the game and am comfortable playing it and being in it without feeling anxious I might fuck something up or am misunderstanding something every 5 minutes. 

 

Others have been through this in previous posts but I'm gonna give it a shot at explaining it too as it's such a weird game to get to grips with at first. The tutorial teaches you the basics of the game, weapons, slabs (which are like the powers in Dishonored) in a very streamlined succinct way, you learn about the loop, you learn that if you die you go back to the beginning of the day (but it's not as simple as that) and that Julianna is someone who is out to get you and very much your antithesis on the island. Once you're out of the clutches of the tutorial the game still holds your hand quite a bit as there's still a lot to learn and get to grips with. You learn about the 4 different areas (Updaam, Karl's Bay, The Complex and Fristad Rock) and 4 different times of day (morning, noon, afternoon, evening) along with a permanent 'slab' called reprise you get early on which means you essentially get 3 lives per time of day before the day will reset instead of just one, which obviously makes things much easier and takes the pressure off you considerably.

 

The visual interface the game uses is very clever. When you boot up the game you're presented with a screen that shows clearly what time of day it currently is (you can fast-forward if you like) and then the 4 locations to the right of the screen, when you hover the controller cursor over these options it'll tell you if you have any leads, objectives or targets for any of these select areas at the time of day you currently have selected. Targets appear in red, objectives appear in white but will appear in orange if something occurs at this location but just later on in the day. Why I'm highlighting this is it stops you from being overwhelmed and bewildered once you get into the game, you're very rarely thinking 'what the hell do I do now?' which is good. As soon as you come out of a mission you'll then be presented with the screen described above before you start the next one, you can then hover the cursor over the 4 locations and immediately know what is going on in each of them, then deciding what objective or target you want to do and which you'll have to do for the next loop. 

 

It's almost akin to firing up a multiplayer map really. The 'loadout' screen I've described above is very similar to a multiplayer lobby and the levels themselves are quite similar to multiplayer maps, with the time of day being a kind of map modifiers which changes the layout, number of enemies, events going on within the world etc. The loadout screen (which I've not touched on yet) is also quite similar to a multiplayer setup, you can select which slabs you want to use along with Reprise so 3 in total (I think there's 6 you can pick up plus Reprise), have a choice of 3 weapons varying in rarity along with trinkets you can attach to them and trinkets you can attach to Colt as character perks. 

 

In terms of the way it plays, there isn't really too much surprising in there if you've played Dishonored. Essentially it is Dishonored really, if you've played that then you know what to expect in terms of feel and the kinds of supernatural abilities you can pull off with Colt's powers. Where it differs is that in this the emphasis is on action rather than stealth, you can Stealth in this and it is extremely effective (possibly even a bit OP) but where the real fun lies is when you fuck up the stealth or just go in all guns blazing. It is the complete polar opposite to Dishonored in that it feels wrong here to use Stealth and sometimes feels like cheating because of how effective it is. The level design is phenomenal as expected, Updaam is very similar to the downtown Karnaca area in Dishonored 2 with loads of little alleyways, little houses and rooftops to clamber across, Fristad Rock features a magnificent multilevelled detailed mansion very similar to the one towards the end of D2, The Complex is like a comic book supervillains lair with lots of science experiments and laboratories and Karl's Bay is a mixed residential area similar to Updaam mixed with some industrial factory units. 

 

For me, it's very loosely a roguelike, so if that puts you off then I really wouldn't be worried about it. As mentioned above you get 3 lives per area before the loop resets, which is incredibly generous even at the beginning when you're a little underpowered, as well as this the game saves every time you enter or exit a mission meaning that you can't really lose progress. If you're halfway through a mission and something comes up in the real world you can just go to the tunnels and leave and you'll be put back at the lobby screen with your progress saved - the game will just move on to the next time of day. Once you get acquainted with Residuum (which is very early in) and learn how to infuse your apparatus you can then keep all the weapons, trinkets, slabs, slab upgrades you want between loops as long as you've got the required amount of residuum (which they doll out willy nilly). So when the day resets it doesn't really mean anything other than just another opportunity to get the shit done that you couldn't on the previous day. You'll have all your favourite slabs loop after loop, all your favourite weapons loop after loop, all your upgrades etc. So there's no real penalty or annoyance at all when the loop resets, it's just another opportunity to get shit done. 

 

I touched on the objectives above but wanted to expand on that. They are divided into three, Visionary Leads, Arsenal Leads and the less important general Leads. Visionary Leads are bits of information you have picked up one of the 6(?) visionaries you have to kill on the Island, Arsenal Leads are bits of information on special weapons and Slabs with general Leads being various bits of useful information you may pick up through eavesdropping or exploration when travelling around the various locations on Blackreef. As explained above, you'll see one of these leads as you hover your cursor over a selected area at a selected time of day, once you enter the mission the marker will be on your map to go investigate a certain area or person in the map, once this is done it'll likely point you to a different time of day and a different area for you to investigate this lead further. Eventually ending up in you finding the target or weapon but sometimes you'll find other useful stuff like a time of day and place where two of your targets are in one location, secret paths and bunkers dotted around the island which may explain more about what is going on in Blackreef and various other cool little snippets of information. The way the leads are dolled out makes you want to go right back in to the next time of day, find where the next lead is on a select path and go investigate further, almost like a detective game similar to Sherlock Holmes or something maybe? 

 

So what do I think of it? Well, unsurprisingly, I think it's a great game but it hasn't reached the heights of Prey or Dishonored 2 yet for me. I think largely because of the way I like to play (sneaky sneaky) it's a little unsatisfying and a bit too easy. As mentioned previously, Stealth feels like cheating in this game and I'm very much a stealth player through and through, it's engrained in me and it's not something I can switch off easily which means when I take down a target or find the next piece of information on a lead it doesn't feel like I've properly earnt it, it feels like 'oh, is that it? I've got it, ok well I guess I'll leave now' if that makes sense. It's an incredibly unique, weird, surreal, original, stylish, brash, bewildering and (at the beginning) confusing game that doesn't really quite feel like anything else. I'm so glad something like this got made because quite frankly we need more games like this and less identikit open world games (as much as I love some of them). Arkane have once again cemented their reputation as one of the top development studios in the world with this game. 

 

Lastly, this game is an immersive sim through and through. 

 

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