DEATHLOOP is an interesting first person shooter based around the concept of all taking place around one single day where your character is trying to break the loop by finding and killing 7 specific people. Combining puzzles, exploration and combat, it is a fine experience that I almost dropped because I wasn’t sure how to proceed, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The more interesting elements of the game were definitely its lore and puzzles, and I’ve found the combat and character upgrades/customization to be a bit lacking.
Starring amnesiac security officer ‘Colt’, after a bit of tutorializing, the game follows a very self-contained loop; You start the day at the morning and are able to explore one of four places on the island you’re in - places change slightly depending of the time - you try to complete objectives, figure out a password, kill someone, sneak somewhere, then you leave the map and time passes. After you go through morning, noon, afternoon and evening, the day loops and you’re back at the morning of the same day. The game generously tracks your ‘leads’ - quests of sorts - in order to give you direction about what to do next and this is a good thing because otherwise I would’ve been completely lost. If you die three times during your explorations, the day also resets to morning. There is no penalty for death, but you’ll have to try again what you were doing and if it’s a bit difficult for you and you weren’t sure it was the right thing to do anyways, it can be frustrating.
The main idea is to kill 7 specific people to break the loop and escape. These seven “visionaries” are certainly interesting characters and you learn a lot about everybody and the world you are in via computer chats and other documents left laying around - although I felt like the documents you could interact with and the ones that were just decorative props looked too similar, so that was sometimes annoying - and sometimes if you try to fight them head-on they can be tricky, but they’re no boss fights, I remember killing some of them without even realizing it, which felt a bit anti-climactic. Ultimately you do not need to fight them all in single combat, because you have to solve puzzles and figure out how to get them to regroup and drop their guard in order to defeat all seven in the same day. I kinda wish the game had been more explicit about when I could and couldn’t do that, because I did a lot of unnecessary stuff before figuring out the critical path.
Colt is equipped with a “reprieve slab” that lets him die three times and every visionary has a special power granted by their slab, you can collect them and upgrade them when you defeat these foes and you can equip two. You also have trinkets that grant you abilities and bonuses - more health, more energy for slab use, taking less damage, etc. - and guns of various types (shotguns, nailguns, pistols) with their own small upgrades. When you loop, everything is lost if you do not infuse it with a resource you can collect by breaking down gear or by absorbing it from dead enemies and items in the world. I found most of the stuff here kinda boring. The amount of different and interesting guns is very small, the slab powers didn’t suit my playstyle and the trinkets basically amounted to passive stat buffs that I never felt like playing with.
There’s also Juliana, who will enter your game (randomly?) and attack you, dropping a bunch of items and slabs when you defeat her. You can play as her and invade people’s games online, but I immediately disabled that, as it would’ve stressed me greatly. Having her be AI-controlled didn’t improve the game much, tho.
I had a good time with DEATHLOOP, proved in some capacity by the fact that I beat the game. It felt like an interesting comparison with “Minit” that I have played only a short while ago, both games being loop-based with things that you “know” and things that you “own” being unlocked between the loops. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t familiar with the other games from that developer, but I wish there was more meat to the character progression. In any case, I recommend you check it out!
