Deadlink Review

Deadlink has no patience for players who want to take the time to methodically pull off headshots and lurk around a map for optimal strategic dispatching of enemies.

You don’t aim down the sights. You don’t belly crawl. Technically, you don’t even die.

Deadlink is a roguelite by way of a boomer shooter. Which, for even a person in their late 30s like me, is just… well it’s a shooter. I get the term, I do. But come on! Do we really know many boomers who have the kind of reflexes for this malarkey? Think arena shooter. Hell, think Goldeneye. Definitely think Doom Eternal. Deadlink is kind of like Doom Eternal on crack.

The heart-pounding pace of Deadlink and its reliance on pulling your weapon near the right direction is phenomenal. But the secret ingredient to this particular gumbo of gaming ideas is its roguelite trappings. Whether players find roguelites en vogue or tired, there is juice to the genre’s rotation of random outcomes. While developer GRUBY Entertainment doesn’t want players to get lost in the weeds, there is a cohesion towards thinking ahead.

Don’t get wrapped up in the narrative of Deadlink, just don’t. After about 15 hours and a few dozen mildly successful and wildly unsuccessful runs, I gleaned little. The player character works for an agency that implants their brain in piloted robotic combat shells. These shells are high-tech pieces of corporate espionage, meant to take out organizations like the Yakuza and research labs for their wrongdoings. There’s a bit of mystique lying under the surface outside of the friendly chatter and codex but it requires players to heavily invest in beating the game on higher difficulties.

More importantly, the narrative and visual flair of Deadlink is meant to provide the game with a cool delivery package for its gameplay. Unsurprisingly, Deadlink nestles itself into cyberpunk. There’s splatterings of neon lights, cyborgs, CEOs wielding katanas, and enforcers wearing chest-exposing white suits. Cross-pollinate Blade Runner, Miami Vice, Samurai Cop, Bionic Commando, and whatever other references that might come to mind and there rests Deadlink‘s design language. It is not the most visually stimulating game; graphics are relatively simplistic, lacking significant shading and detail. Textures are sharp colors and levels are usually given a dominating splash to make them stand out.

While Deadlink might not be the most visually fetching shooter around, much of it is done in service to keep the action at a consistently blistering framerate. My god does this game run like a dream on PlayStation 5. I can’t say that I’m laser-focused on framerates and performance modes and usually only notice major hitches that significantly impact the experience. Nothing of note ever caused Deadlink to stumble. Not the countless enemies and projectiles and explosions on screen. Not the grappling back and forth across the map blasting a tank in the butt.

There is a keen awareness to keep the action flowing not just visually but mechanically. Fitting the looks, Deadlink uses a crunchy, dark synthwave score to puncture the gunshots, acting as additional fire to the feet of the player. One of Hotline Miami‘s greatest strengths was weaving the music into the mood and vibrancy of the gameplay, making the violence and action an intrinsic joy. That same aural blast triggers a survival sense in the player and, more importantly, makes them never want to stop moving.

Being stationary in Deadlink is a death sentence. The faster the player moves, the less likely it is for a projectile to make contact. Players enter into an arena and enemies spawn. Light enemies are easily dispatched, lacking armor. Flying drones pepper the player from above while melee units speedily rush and are heavily shielded. In these multi-height combat zones, players will see ammo pickups, temporary armor, grenades, launch plates to jettison across the map or high up away from danger.

Regardless of where the player is, enemies will coalesce at their location. The constant need for locomotion is a necessity to often swoop in and out of danger, selecting which enemies can be taken out to thin the herd. It’s an incredible strategy to understand the general outline of areas–despite the fact that they are random-ish–and capitalize on tight alleys and high rafters to allow for some breathing room.

Initially, players are equipped with one combat shell, the soldier. It comes equipped with a shotgun, a rocket launcher, grenades, a grapple, and a stun blast that hits in an area. Each combat shell comes equipped with a different primary weapon that never runs out of ammo. The “heavy” weapon, however, does massive damage but can only be replenished through pickups or breaking floating “C-Balls” that can be grappled to or punched open. Grenades recover up to a couple over time but more can be added to the stock by collecting them. The two skills of a combat shell are on cooldown but there are ways of decreases that time.

There is a slight unwieldy chaos to Deadlink upon initial rounds. Despite running through the tutorial, it is easy for someone like me to forget that more than guns exist. Mastering the rhythm and flow of grappling towards an enemy and blasting their head off with a shotgun takes a moment. Identifying movement traffic of the player and enemies and the path to a C-Ball for rocket ammo might not seem essential when there are only a few heavy enemies to deal with but it becomes essential when the pressure is on. The player’s kit is minimal in service of a handful of efficient death-dealing tools, focusing on survival through blood-letting.

Where Deadlink‘s roguelite elements come into play is the random pathing and upgrading. After clearing out an arena of foes, players are given the option to select a door to go through. These doors will lead to implants, upgrade experience, shops, weapon modifications, combat shell upgrades, and more.

Implants are the most crucial element of randomization throughout each run of Deadlink. Initially, players can slot four implants onto their combat shell. Implants usually have an active and a passive buff. Buffs may be something like increasing elemental damage for 5 seconds, triggering a drone that hovers around shooting enemies, ratcheting up movement speed, enabling double jumps, or causing random bullets to home in on enemies. However, active implant effects can only be triggered to one of four assigned actions: weapon swap, breaking a C-Ball, or activating either combat shell skill.

Tying active skill activation to these actions prevents the player from becoming absurdly overpowered but is also restricted by power usage. Passive skills are active regardless of what action they are assigned to. But some of the best active skills require 3 energy bars, meaning they must be assigned to the C-Ball-breaking slot. While it may initially feel restrictive, the momentum of combat and the reliance on constantly doing things really becomes less of a hindrance and more dependent upon the player remembering these implants have been assigned to their shell.

As a run progresses, players can spend credits at a shop to increase their implant capacity. Deadlink seems to prioritize implants as completion rewards between areas which seems cool, but often doesn’t dramatically increase survivability. Players would be wise to often forgo implants for weapon mods, combat shell upgrades that amplify skills, or Neuralink boosts which offer flat increases to things like defense and damage.

It takes a bit of initial grinding for the actual rewards to become moderately fruitful. Players use a separate earned experience and “Turing Tokens” to purchase permanent upgrades to both combat shells and how a run is influenced. Bonus health and damage can be raised, skills get new passives, and more items can be earned or bought during a run. It’s great to get to a point where players can start a run and equip a weapon mod, implant, and combat shell upgrade right at the jump, eventually getting to a point where they have multiple options of each.

There’s a great ramp up to progressing through the four main “biomes” of Deadlink. There’s no distinct brick wall as players can safely churn through a few attempts at the first boss, earning enough upgrade currency to allow them to last longer. Getting the Hunter shell (which comes with invisibility and a magnum), the Engineer shell (which has a machine gun and a deployable turret), and the Juggernaut (which has a rocket punch and a sawed-off shotgun pistol) don’t need absurd requirements. No shell is distinctly better than another but do feature varying amounts of shield and health.

But one of my favorite things about Deadlink was that I never felt like I wasn’t learning something new. I had beaten the first two areas before I realized that shield recovery pickups primarily dropped by killing an enemy with a skill. I learned optimal patterns for kiting enemies into explosive barrels. The game doesn’t even truly require players to be that precise with aiming, often snapping to nearby enemies with a slight flick up giving rise to a headshot. Even the difficulty ramp isn’t too sharp, relying more on stranger enemies that don’t just die with simple raw damage.

Better yet, Deadlink lives beyond the life of its initial run. Two new difficulty options that drastically increase rewards and lethality reward players who invest deep into permanent upgrades and understanding mechanics–plus it’s how more of the story is shown off. An endless mode that satisfyingly yields experience and tokens feels less like a distraction and more like another test of skills. There’s also timed challenge trials for each combat shell where players can test their meddle against an online leaderboard, truly extracting as much value from Deadlink as possible.

Deadlink is a thrilling, kinetic blend of two genres that are rarely harmonized. Random runs are not drastically hindered by the usually roguelite trappings, instead identifying that player skill should be the de facto method of progression. The raw momentum of zipping through Deadlink‘s many areas is immensely satisfying but the reward of new upgrades to tackles increasingly brutal modes rockets the game past any potential doldrums, having players beg for that one more run.