We are revisiting Deathloop, but this time on the Xbox Series X. A small disclaimer before we begin. While I cannot fathom ever having a write-up like Ben Sheene’s original Deathloop review, I do have some notes to add for this newly released XBX game that was an exclusive on the PlayStation 5. I have purposely gone into this game without playing it on the PS5, and I must admit that Ben hit the nail on the head about it.
Did I love it as he loved it? Not at all, but I can see its perfection.
Let’s loop into this sucker.
General Story
While I highly recommend visiting Ben’s write-up prior to mine, the story hasn’t changed a single bit since it was first released. The game revolves around Colt and Julianna. The former is who you start out with wat the beginning of the game and the main character that goes through the campaign. You wake up as Colt, you piece together why you can loop back to life once you die, and you must figure out the breadcrumbs that equal the connection to Julianna, and why she is hellbent on making Colt’s life miserable. Also, Colt wants to break the loop, and the reason for that is slowly revealed. There is a lot of backstory to their relationship and Julianna’s justified bitterness towards Colt’s need to destroy the loop so that he can leave it. It is a fascinating story that reminds me a bit of Christopher Nolan’s Memento while containing the humor of a good buddy comedy. Well, if your buddy was trying to kill you.
The story really does dig its teeth into you and motivates you to keep going and going and going and going. It is thick with pieces and parts that branch out into fun sections. It also allows you to jump around major and minor quests, which makes this a buffet of a story to play. While it’s not exactly a branching narrative, its story flowchart will certainly make it feel less linear…but ultimately it just has a lot of linear parts with some choice. Regardless, it’s a fulfilling story that drives the gameplay, which can be good or bad depending on how you take it.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about that gameplay.
Interesting, repetitive, looping even
The gameplay for Deathloop is quite deep in its backend, while light on the front end. It’s a weird combination that is balanced out by the story. For the first few hours, you’re going to run around a map no bigger than something you would find in a Call of Duty multiplayer experience. That isn’t a knock, rather it’s the beginning of a bigger picture.
As you progress in the game, hitting the smaller quest breadcrumbs that lead to a big fight, you start to unlock more and more of the world. For example, there is a point in the game where you go on a mission to unlock a door with eight doorbell rings that lead you to a new piece of the overall map. That map piece unlocks a new section of the world which makes the experience bigger, and for the most part better. The game works like this, where the smaller quests sometimes equal the literal bigger picture. That first unlock will motivate you to keep going in hopes of unlocking more places. There are more than a few places that need unlocking.
Equally as intriguing and rewarding is how you find weapons on these missions. The game starts you out with weapons that are suboptimal, where they might be powerful, but they’re also highly defective during fights. For example, you will run into frequent gun jams during this early stage of the game. Your gun will stop firing, the unjam gun indicator flashes on the screen, and you must wait for Colt to unjam the gun before continue using the weapon. When this first happened, I was like, “No, lord no…not Zelda.” This frustration isn’t quite the level of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild weapon breakage that never should have been included in the game, but it is a nuisance, though a temporary one.
As you go through the above-mentioned missions, you will get better weapons that do not jam, rather they just run out of ammo. Yay for that, right? It is better than breaking or jamming. Anyway, when you run into these weapons, they will have a certain color on them rather than being black and grungy. If you successfully survive the day with these weapons and make it back to home base after a successful mission (that is the name of the game), then you can infuse them to Colt and have them forever, or until you want to sacrifice them for infusion points. And the backend of the game is thick with infusion points.
Infusing a weapon requires you to kill enemies, successfully complete missions, or *spoiler alert* ingest glowing items along the way. You’ll get infusion points that eventually allow you (depending on cost) to infuse weapons permanently to Colt. This means that even if you die over and over, you can always have these weapons. Prior to infusing them, if you die, then they’re gone. We’ll get back to infusion points in a second. In the meantime, you can add traits to the weapons that you collect, and they give special abilities to said weapons. These traits can be fast-reloading or just your typical attribute you would find in any MP game. You can mix and match these traits and find a good combination that works for your weapons.
Secondary abilities go along with the weapons. These abilities are gained from defeating bosses. These abilities could be jumping from point to point, or even quickly transporting Colt through tough obstacles. They’re neat little abilities that add to the gameplay entertainment and work well with the gameplay and story. You can tell that Arkane took some of its Dishonored design into this world and it works just as well.
Circling back to infusion points, these will motivate you to complete missions, kill enemies on a regular basis, and/or play against other players. We’ll get to the latter in a second. Should you die three times in a row, you will lose your infusion points forever. If you die once or even twice, you can go back to the place where you died and collect those points back. Again, if you die thrice, you lose those points. The cost of dying forces you to be less cavalier with going in guns blazing, which also balances out the repetitive enemies at times (they respawn and loop back in when you loop back in). The less you must kill the same people repeatedly in a quick fashion, the less it feels like a repetitive chore. The price of losing tames that feeling considerably. As for the dying three times and the game is over, it works and it is technically an old-school concept of having three lives and then the game is over. Very arcade-like, which I don’t mind one bit. It puts just enough pressure on the player to do better and to make sure they understand their surroundings. It certainly opens your eyes, and it doesn’t give you much flexibility with death. I can dig it completely.
Before we talk about fighting other players, let’s discuss how the controls feel. For my taste, I had to slow down the speed of the turn radius of my guns. I felt like they were a bit loosey-goosey on default. I would constantly overshoot my target or just miss them when trying to calculate when to let go of the thumbstick. I don’t understand how people play that way, but it must be standard if it is the default. Anyway, a slower turn and it all worked. I liked the variety of weapons the game presented to me and how they could be used. Each weapon felt like it offered up a different style of shooting, which is what weapons should do in FPS games. A good majority of FPS games are very imbalanced in how weapons work. I was highly impressed with how you could use a fancy shotgun from long range. I’m not sure you should, but this is a game about dying and looping back, so I’m not going to argue real-life accuracy semantics. Anyway, the controls were solid once they were adjusted, and I found myself getting more flexibility out of the aim/shoot than I felt at the beginning of this experience.
Now, about that fighting other player thingy. One aspect of the game, which is on par with Elden Ring is how players from any platform (unless otherwise changed in the settings) can invade your missions and take you out. The cost of dying to another player is all your infusion points, and they get a cool weapon. I wasn’t a huge fan of this in Elden Ring, and I’m not a huge fan of it in Deathloop. I want to play a campaign separate from my multiplayer experience. I want to progress the story and just see what it is all about. I don’t want FuzzyButt2022 invading my experience, killing me, and then me picking up my leftover pieces and moving on through the story with the possibility of more interruptions down the line. I get that people love that type of gameplay, but I’m old and grumpy, and I just want to see a good story. Deathloop has an amazing story included with it, but it just gets so damn disruptive when someone is hunting you down. Is it cool? For sure. Do a lot of people love it? Probably, I mean it was game of the year for a reason. Do I love it? Lord, no. What I assumed when I started the game as Colt was that I was going to get the full campaign and that Julianna was for the MP experience against others. I didn’t expect Colt to have this aspect in his part by default. Yes, you have to progress in the story to unlock this feature, but I didn’t appreciate it unlocking without my permission. Thankfully, the game does allow you to play a single game experience (click on the top-left of Colt’s menu when you’re on his side of the game). This allows you to change from online > friends only > single-player. I’m glad they included this option because…wow…I would have been miserable otherwise. I will admit, though, there was one fight where the person invading had 27K worth of infusion points and I accidentally killed them. The only other person I successfully killed during my journey with Colt gave me 5k worth of points. I was in heaven and infused everything I could use those points with to permanently infuse. I used those points like there were going out of style.
All of this is the crux of the gameplay and it’s quite impressive. It has something for everyone, it works well with the options it offers, and while it’s a slow start at the beginning, the first time you unlock a new piece of the map you’re going to see a whole world of potential with Deathloop.
Xbox Series X v PlayStation 5
There is no winner with how this game looks on both systems. They both look spectacular. Great visuals, good draw distance, and while the buildings/environments have a Dishonored and We Happy Few feel to them, the constrictive landscape you get to traverse makes the experience more intense.
Now, in system functionality…they’re pretty much even. The gameplay loads fast, there is little downtime, and it just works well. You honestly can’t go wrong with either platform. Please stop thumping your chests at platforms. Just enjoy the game.
Conclusion
Deathloop’s debut on the Xbox Series X is equally as good as it was on the PlayStation 5. You get the same great story and the same perfect gameplay experience. Choose one and enjoy.
