There are Trinkets, which are small glowing items that enhance whatever gun they’re attached to, and Slabs, which give Colt - and his enemies - superhuman powers like invisibility, telekinesis and short-distance teleportation. It’s not every encounter, and there are still plenty of moments when I’m bested by the NPCs, but it’s enough that I’d classify the enemy AI in Deathloop as OK, rather than good.Īlong his way, Colt picks up a variety of weapons and ultra-high-tech artifacts that grant him special abilities and perks. There are times it feels too easy to sneak up on enemies, and moments when they fail to react appropriately to Colt’s presence, standing still for seconds too long, piling up in hallways or ignoring nearby scuffles. I’d like to blame the success of Deathloop’s stealth mechanics on my own skills or the masterful sense of level design coming out of Arkane Studios, but it might just be the game’s hit-or-miss AI. My favorite weapons in these moments are the Tribunal and the PT-6 Spiker, both of which are silent and deliver instant-kill headshots. Generally speaking, I can find some cover, pick off the folks that follow me, and return to the rest of the mission in stealth mode. Additionally, if I accidentally alert the enemies in one location, I don’t feel like I have to abandon my plans and roll in guns blazing. If something in Deathloop looks scalable, it likely is, opening up the game world in all directions. The environments are endlessly climbable, offering plenty of vantage points for Colt to survey and mark his enemies, tracking their movements and revealing the kinds of weapons they’re carrying. I get too close to an enemy, or miss my headshot, or forget about that security camera, and I end up just throwing a grenade and emptying my magazine, recklessly running into danger.ĭeathloop invites the kind of stealth that I can sustain. Usually with games like this - I’m thinking Deus Ex and Far Cry - I intend to play stealthily, but it doesn’t work out. It’s mechanically mature and narratively dense, but best of all, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.ĭeathloop is one of the few first-person action games that I can successfully play in stealth mode, silently taking down enemies, hacking turrets and sniping from the rooftops in order to stay alive. In action, Deathloop feels a lot like Dishonored (of course), with a chaser of We Happy Few and Quadrilateral Cowboy.
Blackreef is a retrofuturistic bubble populated by residents who split their time between partying and violently defending their consequence-free way of life, and Colt can either sneak or shoot his way through their ranks.
Colt’s job is to explore Blackreef, the island where he’s been trapped in an infinite respawn cycle, and learn as much about its leaders and technology as possible, in order to burn it all down. The identity of the message-writer is just one of a dozen or so core mysteries in Deathloop, and these are the driving force of the campaign. Colt is confused - he doesn’t even know his own name at this point, let alone how he got here or who’s trying to talk to him. As he walks, glowing words appear around the environment, as if a loved one is leaving words of encouragement and warning for him. Colt awakens on a cold, empty beach littered with bottles, and he makes his way to a compound built into the side of the sea wall.