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Deathloop tries to appear deeper than it really is. The game lures with a time loop, variability of passing, a lot of little things that make up the gameplay in the immersive sim genre. In fact, it only pretends to be multifaceted, and you can figure it out very quickly. All the details are in our review.

Deathloop protagonist Colt Van wakes up on the beach of Black Reef Island. In the hand - an empty bottle, in the head - a rumble and complete chaos. Very soon, Colt will find out that this is far from his first awakening, moreover, he is doomed to appear on this shore every day, as he found himself in a time loop.

Naturally, the protagonist does not want to put up with such a course of events, and wants to break the loop. The problem is that the other inhabitants of the island are trying to prevent him, and Julianna, the head of the security of the local organization, is especially active in this matter, which, in fact, created this time trap. Thus begins a crazy killing race, which will be repeated more than once, while the Colt will move step by step towards his goal.

To break out of the cycle, the hero must kill eight ideologues - local bosses that form the backbone of the organization; Julianne is one of them. For everything about everything - one day, divided into four periods of time: morning, afternoon, afternoon and evening. There are also four locations available for visiting, ideologists hang around in each of them.

However, only one territory can be visited in one period of time: while the Colt is in it, time stops, but as soon as it leaves it, the timer moves on to the next phase. What if, say, in the morning there are two ideologues in two different locations, you can only kill one, and in the following periods of time they will not appear? You will have to look for ways to lure the villains out of their fortresses, collect them in one place and finish them off in one fell swoop.

This is what Colt will have to do for twenty hours of the Deathloop campaign. Actually, the passage of the game comes down to building such a chain of events in which all the ideologists will be in the right place and the right time, making it possible to deal with them in one day.

It will not be easy to do this, because each of them has their own daily routine, tasks and goals. Most of the time, Colt will not look for ideologues (especially since they are looking for - each is marked with a bold pointer), but evidence and clues, piece by piece to collect information that will point to their weaknesses. Moreover, the structure of the plot is built in such a way that it will not be possible to investigate everything connected with the Black Reef in one loop - you will have to complete at least several cycles.

And here lies the main pretense of Deathloop. The sequence of actions that must be performed to kill all opponents is only one, so the variability within the central chain of quests here the cat cried. Of course, you can search for clues in any order, visit any location in any time period, reset the loop whenever you want, eliminate ideologues in various ways (although there are very few of them), but in the final episode you will go exactly the way that the developers intended, without the possibility deviate from it.

Moreover, all quests are carefully noted in Colt's diary, and new clues are displayed with markers: you don't even need to carefully explore the locations and use visual landmarks - the game will do everything for you. Of course, turning off the markers makes it harder to play, but by default they are active, and therefore Deathloop becomes not a puzzle with many variables, but a linear adventure in which the choice is reduced only to the order in which the missions are completed.

However, the game still allows you to influence the world. If, for example, you kill a musician in the morning, then he will not play at the party, and so that a fire does not break out in the building in the middle of the day, you need to de-energize it in the morning. But these points of influence almost do not relate to the main plot, but serve only as a small reminder that the Colt is an integral part of the Black Reef, like the rest of its inhabitants.

The latter, by the way, call themselves residents, and act as hedonists who voluntarily chose an eternity-long exile in order to have endless fun. They do what they want, when they want - because there will be no consequences, and the next day the loop will begin anew. This fact, by the way, also elegantly explains the fact that with each restart, the doodles end up in the same positions - a time loop, after all.

By eavesdropping on NPCs, you can learn a lot of information about the world and ideologists, learn about hiding places and secrets. Another layer of the story lies in the numerous notes and diaries that can be found on the locations and, in particular, in the habitats of the ideologues. Finally, important plot points are revealed in dialogues with Julian on the radio; they turned out to be lively and informative, with jokes and jokes that could be called friendly if the characters did not seek to destroy each other.

Julianne is constantly trying to excel at this. She likes to invade the location where the Colt is located, temporarily block the exits and open the hunt for the protagonist. The first meetings with her are quite tense; The adrenaline rush is added by the fact that after two deaths the hero returns to the beginning of the loop. However, the understanding quickly comes that the opponent is not as strong as it seems, and the rest of the ideologists do not cause any particular problems - a couple of shotgun shots or a well-aimed hit in the head takes their lives. Ordinary opponents posed a great danger to me: they attack in a crowd, and, if gape, very quickly reduce the health bar to zero.

The multiplayer component of Deathloop is that the role of Julian can be taken by another player. She aims to kill the Colt, has a large arsenal of weapons and abilities, and also knows how to disguise herself as an NPC to take the enemy by surprise. If you wish, you can turn off the network game and protect yourself from intruders.

At the beginning of the passage, there is a high risk of losing weapons and trinkets that improve its performance. However, once the Colt gets to the resource resource (and it will be very soon), he will be able to save and transfer between loops any equipment that he can saturate with this resource. There is a lot of it in the game (most of all - on the corpses of ideologues), the shortage is almost not felt, so Deathloop turns from a roguelike shooter into an ordinary shooter very quickly.

And, fortunately, unlike Dishonored, the game does not motivate you to complete stealth missions, but allows you to choose your own style. Do you want to sow death? Please! Do you want to remain invisible? Easily! In the arsenal there are powerful shotguns, and sniper rifles, and pistols with a silencer. Trinkets will help complete the build: a double jump will add verticality to the gameplay, a quick hack will allow you to instantly take control of automatic turrets, and a shock absorber will reduce weapon recoil to a minimum.

Separately, it is worth noting the ingots, each of which gives the Colt unique abilities. The hero has his own ingot - the one that allows him to resurrect twice. The rest will have to be removed from the ideologues, including Julianna. Like trinket weapons, ingots work for the player's style: one makes the character invisible, another scatters opponents, the third (my favorite) binds enemies with an invisible net, after which it remains to kill one so that they all die, and so on.

You can choose options for stealth passage or hurricane sweeping of locations without any problems. Even within the same play style, there are several options: for example, invest in damage and ammo to sow death without reloading, or rely on lifesteal and ensure a constant flow of health at the expense of the lives of opponents. Killing the ideologues again, you can add buffs to your ingots, so if you have already gone to the location to complete the quest, do not forget to look at the local boss.

On the PS5 Deathloop, the game supports vibration and DualSense trigger feedback: the controller responds convincingly with a motor to any action in the game, including the steps of the Colt, the triggers resist when fired, and the gamepad speaker reproduces radio conversations, the sound of falling shells and many other sounds. This does not affect the gameplay, but contributes significantly to immersion.

The game works stably on the console, but I managed to find a couple of small bugs. It was especially disappointing when the game crashed in the middle of the final mission, throwing me back half an hour (progress is saved only at the beginning of the location). On the PC, judging by the reviews, the project suffers from poor optimization. Might have to wait for patches.

Exploring the world is interesting. It is full of little things, made in a style reminiscent of BioShock and Dishonored, pleases with a huge number of paths, branches and elevations. Maps differ in their architecture and content: there are both dense urban development and wide spaces, and large research complexes. They are quite easy to explore, and even despite the lack of a mini-map, you will be able to navigate in each of the areas without problems. Moreover, despite the apparent scale, they are very compact.

Deathloop combines a linear story with a sandbox game that invites the player to entertain themselves. This approach has the right to life: someone will want to race through the scenario, focusing only on quest markers, while someone will be interested in studying the game, testing its mechanics for strength and experimenting with different builds.

On the other hand, this affects the depth of the gameplay, which seems to be there, but few people will be able to notice it. Deathloop doesn’t even give that adrenaline to sweat down the back and trembling in the knees, from the risk of losing everything that was obtained by overwork: the game is too fast to save favorite items, the bosses are too few challenges, and the non-adjustable difficulty is too compliant here.

However, this is still an Friv2Online Games Studio, and if you liked the team's previous work, then you most likely already play Deathloop. At the same time, the project should also be recommended to beginners who are just starting to get acquainted with the work of the Lyon studio - it is lighter and friendlier than other immersive sims from Friv2Online, so it can be a good entry point into the genre.