It delivers bombastic thrills and wince-inducing kills with intelligence and elegance in equal measure.Īt the heart of the game is Colt Vahn, a man simultaneously adrift in time and stuck within it.

Deathloop is a game where observation and dynamic thinking go hand-in-hand with shotgunning goons in the face and snapping their necks where throwing a grenade into a soiree for sycophants counts as the right kind of experimentation and derring-do. The systems are presented as digestible on an individual level, but then the game subtly pushes you to put the pieces together so you can truly appreciate how the clockwork world ticks, before bringing a swift fist crashing down on it. It's Arkane deconstructing its own brand of open-ended action and laying bare all the pieces crucial to it. You begin your first day in Blackreef dazed, confused, and incredibly hungover, and end your final one as the unstoppable architect of its demise.īut what's most impressive about Deathloop is that it's also an introspective game. The mechanics that govern the world and facilitate your quest to upend it are constructed so masterfully that there's a tangible sense of growth both in-game and out of it. The rules of Deathloop's world created an intoxicating sense of liberation, but this leads to the game's central question of purpose: When nothing matters, how do you give your actions meaning? That is where developer Arkane Lyon's gameplay design comes into play, and killing with reckless abandon becomes killing for a reason: to break the loop. Killing became second nature, and with no consequence why wouldn't it?īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's I watched the first Eternalist I killed dissolve into nothingness, and a message written into the air in some ethereal ink assured me he'd return in the next loop, completely oblivious to what happened. I tried to be true to myself-skulking across rooftops, hiding in dark corners, and carefully moving between people, but the allure of Blackreef's daily absolution was difficult to resist. I'm the pebble thrown into water that makes no ripples.Īnd yet, in Deathloop, I murdered hundreds of Eternalists and I felt good about doing it. Whether it's Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex, Splinter Cell, or Dishonored, the role I inhabit is that of a ghost, entering a scenario to achieve an objective and leaving with clean hands and conscience. It made me behave in a way that's not in my nature. Memories are lost and harm-self-inflicted or done to others-is always undone. At the end of every sex, drug, and alcohol binge-fueled evening, the slate is wiped clean so it can happen all over again. It's caught in a time loop, so the events of any given day have no bearing on the next. The Isle of Blackreef is a place where lawlessness and debauchery aren't just welcomed but encouraged.

And yet it moves review gamespot