“Deathloop” is a next-generation first-person shooter game created by Arkane Studios, which has developed “Dishonored” and ” Predator “. Apart from the excellence of works such as “Dishonored”, “Deathloop”, which has been bounced several times, received a 10-point double full evaluation from IGN and GS before the game was released. In contrast, the player satisfaction rate of STEAM’s “Deathloop” is only 68%. What is the reason for the plummeting evaluation of the game? Is there a problem with the quality of the game? Let’s take a look together!
The male protagonist, who forgot his name at the beginning of the story, woke up on a beach. After trying hard to recall, only the memory of being killed remained in his mind. Suddenly, the words “break the cycle” appeared on the island. After climbing to a high place, the male protagonist found a submachine gun. The words around him also changed and prompted him to use the machine gun to practice. In the depths of the island, the male protagonist found jewelry and a wireless telephone. After using the radio to hack open the door, the male protagonist’s name appeared. It turned out that his name was Colt. Then a password door blocked him, and Colt had to find another way out. On the way, Colt killed several people, and then a woman named Juliana’s voice appeared on the radio. She told Colt not to try to break the loop again, otherwise he would be killed. After communication, Juliana told Colt that he needed to go to the library. When he arrived at the library, Colt pulled the handle on the wall. Juliana’s sudden appearance threw Colt into the air, causing him to be seriously injured. Then, words
On Black Reef Island, players need to constantly respawn and travel to various regions to find ways to break the cycle. As they delve deeper into Ke Erte, they will encounter people named Prophets, who, unlike the masked guards on the island, have their own faces. After killing them, players can obtain some leads, and the rest can be obtained by searching for documents on the island or eavesdropping on soldiers and Prophets on the map. Some rooms on the map that can obtain documents can only be entered at specific times.
Eavesdropping to obtain intelligence.
Due to the continuous cycle of the entire Black Reef Island, everything on the island will not change after the cycle, such as the layout of the guards and the rules of the prophets’ actions. The experience gained from your repeated deaths will be imprinted in your mind, and the next rebirth on Black Reef Island will become extremely familiar to you. Therefore, time has become your strongest weapon other than firearms. Also, because everything on the island will not change, when you are familiar with the level routine, you will feel that the level is too repetitive. For example, when you are familiar with how to efficiently kill Frank in the morning but unexpectedly get stuck at the afternoon level, the repeated repetitions will make you feel that the game is too repetitive and there is no change, which is a characteristic of the “cycle” in the game. Whether this design is good or not depends on personal preference.
Unlike the cruelty of Killer 47, Ke Erte, the protagonist of “Death Cycle”, is a complete talker. This can be seen from Ke Erte’s self-talk after waking up from the beach. Ke Erte’s talkative behavior is not limited to this. After Ke Erte solves the prophet, he will also use the radio to mock Juliana on the other end, and Juliana will also respond with diss. After Ke Erte completes a study, he will also provoke Juliana, and Juliana will only answer lightly that XX completed the study on the third day of rebirth.
“Deathloop” and “Return of the Dead” released in April are not as direct as the meat dove part. In the early stage of the game, players can only experience the “death” and “loop” in the game name. After following the process to complete the task “long day”, the game officially starts the meat dove part. When the player enters the area, he will get two rebirths. When the rebirth times are used up, Colt’s weapon will Disappear at random One, in addition, after a day, all of Colt’s weapons, ornaments and slate will also disappear. As the plot continues, Colt will unlock the residues. Players can obtain the residues through the faults and sacrificial weapons left by the dead seer. By injecting the residues into the weapon, the weapon can be brought into the next loop infinitely. It should be noted that the residues cannot be brought into the next loop.
The malfunction residue left after Ke Erte’s death will record his miserable state before his death.
The cycle of a day can be divided into four time periods. Players can choose to go to the destination according to their own plan. Each destination will be marked on the preparation interface with the current time period and whether the region has a prophet. After going to the destination, Colt will have two chances to be reborn. Players can fully utilize the opportunity to assassinate the prophet, whether to directly enter the prophet’s location or secretly come to the prophet’s side to assassinate him, all of which are up to you to decide!
The types of weapons in the game are not many. What makes weapons unique are the entries and accessories. For example, the pistol has a “feedback loop” that automatically hits the enemy and adds damage, and the “winning ace” that can cause additional damage with the last bullet. Each weapon will change its color scheme according to the entry. Unlike fixed entries, players can adjust accessories according to their preferences in the level preparation interface. Some of these accessories can strengthen your weapon, while others can strengthen your weapon. The higher the quality of the accessories, the stronger their effect.
In addition to weapons, when the game reaches a certain level, the protagonist will also unlock skill slabs. These slabs can be used to throw enemies into the sky or to enhance self-damage while being immune to damage (a must-have for reckless people). Teleportation slabs and connecting slabs that can make people physically and mentally connected are believed to make veteran players of Arkane Studios who have come from “Dishonored” feel very close.
If you get tired of looping around Black Reef Island for too long, you can switch to the role-playing Juliana’s cycle of protecting Black Reef Island, which is the online battle mode of “Deathloop”. In this mode, players will play as Juliana invading other players’ timelines to thwart Colt’s plans, which is different from Colt defeating the Prophet to obtain powerful equipment. Juliana only needs to constantly thwart Colt to level up and obtain powerful equipment, accessories, and skill slabs, and these weapons can be permanently retained without the need for residue. Before invading someone else’s plan, players can choose to randomly invade and invade friends. When you find that your friend is playing the game, will you choose to invade and disrupt his plan? After defeating him, will you launch a verbal attack on him? It should be noted that playing this mode requires the use of an accelerator and a long waiting time. Secondly, the biggest problem of this game is that there is no cheat detection! This really affects the player’s gaming experience. I hope that security checks can be added in the future.
As a next-generation game, the graphics of this work do not pursue realistic graphics like other games. Instead, it adopts a cost-oriented American comic, and the occasional appearance of American comics in the plot makes people feel comfortable. Perhaps to cater to the atmosphere of infiltration, “Deathloop” did not set background music. When players are discovered and the battle begins, retro rock music will be played. At this time, the gunshots played by players seem to be backing tracks for this rock music. When the battle ends, the rock music will end with this unique ending sound and will not abruptly stop like music in other games.
In terms of AI, “Deathloop” is not outstanding. When you use a gun to attack nearby enemies, distant enemies will not have any reaction, as if the two people are in two different time and space. The most outrageous thing is that once I solved the gun on the bridge, the two guards under the bridge were still chatting together as if nothing had happened. Although stealth games are more or less similar, it can be seen from “The Last of Us 2” that this problem can still be solved (only discussing the stealth system here).
As a game with both IGN and GS full marks, its positive rating on STEAM is only 68%. The main reason for the significant drop in game reviews is that the optimization of the game PC is really poor! Among all the bugs, the first one is the problem of the game not being able to start. When the game was first started, one of the two 3080s could not run normally, and the other could run normally after updating the graphics card driver. After playing for 10 minutes, the game crashed. To my surprise, the resolution originally set by the computer was modified after the game crashed and needed to be changed back by itself. Problems such as crashing and freezing still occur from time to time during subsequent gameplay. After a screen switch, the game also had a problem of not being able to switch back, and at this time, the level in my game had not yet ended…
In addition to optimization, there are also some problems with the adaptation of Chinese fonts in the game. The first thing that catches the eye after entering the game is the menu interface, which uses at least three or more fonts. Setting aside the issue of whether different fonts will affect the appearance, presenting level details in regular script is really tiring. The same regular script is also used for level dialogues and prompts. Due to the font, both the dialogues and the prompts in the level will make players tired, especially the ammunition prompts are not obvious in the game. Then I switched between English and Japanese to check if there were the same adaptation problems. After comparison, I found that there were also cases where the English and Japanese interfaces used three or more fonts, but the font sizes of English and Japanese were much more reasonable than those of Chinese fonts, which looked effortless. Especially the ammunition prompts in Japanese were much more reasonable than those in Chinese and English. I hope the official can optimize this problem later.
Here is a small problem with switching languages in the game. After switching to English for the first time, I wanted to switch back to Chinese, but found that I couldn’t switch back to Chinese whether I changed the language in the game or on STEAM. After several attempts, I found that after changing the language for the first time in this game, I needed to adjust the language in the game and then exit the game to change the language of STEAM in order to switch the language correctly.
Overall, ” Deathloop ” is an excellent stealth shooting game. The game’s graphics, music, semi-open map, and details in the game are all outstanding. The protective loop mode played by Juliana also adds a lot of fun to the game. The only downside is that the optimization of the PC side of this game is really poor. To quote a sentence I saw in the comments, “The game has only been played for a few minutes, and there are a lot of bugs.” This sentence can be said to be very accurate. I hope the official can fix it soon.
