These things happen, you are so used to seeing a style of play that, when something similar comes along, your head tries to put everything in the same bag. Looking into the eyes of Arkane’s Deathloop, Dishonored came to me – that’s obvious – but also some roguelite in a mix that I didn’t quite understand.
This has history and points to a lot of chicha. Do I have to complete his entire story despite being able to die and go back to the beginning? Does that mean that I have to do everything perfect to get to the end? How the hell am I going to face his eight bosses with that fear in his body? It turns out that everything is much easier than that .
That the game looks spectacular is not something that will surprise anyone at this point. I take it for granted that all of us who have been through Dishonored or Prey are going to dive here head first, without rope holding the harness and without looking for water at the bottom of the well or a collection of forks pointing upwards.
The demo without me at the controls does not give for impressions beyond what is shown on the screen, a Dishonored set in the 60s with a touch of humor and a story worthy of the best of the smokes, so it seems more logical to me reach out to those who, like me, knew that they wanted to play this game without hesitation, but they also did not quite understand the structure that would support those great games that almost all of us manage to see. Well nothing, let’s get to it.
How to play Deathloop
The idea behind Deathloop is that we have reached an island where we must kill eight enemies but we have an amnesia problem and we are trapped in a time loop that forces us to restart the cycle every time we die. When we return, we can do so with new powers or upgraded weapons.
– Like in a roguelite.
– Not.
The difference is that we are not stuck in a limited loop, but in one that offers us 16 different options as a starting point . In addition to being on an island divided into four different areas, we can choose where and at what time of day we start the cycle (morning, noon, afternoon and night).
The idea is not to start in the first location in the morning and finish in the fourth at night, having killed all the enemies at once. What Deathloop asks of us is to investigate, at will and without a clock to rush us, each of the locations and periods to find out the what, how, where and when of each of the variables.
From there we will discover which areas are open at different times, where each enemy is on the island depending on the moment, how what we have learned in one place can help us access another on the opposite end of the island and, in the end of the way, in what place and area of the day we can bring together the eight enemies to eliminate them in the same loop, the Deathloop .
– But then dying makes less sense, right?
Well, think about how mammoth Dishonored scenarios on steroids can be , which is what Deathloop comes to be. 16 different locations are many levels that, despite having an identical structure, it is very possible that they will do the spike presenting different patrols and enemies that you will not be able to dispatch from the beginning.
Luckily the game has the possibility of obtaining points called residues to improve the character and our survival options. In addition, it also offers a kind of limited reappearance -two opportunities- at checkpoints that will allow us to recover the points obtained up to that section if at any time we fall early.
From there, what you have already seen in a good pan of videos and trailers, weapons of the most varied colors that range from rifles to nail guns (special mention to a hacking device that allows opening doors and manipulating turrets), and the Now a classic collection of powers that allows us to avoid falling damage, double jump, unite the lives of several enemies to end them all despite killing only one of them, become invisible, throw enemies into the air as if you were a Jedi of the Blaxploitation …
And all that, which is not exactly little, is what awaits us in Deathloop . a game that we can only classify as a firm GOTY contender when it ends in our hands on September 14 that now seems more distant than ever, but for now has all the numbers to end up earning the foreseeable medal.
