Deathloop test: to make us go crazy, Arkane's game is out of breath

Nostalgic for confinement, Arkane Lyon invites us to relive the same day on a loop. Okay, Blackreef Island still has more charm than the 17 m² hutch in which you may have isolated yourself for a year. But it is that it would be necessary to take into account the neighborhood a little disturbed. Their thing is to screw up the laws of physics to build a hedonistic and inconsistent society. It's a style, but it's exhausting (we're getting old).

Deathloop test: to make us go crazy, Arkane's game is out of breath See the prizeLire the conclusionDeathloop

A fascinating universe
The first hours of play, the discovery of the loop
Exhilarating and hard-hitting gunfights
A real artistic slap

Four zones is not much
Only one way to break the loop, more interventionist than expected
Enemies put up no resistance, laughable AI
Anecdotal scenario, which lacks staging

Deathloop has been tested on PC (Steam) thanks to a code provided for the publisher. It will be available on September 14 on PC and in console exclusivity for a year on PlayStation 5. Arkane being now a Microsoft studio, we do not get too wet imagining that Deathloop will join Game Pass once Sony exclusivity expires.

We're not going to lie to each other: we didn't really know where Arkane was going with his Deathloop. By virtue of the adage that a joke that needs explaining isn't very good, there was something terrifying in watching Dinga Bakaba, its director, wade through semolina to make an audience that makes no effort what Deathloop really is.

The studio only belatedly came up with the words, even pronouncing them half through his teeth. Yet it was so obvious: Deathloop is Dishonored with guns.

Deathloupe

I'm starting to get used to the exercise of explaining Deathloop. After two hands-off presentations and a generous preview a few weeks ago, the concept of the game now seems to me as clear as an imposition sheet; he uses very complicated words to define simple things.

The day breaks, and you wake up with your nose planted in the sand, surrounded by empty hooch bottles. Until then, it's a Sunday morning like any other for an inhabitant of Le Havre. But the catch is that you're actually stuck in a time loop on the island of Blackreef, somewhere in the North Atlantic.

Your name is Colt. Finally, this is what you learn from the strange stage directions that appear before your dumbfounded eyes. And you are presumably affiliated in some way with a group calling themselves the Visionaries. Wealthy and jaded, these eight individuals took over Blackreef in the 60s to conduct experiments there (the island is known for its paranormal phenomena) with the aim of creating a perfect time loop that offers them eternal life - and permanently disconnects the inhibition cable.

It should therefore not be too surprising if during our exploration we come across colorful punks wearing a mask in their effigy, onlookers disguised as wolves or guys who have fun playing long jump while loading their ass in a cannon. Everything is allowed ; they will have forgotten in 24 hours anyway. Well, not all of them.

Colt is somehow immune to the effects of the loop. He wakes up every morning face in the sand and round like the tail of a shovel, yes, but he remembers what he did the day before, unlike his colleagues. Enough to make him understand that if he wants to escape, he will have to succeed in murdering them all during the same day. All while surviving the onslaught of Julianna, Blackreef's security chief who, too, seems to have transcended the effects of the loop and can visit you at any time (I'll come back to this).

Updaam Funk

Remember these numbers: 8-4-4. Eight targets, four zones, four periods of the day. This is how Deathloop looks. Contrary to what its first images let imagine, it is a game divided into missions, which are launched from the comfort of a very intuitive menu. Anyway, no way to get lost: the game begins with a long prologue that goes out of its way to explain absolutely everything we need to know before letting go of our hands. Subsequently, countless tooltips will regularly pollute your screen to ensure that you have understood everything - which also becomes a bit clumsy in the long run.

The loop (of gameplay, this time) is simple: we organize our equipment from our base of operations, we select an objective from the appropriate menu, we choose an area (the Complex, Updaam, Karl's Bay and the Rock of Fristad), and forward Guingamp. Once we have emerged from the sewers that serve as our lair, we are free to reach our target as we see fit. Immersive sim requires.

The game started, time no longer flows. You therefore have plenty of time to search the places from top to bottom, and marvel at the science of Arkane's level design − which is one of its most incredible levels. Unlike Dishonored, however, it is impossible to save your game like a pig before throwing yourself into the mouth of the wolf. In case of death, it's back to square one, and you're stripped of your equipment. Hard ? Far from there. Arkane has planned several parades which, on the contrary, make Deathloop a title that is a little too conciliatory.

JVFR

The interiors are beautiful to cry.

A children's game

First, Colt will quickly get his hands on the “Reprise” ability, which allows him to cheat death twice before Game Over. He is then teleported a few dozen meters and takes advantage of temporary invisibility to get back on his feet. You can take the opportunity to try another approach, but the idea is still to return to your corpse to recover your residualum: the resource that allows you to “save” (definitively) your equipment between loops. Note that the "charges" of the Takeover skill are reset as soon as you leave an area. Suffice to say that it is really very, very difficult to die in Deathloop. Especially since Arkane is not a studio known for the ferocity of its artificial intelligence.

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Residue is acquired by killing visionaries or by absorbing items imbued with it in Blackreef.

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In case of death, you will have to collect your residue from your corpse, like in Dark Souls™

Let it be said: the Eternalists (the guys who defend the Visionaries) are assholes in the fleet. Deaf, blind, and as well organized as Stormtroopers, they never see us coming, place themselves haphazardly, or rush in single file down corridors to offer themselves to our shotgun. Their cone of detection is as small as our chances of being satisfied with the outcome of the next presidential election, and even an explosive shootout a few dozen meters from a group is not enough to make them prick up their ears. To put it another way: most of the time we fight against extras, just good at flattering our ability to eliminate them quickly and effortlessly. As much as it can work if you're the type to play infiltration (which is an option), as much the most naughty players will end up being bored.

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The enemies put up little resistance.

And Julianna in all this? As I said above, the head of security can invite herself into the district where you are to put a spoke in your wheels. You will be notified of its presence by an alert that will quickly make you paranoid, and will not be able to leave the neighborhood until you have deactivated an antenna that it installs somewhere in the area. But we should not overestimate the capacities of the huntress: if she is embodied by the AI, she is not more malignant than the others. Just more resistant, and again. It is only by playing online (which is optional) that the difficulty is likely to increase.

How about multiplayer?

Teased from the start but illustrated very late, Deathloop's multiplayer mode was only approached by the press during this test, not before. And we should not misunderstand Arkane's intentions about him.

I'm going to paraphrase Dinga Bakaba on this point: Deathloop's multiplayer mode is in a way a way of playing a “quick game”. No need to bother planning to destroy the loop, the goal here is to protect it by invading another player's game as Julianna.

You are therefore at home here, and go hunting against Colt. NPCs don't logically attack you, allowing you to come and go as you see fit to lay traps. Julianna also has the ability to momentarily take on the appearance of another person to blend in with the crowd. Moreover, it benefits from the same arsenal as Colt. The difference being that we unlock weapons and powers as the games are played, and not by "saving" them thanks to the residue.

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By playing Julianna, the Eternalists do not attack us, which allows us to come and go freely in the level.

And ? And that's all. There's nothing to "win" except trophies and exclusive costumes for Colt and Julianna. A delicacy therefore, which is above all there to increase the pressure gauge of the invaded player, who has much more to lose than the intruder. It's a pity that so few players have access to the game for the moment, which prevented me from chaining games to form a more informed opinion (spending 25 minutes waiting on a matchmaking menu, I have better things to do with my weekend, sorry).

JVFR

I recognize the exhilarating side of camping to ruin another player's fun.

loop sleeps

Quickly, we are faced with the dilemma encountered by Colt. How to manage to shoot the eight visionaries in the same day if they are not in the same place? You begin to get the trick: we will have to create our own fortune by influencing the schedule of our enemies.

How do I strip Eigor, who doesn't appear until noon near his lab, if I'm caught in a firefight against Fia at the same time in another district? Yes, the Visionaries invented the time loop, but not teleportation or ubiquity.

By dint of iterating (as the start-uppers say), you will quickly get your hands on documents, and other clues allowing you to better understand the routine of the Visionaries. Preciously recorded in a notebook accessible at any time (no need to take notes to play Deathloop), this information opens new avenues to dig to put our plan into action. And to top it all off, each time you kill a Visionary, you'll get an upgrade for one of the four powers available in-game.

Transposition allows you to teleport to reach high places, Corvo-style in Dishonored; Ether gives you a short invisibility; Chaos transforms you into an unstoppable war machine, and Karnesis turns you over to the dark side of the Force to manhandle your enemies by throwing them in all directions. Nexus, the most fun, allows you to link the fate of several targets together. As soon as one dies, all the others follow.

Each loop is also an opportunity to visit or revisit a district at a different time of day in order to access new places. The chaos that reigns in Blackreef increasing throughout the day, some doors open and others close depending on whether you visit a particular place in the morning or late afternoon.

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As in Dishonored, Transposition allows you to teleport to high places.

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Nexus lets you kill multiple nearby enemies with a single shot. Terrible in certain situations.

Sandbox, or house of cards?

But Deathloop may well imagine itself in a sandbox, it is actually much more interventionist than I had imagined during my preview. In fact, I didn't know it yet, but I had already seen practically everything about the game's proposal in 5 hours.

Let me explain. If there are many ways to kill the masters of the place, there is ultimately only one and only way to break the loop. And once you understand that, your approach to Deathloop changes for the worse.

During my preview, I forced myself to loop again and again to find all the flaws in the system. After a while, I realized that I just had to follow the different objectives listed in the menu to the letter to achieve my goals. Also, once you have gone around the four districts several times, Deathloop becomes the scene of a routine that is unpleasant to say the least.

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After a certain point, some areas are no longer useful.

There are certain memorable places that we end up not visiting anymore (Frank the Smooth Talker's recording studio, for example), when we will have the impression of spending our lives in this damn Complex for various reasons. Once you're sufficiently well equipped (which happens quickly), you won't have any reason to farm the residual or go back to kill a Visionary just to steal his power. At the end, a little tired, I contented myself with arriving in a district, slaloming between enemies more blind than a climatosceptic, and fulfilling my objective before plunging back into my sewers to begin the next task.

And that's perhaps where Deathloop stands out the most from Dishonored. By the rules which are his, the new game of Arkane encourages less to experiment than to try. There is never much to think about; as if we followed to the letter the “intrigues” proposed in the last Hitman. After the (fascinating, I insist) stage of discovery, the game completely replaces the player by telling him what to do, when to do it, where to move his pawns and what to do next to get it over with as quickly as possible.

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Café challenges, very “Batman Arkham” in spirit, allow you to unlock powerful weapons.

I'm just exaggerating. In addition to the "Visionary Tracks", in other words the main quest, we can just take the time to follow a quarter of secondary quests that will allow us to unlock legendary weapons. Sidesteps that will often allow us to learn a little more about the uninhibited universe of Deathloop, and whose references (Batman: Arkham and Bioshock, in particular) are obvious. But why waste time looking for overpowered weapons if the adversaries oppose us with almost zero resistance?

Cabinet of unhealthy curiosities

I probably give you the impression of being a big grump and having turned my jacket over from what I wrote in my preview. Believe that I am the first disappointed. A little as if I had pinned too high hopes on a toy requested for Christmas and which in the end will not occupy me very long.

On second thought, "disappointment" is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration in the case of Deathloop. It would be dishonest of me to write that I didn't enjoy it. The gunplay, which merges the expertise of MachineGames (the last Wolfensteins, as a reinforcement here) in terms of pop-guns and the nervous mobility of Arkane's games is truly exhilarating. Colt's powers, combined with a nice variety of weapons, provide plenty of fun as long as you are skilled enough to quickly switch from one ability to another. I can't wait to see how our speedrunner friends will mishandle the game.

Deathloop is also and without a doubt the most beautiful game ever imagined by Arkane. The art team do their best to bring to life environments so colorful they would cause Dishonored characters to have seizures. Very inspired by the 60s, the cinema of Tarantino and Carpenter, Deathloop is a game in which I loved getting lost to search every corner. Careful attention has been paid to “environmental storytelling”, and we expected nothing less from Arkane.

Technically, what is it worth?

Deathloop uses a modernized version of the Void Engine (derived from id Tech 5), already at work on previous Arkane titles. Featuring an enjoyable physics engine, it brings to life detailed environments and memorable art direction. But the PC version of the game still seems a little fragile to us at the moment. I was confronted several times with crashes that forced me to restart the current level. I also notice that the gluttony of the game is very variable geometry, pointing to some small optimization problems.

On PlayStation 5, the game is enjoyed without a hitch. It keeps its 60 fps perfectly, and offers loadings (quite frequent casually) much faster than on a computer, even though it is equipped with a high-performance SSD. Overall, the console version of the game strikes me as the best way to enjoy Deathloop. So yes, I can already see a few creepy purists syncopating at the back of the room, but the contribution of the DualSense in terms of immersion is immense. The vibrations are excellent, and each weapon offers a different resistance in the adaptive triggers. Note that the PS5 controller is also recognized on the PC version of the game, but does not offer quite the same rendering as on the Sony console. You have been warned.

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Artistically, Deathloop is an absolute marvel.

The dialogues, very numerous (Colt and Julianna provoke each other permanently by radio interposed) are not only funny but also embodied in a breathtaking way by the actors and actresses of dubbing. Special mention to the Spanish version of the game, which perhaps even stands out more than the original version. Frantz Confiac (the voice of Idriss Elba) and Annie Milon (Rosario Dawson, Jada Pinkett Smith) burst the screen (well, the speakers?), even if the writing sometimes forces a little too much profanity.

I would end with a regret concerning the musical part of Deathloop, which I would have imagined less withdrawn. Composed by Tom Salta (PUBG, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands), the soundtrack is very discreet, and ultimately only exists to accompany the oscillations of a fairly binary rhythm (infiltration / combat).

Deathloop, the warnings of JVFR

Deathloop is Dishonored with guns. So much so that Arkane pours the same qualities and the same defects into this new mould.

Absolutely fascinating to browse for everything related to level design, the artistic dimension and its universe in general, it struggles to renew itself enough to keep players spellbound until its outcome.

More interventionist than one might have imagined, Deathloop is not a complicated game, despite its concept of a time loop. Didactic to the point of being insulting, it lets us do whatever we want in its levels while constantly reminding us that there is only one way to break the loop.

A lack of letting go that we would have more easily accepted if the game showed its fangs more to its players. Artificial intelligence still not being the strong point of the studio, the enemies oppose most of the time no resistance, and we make our way through Blackreef as easily as a machete slices a clod of butter left in full Sun.

Deathloop

Dishonored with guns? Yes, with all that that implies in terms of qualities and faults. If it is exciting to play, Deathloop is a game that has a lot of trouble renewing itself and whose lack of difficulty barely keeps us going. It is nevertheless Arkane's most ambitious game, which will undoubtedly appeal to fans of the formula.