All You Need is Kill

I read All You Need Is Kill a long time ago, a graphic novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I remember it being one of the best things that I had read in a long time. The whole premise of living, dying and then returning at the beginning of the day with the skills, knowledge and abilities that you had learnt during the previous cycle was such a brilliant idea that it eventually ended up in Hollywood and the movie "Edge of Tomorrow." The roguelike genre has been around for a while, but recently we have seen some incredible games, such as Dead Cells, Hades, Slay the Spire, The Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain, that have pushed the genre even further. With Deathloop, the whole idea has been taken one step further with the retention of knowledge in the form of clues and infused items between loops. You play as Colt, a man who just wants to get through the day without being shot, stabbed, blown up, gassed or obliterated in some other weird and wonderful fashion. Waking up on a beach, you discover that you have done this before, many, many times. But for some reason, this time, you can retain the memories of what has come before. You must piece together what is happening, why it is happening and what you must do to stop it all from continuing—no mean feat. The key turns out to be eight 'visionaries', the leaders of the beautiful island of Blackreef. Each Visionary has a role to play in why Colt can't get out of the loop, so each of them needs to be taken out for everything to go back to normal - all within the same day. The trouble lies in that this can't happen at the beginning of the day as Colt can't be in two places at once. So begins the journey of Colt and his attempt to round up the visionaries so that he can slaughter them in bulk. The map of Blackreef is divided into four distinct areas - Updaam, Karl's Bay, The Complex and Fristad Bay. Colt can play each of these areas at one of four times in the day - morning, noon, afternoon, evening (except Karl's Bay and Updaam, which are off-limits in the afternoon). Giving you a possible 14 different locations to discover clues, kill Visionaries and pick up new weapons. Colt's initially armed with a shitty SMG, and it tends to jam at the most inopportune moment. So one of the priorities is to pick up another weapon. The issue is that you lose any guns you may have picked up with the whole respawn at the end of the day. To combat this annoyance of losing items, skills and powers, Colt can harness something called Residuum that gives him the ability to infuse items to keep them in subsequent loops. This mechanic makes him more of a death machine each loop and means that Colt can take new routes to his targets, use different powers to avoid, bamboozle or straight out destroy the enemies. Arkane is probably best known for the Dishonored series of games. It's a series I truly loved. Not just are you a kick-ass Assassin, but you also get to harness some super abilities such as Blink. Well, Deathloop takes this one step further and brings these powers in via slabs. We get the typical Blink (called Shift in Deathloop) and Invisibility (called Aether in Deathloop), but it also introduces Nexus, which links enemies together so that if you take one out, it does them all. These powers are what brings Deathloop together, and you can choose to go stealth with Aether and Shift or loud and proud with Havoc and Nexus. Overall the game is great fun; I had a blast going through and nearly mastering it. I have completed the run through a few times now, each trying to do something a little different, taking out the Visionaries in different ways and then choosing a different ending. I will probably come back just to 100% and grab that achievement, but there are other games to play for the moment. As a side note: There are hints that Deathloop is part of the same universe as Dishonored, and I'm looking forward to seeing if they take this any further. ——— Original ratings: • Visual Design: 9/10 • Sound Design: 9/10 • Gameplay: 8/10 • Longevity: 9/10 • Fun: 10/10