Quick-witted, sarcastic, and bloodthirsty, Julianna emerges as Colt’s implacable nemesis, one who has taken pleasure in murdering him in every conceivable way over an untold number of days. There’s one wrinkle, however: Colt is being hunted by Julianna, the only Visionary who also retains her memories across loops. Near the conclusion of the story’s tutorial-ish first act, Colt also gains the ability to infuse weapons, trinkets, and quasi-magical “slabs” with a kind of extra-dimensional phlebotinum, which causes those objects to reappear in his possession each morning. Unlike most of the denizens of Blackreef, he remembers previous iterations every time the loop resets, whether at the end of the day or due to his ignominious death. (It’s worth noting that, apparently by pure coincidence, Deathloop has some superficial resemblances to Housemarque’s Returnal, released just five months earlier.)įortunately, Colt possesses a handful of key advantages compared to his targets. This is not an easy task, given that each of these supervillains is surrounded by loyal goons and sophisticated security systems – and, what’s more, each has a habit of quietly changing locations throughout the day. In short order, Colt determines that the only way to “break the loop” and escape this purgatory is to kill all eight Visionaries before the day ends. This extraordinary island has been hijacked, so to speak, by eight aggressively unpleasant megalomaniacs called the Visionaries, who have used bleeding-edge experimental physics to turn Blackreef into their eternal, self-aggrandizing playground. He is living the same day over and over, thanks to the unique timey-wimey properties of Blackreef. Colt remembers almost nothing about his past up to this point, but his extraordinary circumstances quickly become apparent. The player controls Colt Vahn, a foul-mouthed ex-military type who awakens on a beach on the mysterious subarctic island of Blackreef. The elevator-pitch premise of Deathloop is admittedly arresting. Friday’s worth of ridiculous garnishes, then Deathloop is a perfectly shaken whiskey sour. If Assassin's Creed has become one of those novelty bloody marys stuffed with a T.G.I. Arkane Studios’ inventive puzzle-box shooter Deathloop is the latest title to illustrate that game developers can achieve amazing things when they focus on doing a handful of things very, very well. Ditto Crystal Dynamics’ Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015). Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2013) was another. Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010) was one such game. Occasionally, however, a AAA title comes along that throws into stark relief just how needlessly distended many of its contemporaries have become. (This writer, for one, still spent 200+ hours in the world of Valhalla, because everything else aside, it remains a spectacular, pseudo-historical simulation of Dark Ages England, which is extremely my jam.) The proliferation of Stuff is starting to feel like a problem, however, one that big game studios are struggling to overcome, given that packing their games with these checklists of bric-a-brac seems to result in ungodly piles of money. It’s also worth pointing out that this doesn’t necessarily mean that such games are bad. This is hardly an original observation for a critic to make, of course. This epidemic of Stuff – combined with vast open world settings and over-long, meandering storylines – contributes to an exhausting sense of bloat in many AAA prestige video games. There are weapons, armor, mounts, ships, and tattoos to unlock. Motivated, perhaps, by a belief that gamers must quote-unquote feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, Valhalla publisher Ubisoft also crammed the game with a seemingly limitless laundry list of Stuff: side quests to complete, monasteries to raid, legendary beasts to slay, curses to break, mysteries to solve, and what seems like about 500 treasure chests to locate and open. It is not enough that Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla allows you to stealthily eliminate Anglo-Saxon evildoers in a mind-blowingly meticulous recreation of 8th-century England. One might term this the Ubisoft Problem, although the condition afflicts titles released by many prestige game studios. One of the common criticisms that is often leveled against contemporary AAA video games is that they’re overstuffed with… stuff.
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