It’s safe to say that Deathloop stood tall as one of the most anticipated games of the year. Amid a release slate flush with sequels and remakes, here was a brand-new concept from Arkane, a studio that hasn’t missed in nearly a decade, making creative use of its time-loop feature to deliver a truly fresh experience.
Deathloop has been out in the wild for a few weeks now. So, among players, how’s it stacking up to the hype?
Read More: What Deathloop Does Differently From Dishonored and Prey
On Steam, one of two platforms (Deathloop is also out on PlayStation 5 and the Bethesda launcher, but c’mon, that’s not relevant), the game has racked up more than 8,000 user reviews. Of those, about three quarters are positive. Many of those reviews liken Deathloop to Arkane’s previous hits Dishonored and Prey, and the stellar standalone expansions for both. And then there are those who riff, with horrible puns, on the game’s name, saying that an absence of support means “we will forever be stuck in a deathloop of mediocre games.”
In the other corner, you’ll find folks slamming the game’s poor technical optimization, which has resulted in some distracting instances of stuttering. There’s no shortage of critiques about its fundamental design, either—with some saying it’s little more than a lesser Hitman, albeit with magic powers and a first-person perspective—or a narrative that’s so undercooked it bears a high risk of salmonella. (For more on that, Polygon’s writeup of the ending’s pitfalls is a fantastic read.)
And, of course, some reviewers land squarely in the center, saying Deathloop is fine but very “been there, done that”—perhaps, a jokester could argue, the highest accolade one could give a time-loop game. Here, in totality, is Deathloop, as told by the cyclical nature of Steam reviews.
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