FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
Nothing interesting has come out this Summer.
I really enjoy this style of game. I try not to judge games by how long they are, but by the experience. Trying to do a dollar to length comparison is just foolish. However, 15 bucks for 2 hours is still kind of... not great. I've seen someone say 2 hours, but then a couple live streamers say it took them about 4 hours. So, I don't know.
I really enjoy this style of game. I try not to judge games by how long they are, but by the experience. Trying to do a dollar to length comparison is just foolish. However, 15 bucks for 2 hours is still kind of... not great. I've seen someone say 2 hours, but then a couple live streamers say it took them about 4 hours. So, I don't know.
Apparently it is 2 hours total but if you factor in the trial and error/restart nature of the game (like Limbo) then then play time is more like 4-6.
Just when you think we’ve seen everything the zombie genre has to offer, another worthwhile adventure lurches forth. Deadlight mixes Shadow Complex’s impressive 2.5D visuals, Limbo’s rewarding platforming puzzles, and The Walking Dead’s grim atmosphere. The resulting cocktail is potent. Deadlight’s side-scrolling action lets players dispatch and evade zombies in new, interesting ways. The game struggles with storytelling issues along the way, but emerges as a fresh take on the staling zombie concept.
Deadlight’s storytelling is its biggest flaw. Randall Wayne is searching for his family after a zombie outbreak hits Seattle. Players explore Randall’s fragile psyche through a few flashbacks and some heavy-handed monologues. Cheap-looking graphic novel cutscenes attempt to stitch the narrative together with flimsy characters and voice acting, but fail. The predictable twist and whimpering conclusion are complete let-downs. Not even the scattered pages of Randall’s long-winded, meandering diary are enough to give this zombie infestation deeper context.
Despite Randall’s tenuous motivations, working through a ravaged Seattle and its suburbs in a 2.5D space is a fascinating experience. Deadlight’s bleak art style and detailed visuals increase suspense. The foreground is heavily shadowed at times, giving Randall and his surroundings a dreary, Limbo-like silhouetted look. Rooms behind locked doors are covered in an obscuring blackness, keeping their contents a mystery.
Randall can do the basics like sprint, leap from ledges, and push boxes to progress between areas on his linear quest. He can also whistle to attract zombies. Standing on the opposite side of a pit from a pack of zombies, taunting them, then watching them fall to their doom is a sadistic joy. Other improvisational highlights include pushing a precariously parked car off a ledge onto a pack of undead, and hanging off a third story window while zombies fling themselves outside like lemmings. I enjoy seeing zombies wander the ruined streets in the background, then shamble towards the foreground. Juking zombies and navigating the basic environmental puzzles is the core of the game, and never gets old.
Zombies aren’t always the main obstacles. Sometimes they simply harass you while you deduce a route through the simple puzzles. These puzzles rarely require you to do more than flip a switch or push a box to reach a ledge, but occasionally you have more interesting tasks, like knocking down a water reserve to put out a raging fire. The path to your goal is rarely challenging and the lack of a death penalty takes the sting out of failure. It may be a cakewalk at times, but enduring a side-scrolling zombie apocalypse is fresh and fun.
Most of the game is spent leaping across ledges and studying the surroundings to progress, but sometimes you just get cornered. Zombies are physical barriers, and you can’t simply run through them on the 2D plane. No matter how proficient I became wielding Randall’s axe, two or three zombies could routinely take me down if I tried attacking them all at once. Randall’s limited stamina meter holds players back from relentlessly wailing on the undead. I had less trouble once I started maiming zombies and leaving them behind. A select number of firearms allow you to take out small packs by aiming with the right analog stick, but ammo is scarce. Sections late in the game toss players extra ammunition for some brief empowerment, but this is the exception to the rule.
Creating a compelling zombie game in a generation with too many of them is a hard task. Tequila Works manages to do this while successfully merging it with the unlikely action-platforming genre. The lame narrative and lack of consistent challenge can’t overshadow the fun I had with Deadlight. I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel.
The story is apparently supbar, but the game is fun to play. I'm still going to pick this up when I get home I think.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
I'm liking this so far, but I just hit a bit that got me to ragequit after the 20th reload.
Going through the trapped sewers with the Rat, there's a bit just after getting the slingshot where you slide down a tunnel jumping over spikes.
No matter what I do, there's a set of three traps that kill me every time, and I can't see any way around them. Nothing to shoot, no way around that I can see, and no way to avoid them while still clearing the spikes.
Cringe worthy voice acting aside, this is a pretty awesome game I think. Bought it blind without trying the trial and do not regret it.
All the ID badges seem to belong to famous serial killers. Two of em i recognize anyway, so i assume the rest are. I think I know whats going to happen at the end too. Anyway, very awesome zombie game.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
I think I've almost beaten the game. Could have done without the Rat-man sewer part, but the rest of the game is pretty awesome. I was hoping that it was going to me more of a Metroidvania type of thing, though.
I love love love the level designs. It really looks like a world gone to shit.
I hope these guys get another crack at a 2.5D zombie game. I'd love more of an exploration/survival type of deal. Scavaging for supplies and stuff. Weighing the risk of searching a building VS what you might find/what you might desperately need. That's really a different sort of game altogether though, huh? :P
I also hope they get a bigger budget for Voice Acting next time...
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
I don't care that it was X number of points or only X hours to complete.
I do care that after completing a game that I am never going to play again all I remember is how awful the voice acing was. It also did not help that the first act was easily the best, with each subsequent act veering further from what made the game good.
Zombie as environmental hazard, not monster to be killed, works very well. Act II was just Prince of Persia and Act III was a mess. At Mechner got a thank you at the end of the credits.
Yeah, I'm with you. I want to know the badness. Do you turn into a zombie? Are the zombies all in your mind? They're called Shadows, right? Are you in...LIMBO??? Is is a I Am Legend thing? "Oh, honey. I just had the weirdest dream! Well, let's go find our daughter and enjoy the rest of our lives!"
i dunno, the main guy is good enough and he's the only one talking 90% of the time
He is not good enough.
Ending spoilers:
'I am ready' when faced by an oncoming hoard should have some gravitas. This guy sounded like he hand finally made it to the front of the line at Taco Bell.
Cut out all the talking and all the cut scenes and the game would be better. And even shorter. But still better.
After finishing it, I think the reviewer said it was 2 hours long because everything after the first two hours was shit. It is also the first game in which the voice acting was so terrible I could not ignore it and detracted from the overall experience.
I'm just pissed at it because it could've been so much more. The visuals were pretty awesome and the collectibles were fun.
I get it from a gameplay standpoint, but the way Randall dies if he drowns is hilarious.
No flailing, no gasping for breath, just stop moving the instant his head hits the water.
I was expecting an 11th hour twist that he was a robot, and his brain shorts out on contact with fluids.
Finished up Deadlight with 100% on Friday. All Achievements too. I did enjoy the game, but it wasn't what I expected. I think the Limbo meets Shadow Complex with zombies expectation came from all of us here when we first heard about the game (for me anyway).
I hope they get to make another Deadlight game, but I hope they strive to make an entire game that is like Act I. Once you hit Act II the game loses some steam. It get it back a little bit in Act III, but not much. I dunno, like I said, I feel like its a solid first effort.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
Finished up Deadlight with 100% on Friday. All Achievements too. I did enjoy the game, but it wasn't what I expected. I think the Limbo meets Shadow Complex with zombies expectation came from all of us here when we first heard about the game (for me anyway).
I hope they get to make another Deadlight game, but I hope they strive to make an entire game that is like Act I. Once you hit Act II the game loses some steam. It get it back a little bit in Act III, but not much. I dunno, like I said, I feel like its a solid first effort.
I really like the early bits in Act III when it's basically a shout-out to Out of This World.
There's "not long," and then there's "2 hours long," which is in a whole different league.
Room mate has it and has been playing way longer than 2 hours.
Deadlight - spoil the plot for me, please. I keep reading how incredible awful the 3rd act is, and I'm really, really curious.
Room mate hasn't gotten quite to the end yet, but if I had to guess, I'd say most people hate how the game goes from "zombie game" to "platform game" and the game focuses on this weird old man named The Rat. There's some weirdness about how "The Enemy is Man" but this is a trope of the genre.
I could be wrong an there could be a bigger turn after that, but I think it's mainly folks upset that the game pulled a Walking Dead and is more about the characters than then killing zombies.
There's "not long," and then there's "2 hours long," which is in a whole different league.
Room mate has it and has been playing way longer than 2 hours.
Deadlight - spoil the plot for me, please. I keep reading how incredible awful the 3rd act is, and I'm really, really curious.
Room mate hasn't gotten quite to the end yet, but if I had to guess, I'd say most people hate how the game goes from "zombie game" to "platform game" and the game focuses on this weird old man named The Rat. There's some weirdness about how "The Enemy is Man" but this is a trope of the genre.
I could be wrong an there could be a bigger turn after that, but I think it's mainly folks upset that the game pulled a Walking Dead and is more about the characters than then killing zombies.
Plot Spoilers!
Act II is when you hit the sewers with The Rat and his traps. It just stinks because Act I sets up a pretty good atmosphere and Act II sort of wrecks that. I don't think Act III is too awful, not as good as Act I though. In Act III you're saving your friend, or your friend's wife or something from the remnants of the military who "are the real monsters".
Anyway, the game is about this dude trying to find his wife and daughter at "The Safe Point". He gets separated from the group he was with, ends up in Act II with the Rat, finds out that the safe point is a ruse set up byt the evil remnants of the military to attract survivors so they can have women or something, not entirely sure. Randall gets captured, breaks out, saves the last remaining person from the group he was with at the beginning of the game, and then you find out that he had killed his wife and daughter 6 months ago to save them from getting killed by zombies.
I think the main gripe (Mine anyway) is that the story is kind of weak, and the voice acting is incredibly bad. I mean, I guessed the big plot reveal half-way through Act I. Also Act II feels out of place in the game itself. Game is really fun to play though, pretty solid on that front.
Skull2185 on
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
Posts
I really enjoy this style of game. I try not to judge games by how long they are, but by the experience. Trying to do a dollar to length comparison is just foolish. However, 15 bucks for 2 hours is still kind of... not great. I've seen someone say 2 hours, but then a couple live streamers say it took them about 4 hours. So, I don't know.
Apparently it is 2 hours total but if you factor in the trial and error/restart nature of the game (like Limbo) then then play time is more like 4-6.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/Deadlight/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410b8d
The story is apparently supbar, but the game is fun to play. I'm still going to pick this up when I get home I think.
Also, it looks like there's some kind of Multiplayer mode? I think its just a score attack thing.
No matter what I do, there's a set of three traps that kill me every time, and I can't see any way around them. Nothing to shoot, no way around that I can see, and no way to avoid them while still clearing the spikes.
Twitter
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
All the ID badges seem to belong to famous serial killers. Two of em i recognize anyway, so i assume the rest are. I think I know whats going to happen at the end too. Anyway, very awesome zombie game.
i'm also much better at this than limbo, shadow complex, etc so this is good news
I love love love the level designs. It really looks like a world gone to shit.
I hope these guys get another crack at a 2.5D zombie game. I'd love more of an exploration/survival type of deal. Scavaging for supplies and stuff. Weighing the risk of searching a building VS what you might find/what you might desperately need. That's really a different sort of game altogether though, huh? :P
I also hope they get a bigger budget for Voice Acting next time...
I don't care that it was X number of points or only X hours to complete.
I do care that after completing a game that I am never going to play again all I remember is how awful the voice acing was. It also did not help that the first act was easily the best, with each subsequent act veering further from what made the game good.
He is not good enough.
Ending spoilers:
Cut out all the talking and all the cut scenes and the game would be better. And even shorter. But still better.
When I first heard about this game, I heard it pitched as "Shadow Complex meets Limbo!"
Instead it is "lame-ass zombie Prince of Persia!"
Also, "Randall cannot swim"
Fuck you, game
If you can't swim you don't deserve to survive a zombie apocalypse
And yeah, the voice acting is some of the worst I've heard
You know your game's bad when you throw three potential Achievements and an Avatar award at me for unlocking it and I still can't be arsed to do it
Twitter
I'm just pissed at it because it could've been so much more. The visuals were pretty awesome and the collectibles were fun.
Twitter
No flailing, no gasping for breath, just stop moving the instant his head hits the water.
I was expecting an 11th hour twist that he was a robot, and his brain shorts out on contact with fluids.
I hope they get to make another Deadlight game, but I hope they strive to make an entire game that is like Act I. Once you hit Act II the game loses some steam. It get it back a little bit in Act III, but not much. I dunno, like I said, I feel like its a solid first effort.
I really like the early bits in Act III when it's basically a shout-out to Out of This World.
Twitter
Room mate has it and has been playing way longer than 2 hours.
I could be wrong an there could be a bigger turn after that, but I think it's mainly folks upset that the game pulled a Walking Dead and is more about the characters than then killing zombies.
Plot Spoilers!
Anyway, the game is about this dude trying to find his wife and daughter at "The Safe Point". He gets separated from the group he was with, ends up in Act II with the Rat, finds out that the safe point is a ruse set up byt the evil remnants of the military to attract survivors so they can have women or something, not entirely sure. Randall gets captured, breaks out, saves the last remaining person from the group he was with at the beginning of the game, and then you find out that he had killed his wife and daughter 6 months ago to save them from getting killed by zombies.
I think the main gripe (Mine anyway) is that the story is kind of weak, and the voice acting is incredibly bad. I mean, I guessed the big plot reveal half-way through Act I. Also Act II feels out of place in the game itself. Game is really fun to play though, pretty solid on that front.