Deathloop and Halo Infinite were my big 2021 releases. The former is out now, whereas the latter has a multiplayer beta available. Let's cover Deathloop first since I've spent about 13 hours with it.
Arkane, the creators of Deathloop, are probably my favorite studio. They are the last triple-A studio putting out immersive sims, since the Bioshock series is on the shelf along with Deus Ex and Thief (System Shock is lost in vaporware hell). Both Prey and Dishonored are among my favorite games, so when Arkane releases a title, it's a must-by. Deathloop has a lot going for it, from the swinging sixties art style to the roguelike time loop that serves as its central gimmick. You play as Colt, a man trapped in a loop on a island run by a cult called the Eternalists. The only way for Colt to break the loop is to manage to kill eight Visionaries (the leaders of the Eternalists) in one day, which is harder than it sounds, since there are only four areas with four times of day. So the challenge is for Colt to manipulate events in order to get the Visionaries to cluster together. For example, you can ruin Egor's experiment, which causes him to attend Aleksis's party, where you can conveniently murder them both. As far as gameplay is concerned, Deathloop can basically be summed up as a shooter version of Dishonored. Blink has been renamed Shift, and Domino Nexus; unlike Dishonored, you can only equip two slabs (in game lingo for powers) at once. Colt has a beefy arsenal of weapons, special versions of which are randomly dropped by Visionaries. You can acquire a Fourpounder pistol that shoots poison clouds, or a unique Rapier that has explosive bullets. The shooting feels pretty solid; movement-wise, Colt feels very similar to Corvo from Dishonored 2. You have a hacking device appropriately-named the hackamajig which lets you turn off security cameras and switch movable turrets to your side. The levels are well-designed and full of alternate pathways which come in handy whenever someone invades your game. You see, Colt is hunted by a woman named Julianna, who desires to prevent him from breaking the loop. If you play online, a human controlled Julianna will occasionally invade your game. She's at a disadvantage, however; she has only one life to Colt's three. These encounters are tense and great fun. One of my most memorable happened during the morning in Updaam. I exited on the eastern side of the map to find Julianna sniping at me from the rooftops. I turned invisible using a slab called aether and snuck all the way to the other side of the map, searching for health. I witnessed Julianna shifting over the bridge to Visionary Charlie's live-action game, so I took a shot at her but missed. Slowly but surely, I crept cloaked across the bridge and hid behind a cardboard cutout in the middle. When Julianna ran by, I jumped out and stabbed her in the back with my machete. Good fun!
Unfortunately, Deathloop's AI-controlled enemies aren't much of a challenge. They're pretty brain-dead, and the only time you'll die from them is when about twenty of them have you cornered, since Colt doesn't have much health. The four areas are unique and rich with detail, but you'll soon tired of having to constantly return to them for little tidbits of information. Worst of all, Deathloop lacks any of Dishonored's nonlethal options. Your interactions with the NPCs will totally be of the violent sort. In many ways, Deathloop feels rushed. It doesn't do a whole lot with its time travel mechanic, since nothing is permanent after the day completes. Dishonored 2's a Crack in the Slab mission, which allowed you to travel in-between the past and present of a formerly glorious mansion, let the player manipulate the environment in real-time, and therefore did more with the time travel concept than Deathloop manages. Also worth noting is that enemies lack variety, and the Visionaries go down pretty easily.
Still, despite my complaints, I'd recommend Deathloop for fans of novel first person shooters or immersive sims. If Prey and Dishonored 2 were 10 out 10s, Deathloop is a 7 or an 8, and it has a style and level of detail that few games can match. Some people have reported performance problems; I was able to run it at a locked 60 fps at 1440p and Very High Quality enabled, albeit with AMD's FSR turned on (my system has a 5700 xt GPU and a Ryzen 7 3770x CPU, so solidly mid-range).
Halo 3 was my first console shooter and a hell of a time back in college. I have played Halo 1 through 3 as well as Reach, so Infinite, which seems heavily influence by those classic games, is high on my list of most anticipated titles. The beta is promising. The guns feel solid and sound great, and the game looks like classic Halo visually. I played about 45 minutes testing out the four maps with bots, and found them to be pretty good and reminiscent of Unreal Tournament's excellent botmatches. Performance-wise, my experience varied. At 1440p and High Quality, my system managed 60 fps on the smaller maps, yet Live Fire constantly ran in the mid-50s. Assuming there's still some optimization to be done, this isn't that concerning. However, 60 fps in Infinite doesn't feels like 60 fps in most games. I'm not really sure why. It's likely frame pacing, where some frames are not being repeated at the same rate. Hopefully these problems get cleared up by launch. I'm really looking forward to the singleplayer, but Halo is the last arena shooter standing, so it would be fun to get into a multiplayer game again.
Here are some Deathloop screenshots, mostly focused on the artwork, since that's why most people play video games.
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