There is so much I'd love to say about Deathloop and so little time. If only I had some sort of loop where I could somehow have more time. If only.

Anyhow, Deathloop is carried by its story, world building and characters, all of which are absolutely fantastic. Learning about the world and uncovering the myriad mysteries of the island really kept me going through this game when the game play itself was less than engaging. The twists and turns of the game really hit me hard and I was glued to this game right up until the very last scene between Colt and Juliana. I will warn you though, while many questions do get answered, not all of them do. Even after hunting the island for every scrap of paper, I still have so many questions about the anomaly, the loop, and the island. Unfortunately for me, I share these questions with the characters of Deathloop so these questions will remain unanswered forevermore.

The stealth-FPS thing has been pretty done to death at this point and Deathloop does it fine, I guess. I've never been the biggest fan of the (sub)genre but unlike many worse games like it I think Deathloop actually manages to stick the landing on both the gunplay and the stealth.

The slabs were kinda whatever to me. I stuck to the two I found I enjoyed and left the others and didn't much bother going after the upgrades. Felt like I had far more important things to be focusing on with each loop tbh.

So the story was fantastic, the core gameplay meets expectations, and I have rather obviously been avoiding a huge selling point of this game--the multiplayer. If player invasions and 1v1 shooters are the kind of thing you are into, I think you will enjoy the multiplayer aspect of Deathloop--more on that in a moment. However, if you're like me and you positively don't enjoy those things, don't let that dissuade you from playing Deathloop. You can freely turn the multiplayer off and on or even limit it to only people on your friend's list and I think the game is just as good without it.

Though I am not a fan of the invasion concept at its core, I think Deathloop did a good job executing it. Colt's Reprise ability giving him an effective 3 lives gives the invadee a natural advantage that I think makes the experience compelling rather than insufferable when you get invaded by a Juliana much better at the game than you are.