Deadlight

Deadlight is a beautiful 2.5D platformer with action elements set during the mid 1980s in a post zombie apocalypse Seattle. You'll find yourself navigating the ruins of one of America's major cities, long after the apocalypse has taken hold. Fleeing from the undead you'll make it through not quite so abandoned apartments, survive a madman's puzzle lair deep in the sewers, and face the far more dangerous enemy in any survival scenario - other people. Obviously, this sounds ridiculously cool at this point.

You take on the role of Randall Wayne, a man who has had his life turned upside down by the advent of the zombie apocalypse. At the outset of the game you know little about Randall’s background, but that he is traveling with a group of survivors to Seattle. Quickly you’ll learn that he is a Canadian refuge seeking what he believes to be the last safe haven his wife and daughter could have fled to when the dead started munching on the living’s brains.

The opening scene is actually one in which Randall executes another survivor, and then, when discovered by the others, particularly the now hysterical sister of the girl Randall just killed, is forced to explain that this girl had been bitten after she wandered from the group (but where were the zombies?!?). Things get cut short when it’s apparent that the gun shot attracted more attention than is otherwise beneficial in any zombie scenario, so the survivors need to get out, and fast. Of course, the ladder your group is escaping up breaks before you have a chance to use it, and so you’re forced to part with the group, letting them know you’ll meet them up ahead at the safe point. If I were personally in this type of situation, I’d much rather it was “I’ll meet you around back, or just down the road,” but I guess that doesn’t make for as exciting a game as being forced to travel through a zombie invested city on foot with the hopes of somehow finding your three remaining companions.

It’s also probably a bad idea for the guy traveling on foot to give up his gun. Just saying.

You'll quickly find yourself scampering up ledges, vaulting from window to window, or shimming along power lines and hoping they'll hold you weight, since there is a particularly hungry looking group of zombies down below. These are some examples of the platformer elements of the game, which makes up nearly everything you'll do. Much of the game is no more than simply running and making a few well timed jumps, or climbing up ledges, into windows, and then hoping over zombies, sometimes even whistling to bring them closer to you, since this game is not big on combat. Things get really interesting when you need to push a box around, kick down a door, or just charge through a weak wall.

You will encounter a couple of means of defending yourself beyond jumping over zombies or tackling them as you progress. The foremost of these is the handy-dandy fire axe. It’s great for knocking zombies down, or, if you’re good enough, chopping their head clean off. Later in the game you’ll encounter a pistol and shotgun, which double as a means to take out locks on gates, and eventually find the useful slingshot, which is largely used to trip special switches during the largely puzzle based platforming section in the middle of the game. However, limited ammo renders your firearms mostly useless, except as a means to escape a particularly tricky situation, and as such you’ll rely much more on the axe, that is, when it’s available.

The middle of the game involves several puzzles and zombie traps. In this one there are many switches you'll need to trigger to move platforms around.

Associated with all this running, jumping, climbing, and axe swing is a stamina mechanic. Its simple enough: hanging from a ledge burns up your stamina, and when it reaches zero, you let go. When your bar hits zero when you’re swinging an axe, your attacks become much more spaced out, weaker, and your character beings to hunch over between attacks. The latter scenario is the only time I really ran into issues with lacking stamina, since it’s not very often that your jumping from ledge to ledge without adequate time to recuperate. Stamina, as well as your health, can be upgraded if you find the right item, which is nice particularly in the case of your health bar, since the only way to heal is to find a medpack, which cannot be taken with you.

Unfortunately, I’m at the part of this review where I’m out of content to talk about, and it’s onto the quality of the experience. In that sense, Deadlight falls terribly short of what I was expecting. It is, as I’ve said, not heavy on the combat. For the majority of the game you’re unarmed, and so your best defense includes things like tackling zombies or jumping over them - this game is almost strictly a platformer, which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it essentially picked a hole and stuck with it. There are also quite a few sequences where the tolerances for failure were a little too strict. A split second hesitation while running through a collapsing missile silo, or an ill timed jump when vaulting over a series of spikes can doom the entire “scene.” Add in controls that, whether utilizing an Xbox 360 controller or keyboard and mouse, could feel very awkward and seemingly not respond to your inputs in the way you’d expect, particularly when dealing with fences that you climb over and them jump off, and the frustration of watching Randall keep switching sides instead of simply jumping off. Top it all of with a story that is unfulfilling, told in cutscenes that all bugged out on me, resulting in no sound, a main character I can’t empathize with, and a surprisingly short game, and the result is an experience that was not at all what I had hoped for going in.

A notebook full of collectibles, as well as notes on each chapter, provide a story that is lackluster and makes you feel a bit odd about the main character.

There are certain design aspects of Deadlight that I thought were really neat, but turned out to just not be enough to make the overall experience a positive one. One of the best is the use of 2.5D. First, it's beautifully executed anyways, and the game get's points for the atmosphere it presents. Probably my favorite part about the 2.5D though is that it's not uncommon for enemies to wander out of the background, approaching the screen until they are ultimately on the same plane as Randall, where they proceed to attack and generally be the pain that zombies usually are. Another cool mechanic is how rooms are hidden until you approach them enough to peer inside, acting as a different form of line-of-sight. If you see a closed door in the corner of a room, you'll have no idea what is there until you open it. It could be a path out or filled with zombies, but it will all be totally blacked out until you crack that door open. Again, cool mechanics, but they can't cover up the game's other failings.

Interactive items are either highlighted or will pop up with an icon, but only when you get right up next to them.

I suppose what I had really been expecting from Deadlight was something that was a better blend of action and platformer than what it was. I do like platformers as well, but this one just felt off the whole time. It was never that challenging, or presented you with puzzles or other difficult obstacles to your progress, with the exception of maybe 4 points throughout the game that just required moving through an area with such little tolerance for error as to be frustrating, rather than a challenge to be overcome. Honestly, I can't at all agree with the critical reception Deadlight got, nor even the trailers on the Steam page that would seem to present the game as far more action centric than it really is - the type of information I utilized when I decided to get this game.

I spent nearly 7 hours in Deadlight, but that was largely due to attempting to replay cut scenes that bugged out and did not have any sound, or going back and collecting everything because I needed to do something to justify the copy of Torchlight II I had traded in exchange for this game, otherwise my total time was closer to 3 hours. And just a heads up, the collectibles, which consist mostly of journal entries and stranger’s IDs didn’t really add much to the game, except for this feeling of how odd Randall is. Of course, there is an alternate ending that comes out of left field, and I guess it ties in with those collectibles better, but to unlock if you’d have to go back and beat the game on Nightmare mode, which means no saving, and frankly even I am not that much a of a masochist, so just go to YouTube. While the lowest price I have seen it individually was $3.75 on Amazon or Steam, I have also seen it as part of a bundle with 4 other games on Amazon for $10. Usually $15 titles don’t dip below the 75% off mark, so expect to see it at $3.75 again, though you might want to pick up the soundtrack instead, because that's actually much better than this disappointingly mediocre game - 5 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 5/10

Suggested Price $3.75

*****

For more Deadlight images, check out this collection of various screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click any one for a full sized image.