First Impressions With Deadlink
I know it’s three days before Halloween, but I was excited for this one, I promise next week will be more spoopy. Deadlink was one of the games I covered in the Steam Next Fest in the summer and I thought it was one of the standouts. At least in terms of my tastes. It came out in Early Access on the 18th of this month and I’ve been playing it nonstop in-between video projects, stuff for the writing, and Destiny 2. So here’s a good first look at Deadlink's initial Early Access build.
Deadlink is a roguelike first-person shooter (oh my god, the brand) developed by Gruby Entertainment. You are the first field agent of the newly established Corporate Security Agency, which is a new governmental body formed with the express purpose of committing espionage and sabotage against mega-corporations, stealth optional. But before we can start that, we need to go through a bunch of virtual reality training to prove to our superiors that we’re up to the task. It’s light in details, but it’s early access, it’ll get filled in later. It does give your two handlers, Rumiko Tsurugi and Thomas Crusher, a hefty dose of personality; the former being an ex-Corpo super scientist and the latter a retired special forces operative respectively. And some of the stuff they say can genuinely be helpful on runs, so be sure to check in on them whenever you can.
From the hub, you got access to the codex, the upgrade menu, which you can use credits and tokens found on runs for upgrades, read the codex to get up to snuff on enemies you fight and even talk to your handlers. It's a nice little handful of selections to have that flesh out the world and give context to what’s happening. The meta progression is basic, but again, it’s early access, so a lot of this is very much “game subject to change” and could be radically different by the time the game comes out. But with that in mind, a lot of it boils down to having simple stat upgrades for health, weapon damage, grenade capacity etc., but there are some upgrades as well regarding the combat frames you play as. And that’s where things get interesting.
The main gameplay, as we’ve covered at the start, is a first-person shooter. But what caught me off guard is that the movement and shooting felt good. Like, really really good. Between your double jump and dash, you’ve got more than enough options to keep yourself mobile. And keeping mobile is key to surviving because enemies hurt like hell in this game. There are currently two combat frames to choose from in Deadlink; the Soldier for more direct confrontations and the Hunter for more hit-and-run style tactics. This is best reflected in their weapons and abilities as well, with the Soldier having a shotgun, rocket launcher, grappling hook and an EMP wave called the Scramble that marks enemies; the Hunter having a fast-firing revolver, an Arc Cannon that fires in a wave, a translocator that swaps the positions of you and the enemy you're looking at and a decoy you can drop that also cloaks you so you can regroup or flank. While that doesn’t seem like much, the weapons and abilities available offer a nice combat loop of marking enemies, swapping weapons and using your grenades and mobility options to stay alive and mark enemies for shield regeneration and it feels almost like Doom Eternal with the speed and flow of it and it does good things to my brain. And this isn’t even getting into the upgrades that you can find across runs that augment your abilities and weapons with on-activation procs and passives, these really get your build going in some interesting ways.
And you are going to need them because the first section of the early access build does not fuck around. From the first room, Deadlink throws everything it has at you in the form of cyber ’d-up Yakuza members, drones and androids that will ruin your day if they catch you. These culminate in one of two boss fights and this leads to my main issue with Deadlink so far: there’s not much here. Again, I know it’s early access and it could all change by full release, but you can complete runs in less than twenty minutes. Which now that I say that out loud? Isn’t really an issue.
Deadlink is a game that makes up for the minimal amount of content that’s currently in the game by not only having great mechanics but also having the stuff that’s in there be really good as well. I’m keeping an eye on this one, and that’s the bottom line. Because Mojo said so.
