Review: Deadlight

The world has ended. There is no hope. No new beginning. Only the survivors. DEADLIGHT follows the journey of Randall Wayne, a man searching for his family across Seattle during the aftermath of a 1980s event that has decimated life on earth.

Pros:

• Beautiful, detailed graphics with a well executed 3D to 2D use of the background. You see zombies in the back ground and before you know it there up in your face trying to eat you. The draw distance in the back ground at times is breath-taking. From seeing the burning skyline to petrol stations on fire to the country side, it’s all really well done.
• Refreshing take on the zombie genre as a whole. Playing it safe and avoiding confrontations is key to success over fighting. Taunts will aid you in farming the undead to where you want them. Zombie game and platformer have never looked and played so well.
• The music is good and fits in well with the game, I say that and to be fair there isn’t as much music as you would think and this actually adds to the atmosphere.
• PC version supports the wired 360 pad right out of the box, the game will pick up your using a pad and change all the button icons and loadouts for you.
• Control scheme is simple and can be changed to your liking wether it be a controller or the keyboard.
• You will visit several locations and each has its own unique feel, especially with the fore mentioned background activities.
• Combat is simply a case of pressing a button to swing your axe or aiming and firing with your gun. As a whole it feels meaty and gets the job done.
• Chase scenes play out like they were just lifted from a blockbuster movie, with explosions and tension running high, it’s all kicking off and to cap it all off you get a heart stopping slow down moment as you make your final escape.
• Checkpoints aid you and are well placed so not a lot of back tracking is needed.
• A stamina system is used that drains as you swing your weapon, run or hang from ledges or rope. This one system helps the games tense feeling hit home, no random hack and slashing will win you this game!
• Clever and devious puzzles will keep you on your toes.
•  Full online leaderboard support breaking your score down into the various acts.
• Collectibles whilst not compulsory, do add a lot more back story for you and can be found randomly throughout the levels.
• You can have help in the way of a shiny object system where by key ledges or objects will become bright or shiny if you may that will help you to solve puzzles.
• A level select option is also present to help locating collectibles or just to relive an awesome set piece.

 

Cons:

• Typical cliché story that we all know a 1000 times already.
• Jumping mechanic can take a bit of getting used to, as you jump in an arc style instead of straight forward. This makes timed jumps or precise jumps a real ball ache.
• Random difficulty spikes, this could be a result of the jumping but every now and then you will hit a big difficulty spike that will take a lot of will power to get through.
• Music especially on the pc version would always cut out on FMV’s.
• By default the keyboard controls are awkward and fiddly.
• Fighting a cluster of zombies is a bit of a mess, for swinging an axe at them you may well see your axe fly through them and allow them to munch on your brain. Later on this gets quite annoying.
• Aiming with a fire arm is hard work, you only see the cursor when it shows on the enemy, so long-range aiming is really hard. It could do with a longer sight on it to help you.

In summary this is a great game that while it annoyed me in places and the story had been done a million times before, I still found myself coming back to it, not allowing myself to be beaten. I should also point out despite me calling them zombies in-game this is not the case, they are known as shadows. I wouldn’t say its worth the 9.99 price tag, a few quid more off and you have yourself a good game for a good price. I’m hoping the few issues I had with it can be sorted in time as I just love the art style they went with on this. In short if you want a platformer zombie game with puzzles, here’s your horse to bet on.