Deadlight

Deadlight is a zombie game. There, I said it! It was going to come out eventually so I thought I may as well get it over and done with. I’m hoping you’ve not already run away in terror though, because Deadlight is actually pretty good.

The first thing about Deadlight that took me was the eerie neo-noir art-style. It’s quite unique in this regard; the protagonist and certain aspects of the surrounding environment are black silhouettes, while everything else has a normal colour pallette. Open air sections are particularly impressive, with entire streets and towns rendered with an incredible feeling of depth. Combine all this with the lighting that fades in and out as you move between rooms and what this creates is the sense that you’re playing through a living, breathing comic book world. Similarities with the recent Walking Dead game may be drawn from that as a result, but in reality their art styles differ enough that there’s no real comparison can be drawn.

If anything, I’d argue that Deadlight shares more in common with Abe’s Oddysee than anything else – the gameplay is a dead ringer. As I was clambering about and jumping over the various obstacles and platforms, I could help but wonder if Randall Wayne, the protagonist, was perhaps a Mudokon in a past life. While hypnotism and farting aren’t part of Randall’s skillset, the way he can use his voice as a means to interact with the environment – usually talking to characters or luring zombies – and the general way in which he moves around the environment put me very much in mind of Abe. This isn’t a bad thing, I should say – the added nostalgia factor was a more than welcome surprise.

It does feel like Randall may have inherited some of Abe’s renowned combat prowess however, or to be more precise, his distinct lack of it. For the most part, your chief weapon is a fire-axe. While it has decent stopping power against one or two zombies, you’re stuffed against anything more than that because of how frustratingly unwieldy it is. It’s not until you find your first gun that you’ve got any real chance against larger groups of the undead, but even then ammo is scarce, so it’s not something you can use all the time. That said, these limitations feel deliberately imposed to induce a feeling of helplessness and make you question whether getting into a fight is always the best option. It certainly does a great job of adding to the tension in more populated areas of the game.

Elsewhere, there are a few areas that do fall flat. For one, the tone of the character dialogue just doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the game. The most notable perpetrator is Randall himself, who at times seems to be strangely cheery for someone who can’t find his wife and child, is constantly plagued by nightmarish visions and is surrounded by more death and chaos than a clearance rail at Primark.

Another thing is that the game is very short, and it isn’t largely that difficulty either. Intrepid explorers could easily uncover literally everything the game has to offer in about 5 hours – in the first of Deadlight‘s three acts, I managed to get a 100% completion rating first time and with only a mild urge to actually look for secrets. While I haven’t yet maxed out all the acts, doing so just feels like a matter of time more than anything else. Being short and easy might work in certain nightclubs in Edinburgh, but not on the Xbox Live Arcade. Especially not when you can get the infinitely-replayable Trials Evolution for the same price.

Despite all that though, I still firmly enjoyed Deadlight. It has a charm that few other games possess, looks brilliant and has a gameplay style reminiscent of older platforming gems. It’s just a real shame that it probably won’t keep you occupied for very long – certainly not up until episode 3 of The Walking Dead is released.