DEATHLOOP Is Pretty Good and It Has Surprised Me

How's it going, gamers? I hope everyone is doing well and that you had a great weekend. I'm still playing DEATHLOOP and let me tell you, things are starting to get really interesting — it's getting good, genuinely good. This game has a very particular story, and for those of you who enjoy dubbed versions, let me tell you that the Latin Spanish dub is an absolute gem. They brought in some of the most iconic anime voice actors for the roles, so if you play it that way, that alone is going to add a whole extra layer of enjoyment to the experience. But enough of that for now, let's get into it.

A World of Hedonism and Pleasure

So, one of the things that really caught my attention as I kept pushing through DEATHLOOP is the world-building behind the whole setup. And once you start to understand what's actually going on in Blackreef, the story becomes a whole different beast. The premise is, honestly, one of the most bizarre I've encountered in a video game in a while, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The idea behind the loop is not rooted in some grand scientific pursuit of eternal youth or a dystopian vision of biological perfection like you'd find in something like Bioshock, where the whole premise leans into this discourse about longevity and beauty and human evolution. No, DEATHLOOP goes somewhere completely different and honestly a lot wilder. The loop in this game exists essentially as a vehicle for pure, unrestrained pleasure. The people on Blackreef — the Eternalists, the targets you're hunting, the whole society that's been built on this island — they're all there because the loop means there are no consequences. None. You can drink yourself to death, destroy everything around you, lose your mind completely, do every wild and reckless thing imaginable, and the next morning it all resets. Nobody actually dies permanently. Nobody has to face what they did. It's pure hedonism taken to its absolute extreme, and that is literally the entire point of why these people are there and why they defend the loop so fiercely.

Once you understand that, everything else in the game clicks into place in a much more satisfying way. The Eternalists you encounter aren't just random enemies — they're true believers in this lifestyle. They chose this. They want this. That's why eliminating the Visionaries, the eight key targets who are essentially the architects and defenders of this whole system, is so critical to breaking the loop. And that's also why Juliana is so obsessed with stopping you, but we'll get to her in a second.

So Who Exactly Are Colt and Juliana?

These are two very good questions, and honestly, when you first boot up DEATHLOOP, you have absolutely no idea who either of these people are in any meaningful way. With Colt, you're thrown in completely blind. You don't know who he is, where he came from, what he did before all this, why he's on Blackreef, or how he ended up at the center of this whole loop situation. And that's completely intentional. The game makes you earn that information. As you play, as you explore, as you find notes and recordings and pieces of environmental storytelling scattered across the four districts, you slowly start to rebuild Colt's past. His memories aren't handed to you — you reconstruct them, and that process is genuinely one of the most engaging parts of the whole experience. Every new piece of information feels like a reward because you actually had to go looking for it.

With Juliana, the situation is a little different. You know more about her personality and her motivations from the moment she opens her mouth, but what you know is still pretty limited when you think about it. What does become clear pretty quickly is that Colt and Juliana had some kind of romantic relationship at some point, though the details of that are still fuzzy and layered in tension. What's crystal clear is that right now, she absolutely wants to make your life as difficult as humanly possible. She invades your runs, she messes with your plans, she hunts you down with a seriously dangerous set of skills and powers, and she will not stop. Yet despite all of that, there's this complicated dynamic between them that makes every radio exchange and every encounter feel charged with something more than just enemies trying to kill each other. It's not simple, and that's exactly what makes it interesting. Breaking the loop sounds straightforward enough on paper, but nothing about the relationship between these two characters is simple, and I have a feeling things are going to get a lot more complicated before this is over.

You Can Return to the Worlds Over and Over to Keep Finding More

One of the most satisfying parts of DEATHLOOP's design is how it handles replayability and exploration across its four districts. Since you're literally recovering your memory and piecing together the mystery one run at a time, there's always a reason to go back. Always. Every time you revisit a district, whether it's Updaam, Karl's Bay, Fristad Rock, or The Complex, there's a real chance you'll find something you missed before — a new clue, a hidden room, a side mission you didn't know existed, a weapon or ability you hadn't come across yet.

What makes this even more dynamic is the time of day system. The island of Blackreef operates differently depending on when you show up. Visit a district in the morning and you'll find it in one state. Come back in the afternoon or evening and the whole atmosphere shifts — enemy placements change, certain events only happen at specific times, and some characters or situations are only accessible during particular windows of the day. This means that revisiting the same locations never really feels like repetition in the traditional sense, because the island is always presenting itself differently depending on the variables you bring into it.

The Residuum system works alongside all of this beautifully. As you explore and collect Residuum, you can preserve the weapons and powers you find, building up a loadout that carries over between loops. So even when a run doesn't go perfectly, you're still making progress, still strengthening yourself, still getting closer to understanding how everything fits together. It's a loop — literally — but one that constantly moves forward in terms of knowledge and capability, and that's what keeps it from ever feeling frustrating in a way that makes you want to quit.

DEATHLOOP Keeps Getting More Interesting

So gamers, here we are and I have to say, DEATHLOOP has genuinely surprised me. I went in expecting something interesting and got something that goes a lot deeper than I anticipated, both in terms of story and in terms of how satisfying it is to play. The world is wild, the characters are compelling, the mystery of what exactly happened on Blackreef and who Colt really is keeps pulling me in further with every session. And knowing that there's a whole web of Visionaries to understand and ultimately take down in a single perfect loop, well, that's a challenge I'm absolutely looking forward to working toward. I'll keep you all updated as things develop. See you in the next post, gamers!