Deadlight: Director's Cut

Many have commented how the game is 4 hours too short. Well I say it's 4 hours too long. I strongly recommend NOT purchasing this mess, and I'll tell you why: it is EXTREMELY rage-inducing and very badly designed. The gameplay is objectively bad. The controls are atrocious; the character movement is too heavy and unresponsive, a bit like GTA IV if you played that, only in a 2.5D world with VERY precise movements, so you do the math. As for the platforming, it is terrible. When trying to grab a ledge on a simple vertical-only jump, you need to have pixel precision, so couple that with the numerous sequences where you are bound by time (falling debris, timed traps, approaching enemies, etc.) and the result is that you often end up dying multiple times on the same part. And that WILL happen a lot, and I mean it, especially on the last stages. You WILL repeat every checkpoint multiple times. It's humanly impossible to react to many situations so you are forced to replay several parts, skill simply does not factor in at all. On top of that, the layout of the levels are bad and you will often find yourself jumping to death simply because there are no reasonable indications to where exactly you have to jump. "Ledge X or Ledge Y? Which is the right one and which is going to kill you? Jump and find out!". Last but not least, the graphics are bad too. This is the Director's Cut, so what "improvement" did the make? Why, they just shoved more awful bloated graphics effects like the insufferable Chromatic Aberration, uuurgh. And the graphics settings are highly limited, you can't choose certain effects on or off by choice. It's just a slider with 4 different presets. As for the sound, it's nothing special. There's one nice song during the helicopter chase scene and that's it. The voices are bad. The story is meh. In conclusion, a 1/5 game. I can't recommend this at all.

Shame the graphics and the atmosphere are pretty cool.. the millimetric platforming and the bad programming makes this a no-no for mouse and keyboard players. Also crashed after sewer exit.

While Deadlight has its moments, they are unfortunately brought down by serious design flaws. All too often, I would end up jumping for a piece of set-dressing that looked suspiciously like a platform or tripping over an obstacle that was camouflaged into the background, and getting from one checkpoint to another is frequently hampered by dead ends and instant kills for which the player could not possibly be prepared (this is most vexing toward the end, where I was instant-killed several times by off-screen enemies who had never presented themselves). As a result, much of the game revolves around trial-and-error-ing a section until one knows where to run, jump, and aim their weapon through muscle memory rather than quick thinking. And even then, often times whole sections of the level would not load correctly and Randy would end up falling through the floor into the negative zone, requiring a restart-from-checkpoint anyway. Thankfully, the checkpoints are generally relatively close together, but that only serves to make the game less frustrating, not more fun. And even with all of these issues, the game can be completed in four hours and change.

The first act is great. It's like a sidescrolling zombie survival with tough combat and interesting puzzles, and it feels good to play. Then the second act completely falls apart. The story and setting become a nonsense fever dream, combat is replaced by increasingly ridiculous puzzles and nothing but, and the tedium and frustration skyrocket. I didn't finish the third act because the second was just so awful to the point it felt like the first act had been made by different people. Great at first, goes to hell fast.

Do you enjoy trying to jump through or atop things with repeated failure all with the fun of a 5-second window? Do you enjoy the controls being so clunky that when trying to storm through a door, you just bonk against it harmlessly while being shot at? Do you enjoy graphical glitches in time trials so that, if you avoid all the falling objects, you randomly find yourself splattered anyway? If you enjoy a game of fighting the controls non-stop, and every stage changing everything so you never get the opportunity to get good at it, this is surely the game for you. The idea? Seems neat, who wouldn't like a 2D zombie platformer to axe zombies some questions. Except the problem is you die, over and over and over again, by the game springing new mechanics on you without warning. Then once you got those mechanics down, you get to enjoy it all over again with NEW mechanics, and never feel as if you've gotten good at any of it. Finally figured out you need to dodge roll over a pressure plate? Have a nice collapsing roof nothing in the game hinted at coming! Want to jump to the next platform? Accidentally have your thumb angled too far down as you jump? Enjoy letting go immediately! This game is one long series of control based frustrations, and I've played plenty games with control based frustrations. I'm not sure if it's better on a keyboard, but it CLEARLY was not made with the imprecision of gamepads in mind. That could even be ignored, if it wasn't for the constant changing of what to expect to "keep you on your toes" to the point of just no longer bothering to expect anything. What's the point of a game I can't hone any skills in? It's just a random collection of scenes with a loose narrative that will spit in your face come the end.