Deadlink

I dislike this game for one simple reason; every boss fight has a ton of additional enemy spawns constantly and that simply is not fun to me. The combat is good and the fights are fun, but I just cannot stand when 90% of a boss fight is spent killing additional spawns for health (Shields, in this case) and ammo. It makes for a very unfun fustercluck of an experience. If that's your thing, you'd probably love the game; unfortunately, it isn't for me.

There is simply too little content here, and the progression requires way too much grinding just to tackle the higher difficulty settings. Having only four levels with minimal layout or run variation in a roguelite directly undermines the entire core of the genre. After just a couple of runs, you have already seen almost everything the game has to offer. From there, progression feels artificial because you are locked behind spending tons of resources just to upgrade your stats enough to deal with spongey enemies. The good: - Cool cyberpunk theme and polished visuals. - Fast and responsive movement and gunplay mechanics that feel heavily inspired by modern Doom games. - Solid weapon variety, though there is definitely room for more. - Boss fights are fun, even if they lack run-to-run variation. The neutral: - Weapon balance is hit or miss, as certain guns feel completely underwhelming or useless on higher difficulty tiers. - Enemy variety could be much better across the four maps. The bad: - Content is extremely sparse, and you can comfortably see everything the game has to offer in under two hours. - Higher difficulties rely far too heavily on tedious grinding, and the resource grind feels exaggerated to artificially pad playtime. - Specific enemies feel wildly overtuned. The healer on the third map is a total nightmare because he heals huge chunks of health while acting like a tank and hitting like a truck. You can interrupt him with melee, but on higher difficulties, the fight just becomes absurdly unfair. - The progression system actually works against you. The more implants you unlock, the more you dilute the item pool, making it way harder to land a decent, cohesive build when you need one. - Class variety is pretty thin with only four choices available, and the balance between them is way off since a couple of them feel vastly superior to the rest. - Poor CPU optimization. Out of nowhere, the game will randomly spike my processor usage, causing CPU temps to skyrocket for several seconds for no apparent reason. Overall, this is a decent foundation for a shooter, but at full price, it is hard to recommend. With so many deeper, more varied roguelite shooters on the market, Deadlink falls short due to its lack of content and artificial difficulty scaling.

The demo was great, and I expected to have fun with the full release, but ultimately the "FPS with roguelite elements" moniker turned out to be false advertising. It's a super-short roguelite with the difficulty cranked through the roof just to hide how little content there actually is, and most of the progression is nowhere to be found. Disappointing.

FPS Roguelike that feels quite satisfying to play, reminiscent of Roboquest albeit with the movement toned down a bit. Solid gunplay that feels fluid without being too intense. The feeling of flying around as soldier with the grapple cooldown reset shell upgrade is unparalleled. The implant system is fun and you can get some pretty interesting synergies going. Lacks a little variety when it comes to classes, abilities and weaponry I feel. Each shell only gets the one weapon (not counting the heavy weapons which are interchangeable between shells anyway) and two abilities that can't really be tuned outside of the aforementioned implant system. Even then, the 4 shells you do unlock feel varied enough in their playstyles to not become repetitive or boring. Working your way through the permanent upgrade trees can become a chore after a while as costs exponentially increase as you get nearer to completion, with some nodes requiring several full runs worth of EXP. Game also hasn't received a content update in almost two years, do with that information what you will. Overall solid game, would recommend to any action roguelike fan.

This is the perfect game for a quick play. You're looking for beef-ed up weapons, fun powerups, beautiful art style and good enemy variety? This game has you covered.

Loving the flow of the combat. It's like Hades, but FPS and Cyberpunk, and without the 10/10 music and NPC interactions. Looks and runs great, constant 144 FPS in 5120x1440.

Genuinely very satisfying gameplay. It's not as harsh as other roguelikes, you can very easily maintain your shields which I appreciate. The guns and abilities are fun to use, the music is great, the bossfights are fun, you can get upgrades fairly quickly. I haven't really got any complaints. Well worth getting on a sale. Alternatively, keys are about £2.