Team Fortress 2(TF2) stands out among the seas of multiplayer FPS(first person shooter) schlock. Team Fortress 2 more than any other multiplayer game I have played isn't afraid of giving the player huge amounts of freedom to play how they wish, with drastically different ways of playing. In most multiplayer shooters your choices boil down to 10% faster firing speed in return for 5% lower damage, or some garbage like that. Whereas in TF2 you can replace your gun with a bottle of milk! The milk, by the way, is thrown at enemies and coats them in milk, shooting these enemies then returns a percentage of the damage done as health(just like real life). You are free to completely change how you play and plenty of these strategies are actually viable. The game works on a set of consistent system(apart from the random mechanics #RemoveRandomnessFromTF2), these systems are learnable, and learnable to a great extent they are. Anyone can press space then left-click a rocket at their feet, but very few people can effectively do a rocket jump roll out to the frontlines or consistently hit market gardens. That is until you build the skill to do so. These two things, freedom and high skill ceilings work together to create some of the most fun anyone can have, want to stop a casual game with a stupid strategy? You have the freedom to try, and if you have the skill you can succeed. That potential for fun is unmatched in my opinion. And that is just talking about the casual mode or casual style community servers. There is an immensely fun competitive mode and the best cooperative FPS on the market(d@m) included. So please give it a try, TF2 is in a crisis right now with the bots, but we will win.

Eh, probably like a 6/10 game.

This was my most anticipated game probably ever. I love Arkane Studios, they are the only AAA studio left making my favorite type of game, the immersive simulation, so of course I do. Unfortunately, I feel DEATHLOOP fell a bit short in some ways.

In prior Arkane games the player was given a huge set of tools with which they could use and abuse the game's systems to solve problems in creative ways. In Prey(2017) there is a moment when the player must get into a room that is full of enemies by opening a door and letting the enemies flood out. How do you keep you or the other people around from being killed by the monsters? Well that's up to you. I built a knee high barrier of GLOO to slow them from getting out of the room, used my Typhon powers to establish traps, set up multiple turrets, and mimicked a turret. The Typhon couldn't even leave the room, my defenses were too strong. The game never told me to do this, I did this of my own volition. But unfortunately DEATHLOOP just doesn't provide the player with as many tools to find their own solutions, resulting in unfortunately few solutions. The tools provided in DEATHLOOP just don't provide as many opportunities, and that is really sad to me. There are still cool things to do, don't get me wrong, but I would have appreciated more depth.

In this game you can only equip two weapons, two powers, four character traits, and you can add three mods to each weapon. I don't see any reason to artificially limit these things, the process of playing this game is about discovery, and discovering these the things is the biggest part of that, so why make it so I can't even use most of these things? I don't see how this supports the gameplay, the only thing it does is push the player into playing the game like the common Call of Duty. If I could have all the powers equipped I would be solving the game's combat puzzle in far more interesting ways(not too interesting though because most of the tools are pretty limited in their functionality, and there are not very many tools) which is what it feels like DEATHLOOP wants me to do, but it just does not let me.

What really irks me is that Arkane could have made this better all they needed was more interesting systems and tools and to not artificially limit me to only two cool powers per mission. Arkane knows how to make a better game than this, they have but it feels like they are holding back. For example in an unreleased Half-Life spin off game these guys made they had a nailgun that would arc electricity between the nails you fire. With this you could make little electric fences. Now let me ask you this. Why not make the nailgun in this game work that way? That would be a cool tool to give me, but instead the nailgun just functions exactly like a pistol.

You have heard every other complaint before, the A.I. sucks and it does not need to suck. The looter shooter mechanics are unnecessary, the trinkets should have made the guns cool not just added boring stat bonuses. The game is only "solved" one way. The ending sucks. Etc.

Overall, I did have fun, but that was only because I went out of my way to play creatively and engage with the systems. I DO recommend it, but only if you are really willing to try to play creatively because in DEATHLOOP it takes a lot of effort to be creative. If you do end up liking it then I would implore you to try Prey(2017) or any other Arkane game, as they take the creative gameplay to the next level.