Deadlink

The games just feels good to play: the gunplay, the movement, the sound effects and the music. Everything just feels right.

At the same time, it severely lacks content. Maybe if we had the ability to choose different routs like in dead cells, maybe if we could skip some levels the game would feel more varied, but as it is, at some point, the game just starts feeling tedious. There are 4 locations each a set of room to clear and a boss fight at the end. 3 locations, while visually different, feel mostly the same - fight low level humanoids, take care of 1-2 harder enemies (which are unique for each level). Only the last level puts on some twist on the formula, but by the time I reached it, I had already adjusted to the gameplay and finished it on my 2-3 run. So, my experience was 5 levels, where I got to learn and understand the gameplay mechanics, 8 kind boring runs on the same 3 kinda similar levels and 2-3 runs that are kinda fun because of the 4th level.

The game is also a rouge-lite, which means you have an overarching progression between runs. Around the run 10, when I hadn't yet unlocked a lot of abilities, but had already started playing well, the runs started to feel pointless, like, what is the point of try-harding this run, if I will just get XP and return here with more health, shields and firepower in a couple of runs.

Deadlink is really fun to play, I just wish that the developer's next game will either improve on the rouge-lite aspects of it, or would just ditch them completely in favor of a linear structure, or would go full-on rouge-like to put more emphasis on the players skills.