Colt discovers that the only way to kill the loop is to assassinate the eight superpowered nerds who set it up. Fucking hell, airdrop in two crates of hard cider and a Realdoll and show me where to sign, guys. And Colt wants to escape from this situation, which is the first glaring plot hole for me. The premise is, you are Colt Vahn, grizzled mercenary type ‘cos you can’t exactly get a job at the DMV with a name like that, who wakes up with no memories on an island full of good-time Charlies who have deliberately locked themselves in a one day time loop so they can party forever and never have to deal with the ever-downsliding outside world.

Sounds like a bloke with a speech impediment trying to point out a single masted sailing ship.

Partly for all the reasons listed below, partly because the name just sounds weird the more you say it. Deathloop comes to us from the creators of Dishonored and Prey – or to give it its full title, “not that Prey the other Prey” – and brings their trademark play-it-your-way AAA immersive simminess to the time loop concept, but will it be the game that takes the crown of time loop genre namer? No, it won’t, frankly. Yeah, I know there’s been half a dozen time loop indie games, but there’re so many indie games competing for attention none of them have a high enough profile, it’s like trying to see magic eye pictures in television static. What Doom is to Doom clones, Dark Souls to Soulslikes, the bitter polyamory of Metroid and Vania. But they can’t officially be a genre without a proper exemplar. They’re a nice neat way to formalize the standard save load function within the context of the plot and they let us live the fantasy of not having to advance beyond the present day and watch our civilization’s gradual transformation into a gigantic consumer electronics landfill. You know what, fine, maybe time loop games can be a genre. We have a merch store as well! Visit the store for brand new ZP merch. Want to watch Zero Punctuation ad-free? Sign-up for The Escapist + today and support your favorite content creators! This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Deathloop.

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