Deadlight Review

Deadlight was one of the May Games with Gold for the Xbox 360. It's a very frustrating game. That doesn’t mean it's not a good game. It just seems rough. Take a look below and see what I mean.

Deadlight - Gameplay, and Story

The world has ended. There is no hope. No new beginning. Only the survivors. DEADLIGHT follows the journey of Randall Wayne, a man searching for his family across Seattle during the aftermath of a 1980s event that has decimated life on earth. This visually stunning Cinematic Survival Platformer will challenge you to run, jump, climb, and struggle for your life as you look for answers and the ones you love.

Deadlight is a side-scrolling zombie action-adventure game where you play Randall, a man trying to find his wife and daughter in a post-apocalyptic world. The story is great as you travel through Seattle through endless Zombies trying to decide if you should stop and fight or keep running.

The looks of this game are amazing. Everything is lit well, for it is a dark game. I had no problem telling what was what and who I needed to kill. There are helper arrows if there are any questions on what you would need to grab onto or jump at. It doesn’t give anything away to have those, and it actually helped a lot.

Deadlight - Gameplay Issues

Don’t get me wrong, and it’s a beautiful game. But the beauty of the game goes away with the stupid character won’t release from a wall for the 13^th time in a row. It was starting to feel like this game should have been called Groundhog’s Day. If the gameplay doesn’t match the game, then it all goes south. I would expect other places in the game to be hard, say when there is a line of Zombies between you and the next door, but no. It’s making sure that you can time one button press when a building is collapsing around you that throws you in rage mode as you grit your teeth in attempts to either throw your controller against the farthest wall or to break the controller in half, whichever is your aggro pleasure.

Deadlight - Timing 

This is a game that was all about timing. There were times when I would have to do the same part over and over because my timing was slightly off… yet there are places in the game where you think the timing would be important, but it’s not. The jump mechanics are horrendous. Why, when there is a pole right above my head, would you make me jump to the left into deep water? It would be fine if it happened once, but multiple times it happened. Then it taunts you when you die by showing you the answer, either lit up in dark spots or in shadows in the light. Yes, game, I know where I am supposed to go, but you aren’t letting me!

The Verdict

Maybe I’m not the best at adventure games. Maybe I thought I could win back my love for the adventure side-scrolling games with Deadlight. Maybe I tried too hard to win it. Once I completed the story and went back to complete the game totally, I felt like I overreacted to some points. Then I got to the same spot that I was stuck in forever, and I realized that my reaction wasn’t bad at all. The only thing that brought me back to the game is to try and get the 100% on it. Finding the secret handheld games was pretty fun, too. It makes you want to go back and look.

TechRaptor reviewed Deadlight on Xbox 360 with a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. This review was originally published on 05-08-2014. While care has been taken to update the piece to reflect our modern style guidelines, some of the information may be out of date. We've left pieces like this as they were to reflect the original authors' opinions and for historical context.