While there’s inherent precision to aiming with a mouse pointer, guns have bullet spread, so for further-off targets, you can’t perfectly trust your dynamic reticule. I think that can be attributed to the combat, which is satisfying with the weakest pistol or the fiercest shotgun. Or dropped weapons might sit on top of each other, forcing you to fumble around to pick up the one you need right this second. There are cheap moments where the AI does something unexpected or funky and an otherwise solid attempt falls flat, to be sure. Running for the ductwork as a latch-ditch escape rarely worked for me since there’s a period of vulnerability when entering or exiting.Īs much as round after round of failure should sting, it didn’t. Instakill! But more often than not, this isn’t some all-powerful tactic to fall back on. It’s good fun, especially if you come out of a pipe leading to a toilet that some poor sucker is sitting on. The reaper can become smoke and snake his way through vents to pop up behind his prey or hang out for a bit to take a breather. There are a few tricks: knocking on doors, turning lights off, or, best of all, going inside the walls. The strategy, then, is to find a way into the building that doesn’t get you spotted and immediately one-shotted, pick off stragglers, and separate the group. You’ll die in a head-on fight and, uh, did I mention the lack of checkpoints?

Levels are packed so tightly that someone else - most likely a whole assortment of folks - will hear the commotion and come searching en masse. It’s easy to take down an enemy or two, but doing so tends to cause a chain reaction across multiple floors. Since you can only hold two weapons simultaneously, and most bullets need to hit their mark if you’re going to have enough to go around for everyone, you’re forced to play smart. There’s little if any room to wing it here.ĭeadbolt is far more stealth than action, though things can certainly get heated in a hurry. If you’re going to keep the undead down, you’ll need a plan, sharp reflexes, and efficient aim. It’s just you, armed with severely limited ammunition and maybe a hammer, against a whole bunch of them. Green-skinned zombie gangsters, ceiling-walking vampires, regenerating skeletons, and mercenary demons can wreck his day, often in a single shot. You play as the grim reaper, but not even death is unstoppable. Karma mercilessly kicked my ass 50 times in a row. Then I made it to the second level of the second act. “This isn’t so hard,” I foolishly thought. As someone who was way into Risk of Rain, a tough side-scrolling shooter that only grew tougher as time ticked by, I should have believed its designers when they called their next game “extremely challenging.” But after clearing the first set of missions in Deadbolt, their stylish new stealth-action title set in the underworld, I was feeling confident.

Deadbolt game