Note: Although this was posted in November the game itself was played in October.
SCHLOCKTOBER '21: This October I played a number of games with Halloween appropriate themes, focusing on older and less appreciated games in my backlog. These aren't necessarily horror games but rather games with strong horror elements. I've decided to blog about these games and whether I think they're still worth playing as a seasonal treat or the gaming equivalent of an apple full of razor blades.
Deadlight was first released in 2012 during the second to last Summer of Arcade when the sheen was already coming off the incredible promotion that gave us influential classics like Braid, Trials HD, LIMBO and Bastion. In 2012 the general consensus was that the games released were mostly disappointing, with the exception of Dust: An Elysian Tail, a gorgeous hand-drawn 2D platformer that became something of a cult classic. The infamous Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD was seen as the biggest flop of the bunch but Deadlight got mixed reviews, seen as a stylish zombie platformer that was too short and too uneven to stand out from the crowded fields of XBLA platformers or 2012 zombie games.
I didn’t buy Deadlight when it was first released but I picked it up on sale at some point and then bought the Director’s cut version for $6 a few years ago, always intending to get around to it. Now I have. My overall thoughts are pretty similar to the consensus at the time. Like a lot of the games I’ve played this month Deadlight has more style than substance and a lot of flaws. It’s certainly not terrible and for its current sale price of $3 on XBLA it’s worthwhile as a short horror game you can get through in an evening, but it has a number of flaws that make it hard to give a strong recommendation.
The set up for Deadlight is pretty simple and very cliché for a zombie story. You play Randall Wayne, a 40 something Vietnam vet living in a zombie apocalypse in 1980s Seattle. You’ve gotten separated from your family and have fallen in with a band of survivors, in a set up that seems cribbed straight from The Walking Dead, which clearly inspired much of this game. There’s not a lot of plot here but the tone is established when Randall kills one of his companions who has gotten herself bitten, and then the whole group gets separated from him and he is left on his own to survive in the city.
As a game Deadlight doesn’t seem sure about what it wants to be. Randall controls like a puzzle platformer character, with a lot of weight and momentum behind his movements. He has a wide variety of moves for a game like this. He can run, jump, ledge grab or dangle, crouch, roll when landing (which reduces damage), climb ladders, hand over hand across ropes, jump off walls once, interact with items, drag boxes, break down doors, use a weak and strong melee attack, and shoot guns. The controls are fine for the most part though at times they can be a bit annoying such as some doors requiring only one press to open while others require two. This is done so that you have a moment of panic trying to remember under pressure, which serves the atmosphere but I’m tired of intentionally clunky controls at this point. Overall it’s hard to fault the control scheme given the game that Deadlight wants to be…at least most of the time.
Sometimes Deadlight is a puzzle platformer, asking you to move boxes and hit switches to open up paths and progress, or execute a series of jumps between various points to get up and over obstacles. These areas generally work well, though Deadlight has a visual readability problem that can make some puzzles harder than it seems like they should be. Deadlight is a dark game, with many scenes verging on black and white (though it is in color and sometimes bright colors are used for visual impact) and it’s also visually detailed. This can make ladder rungs or switches or objects you need to shoot hard to see in the environment. I died a lot because it wasn’t clear what I could climb on or whether an object or platform was in the foreground or background. At one point you need to shoot something to clear a gear and I spent 10 minutes groping around the environment figuring out to progress before just shooting randomly at things. I’m not even sure what it was that I hit that triggered the switch and let me move forward. That’s bad design.
These issues come even more to the forefront when Deadlight focuses on action. Some of these sequences involve running from right to left and leaping across rooftops in sections clearly inspired by mobile classic Canabalt, and these are generally okay except that it’s hard to tell if certain objects that can trip you up are in the foreground, background, or on the same plane as you, especially when you’re moving at speed and keeping at eye out for zombies. Other times the game leans into combat. Your base attack is with a fireman’s axe, which you can swing horizontally to knock zombies back or down, and vertically for a power strike that’s mostly used to decapitate or dismember zombies that have been knocked to the ground. There’s also a push move if a zombie gets close to you. The horizontal strikes can occasionally, seemingly at random, decapitate and kill an enemy but most of the time you’re going to be knocking them down and killing them before they get up. This works fine in single combat but for much of the game you’re facing groups of 3 to 4 zombies at once and because so much of the combat is based on chance (will a strike knock an enemy back or down, will you kill with a lucky blow?) your main tactic is to strike a few times and retreat, killing enemies only when it’s safe to because they are all knocked down or the others have been knocked back far enough for you to land the killing blow on the one that’s downed. This is made worse by the game’s stamina meter, which also drains when Randall climbs or hangs off a ledge but is only really a factor in combat. It recharges fast enough that you are never truly defenseless but it also drains quickly and you attack slowly when Randall is winded, so you end up attacking a few times, retreating to recharge, then moving forward to attack again etc… It’s a slow and tedious dance but it isn’t challenging, so when there are checkpoints where a combat section is right before a challenging platforming section you have to go through it over and over again, and each time takes way too long. It’s an interesting way to approach the concept of survival horror but it doesn’t really work for me. Of course you can also use guns and as long as you aim properly it’s not hard to head shot the zombies, but since you never know when you’ll need your ammo and guns are also used to break certain barriers, the game incentivizes you to use the axe. It’s just not enjoyable to do so.
If Deadlight’s gameplay is a mixed bag where it mostly excels is in visuals and atmosphere. It has a striking semi-silhouette look that is, to my knowledge, unique and is very beautiful. The game is extremely detailed, presenting a believable decayed city with some great environments ranging from streets to parks to a dilapidated hospital. The zombies, which the game calls shadows, look great, with their burning coal eyes and lurching movements. All the animation is fantastic. It’s definitely showing its age as a nearly decade old title, but they say art style ages better than realism and this art style has aged beautifully. With the exception of a pretty bad sewer section (that is the worst part of the game from a story, gameplay, and aesthetic perspective) I enjoyed exploring this world and checking out the various details hidden in its crevices. The game is packed with collectables, from the IDs of the fallen to playable Tiger Game style video games, to pages from Randall’s journal that provide a little bit of narrative and background. A lot of care went into creating these highly detailed levels and many of them are just as fun to see as they are to navigate.
And Deadlight is, for the most part, fun. It’s between 3 and 4 hours your first time through, the story is forgettable but not terrible, the game has a striking look and strong atmosphere, and while the gameplay is only acceptable it’s not particularly difficult or frustrating and if you like momentum based platforming with simple traversal puzzles (as I do) you could do much worse. As a horror game it’s not particularly scary but does create a decent sense of dread with its atmosphere. There are a few moments where you are about to burst through a door only to have a zombie burst through it instead that would be frightening in other circumstances, but it’s hard to produce fear with a platformer, especially one where all the characters are so small. While I think Deadlight looks good and creates a decent atmosphere it does not have the boundless creativity of something like Little Nightmares so it can’t match that game’s ability to create fear or dread.
Deadlight is the equivalent of what used to be a straight to videotape or DVD horror movie, which still exist to some extent on streaming services. Much of the time they’ll be total dreck, occasionally they’ll be masterpieces, but most of the ones that aren’t terrible are just sort of…acceptable. They’re a decent way to burn a few hours when you want some chills, a little action, and maybe a decently spooky location filmed by professionals. That’s what Deadlight is. At its $15 asking price it’s a bit steep for the length, but it’s currently on sale for $3 (I got it for $6) and at that price it’s a pretty good bite sized chunk of Halloween-time gaming. Especially if you’d like to play a zombie game but don’t like being scared. More and more I’ve come to appreciate games that get in, do what they want to do, say what they want to say, and get out. As sales and subscription services reduce the price of games and the biggest issue becomes whether they’re worth the time investment, and as I age and begin to face my own mortality, I’ve come to really enjoy a short game with high production values and a distinct style that doesn’t ask me to invest a week doing the same thing over and over again. I liked the Assassin’s Creed Chronicles series and I like Deadlight for similar reasons (though I liked Deadlight better because it had more atmosphere and fewer frustrations.) A lukewarm recommendation is still a recommendation. It’s $3 and 3 hours. That’s not a lot of risk even if the rewards are modest as well.
Schlocktober Rating: Low ambition good execution schlock.
Deadlight is a fun little zombie platformer. It has some flaws but nothing outrageous, and it has some virtues but nothing transcendent. I think it was done a disservice by being included in the Summer of Arcade, which had produced enough bangers that it came with expectations. Now, years later, it's fine. This is perhaps the most average game I played during Schlocktober. A straight 7 out of 10, which is also its Metacritic score. It's not something worth going out of your way to experience but if you've got a few bucks and a few hours and are craving a zombie game or a puzzle platformer with some action it will fit the bill fine. If this were a Halloween candy it would be a Hershey bar. Plain, simple, nothing wrong with it (at least if you grew up with American chocolate) nothing special about it.
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