I haven’t touched many first-person shooters, let alone multiplayer ones, this year, as I got to a point where I just felt like I needed a good break from the genre. Well, it looks like breaktime is over, as last night I sunk quite a few hours into a fantastic new roguelike FPS that I’ll definitely be returning to multiple nights a week, and will be looking to rope friends into playing with me. It’s called Deadzone: Rogue and it offers a direct transmission of dopamine to the brain, delivered in an amusing dystopic satire about an egomaniacal CEO who ruins everything and likes to slap “X” on things.
Emerging out of Early Access on Steam yesterday, Deadzone is a speedy roguelike FPS set on a space station featuring three main “Zones” filled with a variety of missions that task you with barreling down corridors, mopping up hordes of biomechanical enemies, and constantly chasing powerful upgrades. True to its roguelike fashion, many of the upgrades and guns you’ll find will be lost if you die (co-op makes this easier, naturally). But there are also a variety of permanent upgrades you can invest in before you dive into a new run.
In motion, the game feels like it’s learned a lot from what’s made many modern looter shooters so good. Increasing in power not only lets you kill enemies faster while staying alive longer, it lets you invest in classes and playstyles that interest you. The speedy roguelike nature of the game means you’ll be putting together your build far faster than you would in something like a Destiny or a Warframe, but the speed and power fantasy, and the demanding tests of accuracy in hectic situations, all manage to coexist together well. In fact, for my first few runs, I wasn’t paying much attention to the stats. The shooting and movement work so well that, especially if you’re starting on the easier difficulty, you can just dive in and worry about the numbers later.
Eventually, you’ll want to pay closer attention to stats and what bonuses various items give you and how they may or may not detract from the build you’re going for. The game has four elemental powers that may sound very familiar to fans of a certain looter shooter: Void, ice, fire, and lightning. You can go all-in on one or two of these elements, or diversify your lethal portfolio of guns and grenades that come back after a cooldown. Lightning satisfyingly will chain across multiple enemies, ice will freeze them up, it all works very predictably, but also provides a nice sense of discovery when you hit the end of an encounter and can choose from three items to augment or add to your suite of abilities.
Deadzone is a systems-focused game. Various items and Perks play a significant role in how efficient you are at clearing its corridors, but it rarely feels like the action needs to slow down while you sit and do math. Even when playing with other people, folks tend to pick up new items and abilities rather quickly. There’s a very “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” vibe running through the gameplay. So if you’ve found many other looter shooters and some roguelikes to be a bit burdensome with the number-crunching and you love a fast-paced shooter that’s clearly giving the middle finger to our very uncertain and messy political times, Deadzone: Rogue ought to be on your radar.
