Deadlight

 Xbox 360
User Score
7.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 219 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 145 out of 219
  2. Mixed: 45 out of 219
  3. Negative: 29 out of 219

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  1. meo5541
    Aug 5, 2012
    6
    Deadlight is a promising venture, and definitely deserved our attention upon release. Indeed, when the game begins you are right to believe you are in for a real treat. Unfortunately, what starts out as promising quickly turns into "yet another bleak platformer", which is a real shame because Deadlight deserves a lot more credit. Deadlight shines in some areas of another zombie infestedDeadlight is a promising venture, and definitely deserved our attention upon release. Indeed, when the game begins you are right to believe you are in for a real treat. Unfortunately, what starts out as promising quickly turns into "yet another bleak platformer", which is a real shame because Deadlight deserves a lot more credit. Deadlight shines in some areas of another zombie infested world. The art direction is quite strong, near beautiful at times. It looks like you are traversing a chapter of The Walking Dead. The feeling of urgency is conveyed well, whether it be due to attack of the horde, or a "friendly" chopper who thinks you're the enemy. The shooting mechanics of weaponry are strong and comfortable if you played Shadow Complex (and if you didn't why the heck not?!?). The musical score is fabulous and worth an mp3 purchase. You can easily kick back and listen to the dark lullaby the game sings out to you. It's hypnotic.

    Sadly, the enjoyment begins to fade away from the time you encounter your first axe - the game's only melee weapon. It's a clunky mechanic that has you knowing what you want to achieve, but if the animation wasn't done right, you'll find yourself completely missing or even pixel-jumping through zombies, being caught on the wrong side, and while your character turns with all the speed and grace of the Queen Mary, a zombie is tearing a chunk out of your neck. You eventually work out that combat just needs to be avoided, which is sad, because sometimes you really just want to hack into some walking corpses before they become too numerous.

    Jumping, too, can provide a high level of frustration. Often you'll be trying to scale a fence only to jump completely off it and to your death, or you'll be attempting to jump over zombies in a break neck sprint to overcome something chasing you, only for you to inexplicably clip one of the shadows and then end up in the clutches of the mob or gunned down by a helicopter baying for your blood.

    It really boils down to a frustrating experience. You know what you want to achieve, only to have to try X times before the mechanics agree with you.

    There is a lengthy sewer section in which you forget all about navigating through hordes of the undead and instead become Prince of Persia. Ledges, spike traps, circular blades... it's all there. And it feels so un-necessary.

    The levels that shine are oh so brief. A "safe zone" stadium, a quest to the hospital to fetch medical supplies... objectives which seemed to have so much promise but ultimately have you feeling flat because they end too abruptly.

    As does the entire experience. My completed game clocked in at 2 hours 56 minutes TOTAL game time, and that was with about 30-40 deaths.

    For 1,200 points, that's not good enough and left me feeling ripped off.

    Deadlight could have been a glorious game. Unfortunately it feels rush, lacks that last month or two of polish, and could really have benefited from a story that is more about ongoing survival rather than a few decent missions among the old "faithful" sewer levels.    … Expand
  2. dajhorn
    Nov 28, 2012
    6
    Deadlight is fun if you don't take it too seriously. It is a jump platformer with some zombie shooting that you can play through in less than a day. The visuals are very well done, but the story and acting are so bad that I'm not sure whether they are intentionally bad.
  3. capthavic
    Aug 2, 2012
    5
    Honestly....wait for a price drop. Things start out good with a very L4D feeling to the world and characters. Voice acting is decent although the main character, Randall Wayne, reactions randomly alternates between realistic and just plain bored. Gameplay is mostly solid with some light platforming and puzzle solving despite the sometimes wonky controls.

    Sadly, and perhaps fittingly,    Honestly....wait for a price drop. Things start out good with a very L4D feeling to the world and characters. Voice acting is decent although the main character, Randall Wayne, reactions randomly alternates between realistic and just plain bored. Gameplay is mostly solid with some light platforming and puzzle solving despite the sometimes wonky controls.

    Sadly, and perhaps fittingly, everything goes downhill as soon as you enter the sewers. Now as any fan of Spoony knows, sewer levels always suck...but apparently nobody told the folks at Tequila Works that info. Whoever at that studio thought it would be fun to send players through a gauntlet of trial-and-error death traps deserves a swift kick to the junk. There is simply no way to get through them your first time because they give zero margin for error, and you will have no way of knowing whats coming before it happens. Even if you happen to have the clairvoyance to know that the dual wall blades will come together instead of going in the same direction (like the previous visually identical pair you encountered!) you will still die constantly because Wayne only does what you want half the time. You have to be be perfect with timing your jumps or he will fall just short of a ledge he needed to grab. Oh and did I mention that Wayne can't swim....at all...instantly drowning in any body of water deeper than chest high. Even after you manage to drag yourself back to the surface these problems will hound you the entire remainder of the game. And that is what kills any enjoyment to be had here. What was a simple but fun zombie platformer action game just becomes a slog. You will die so often because of something you had no way of knowing would happen and given no time to react. It's not the good kind of challenge that comes from skill and mastery, it's just cheap deaths over and over until eventually figure out the one vague solution to move on. It really just starts to feel like artificial difficulty to pad the game out.

    As for the story the fact that its set in the mid 80's is barely touched on and hardly noticeable. The hidden collectibles offer some vague hints as to what caused the outbreak but its never really explained nor matters. And finally the ending was as predictable and stupid as the final segment leading up to it was frustrating.

    The ideas and beginning are pretty dang good, but is it worth paying $15? No. Wait for it to drop to $10 or (preferably) less. Or just play the free demo and leave it at that...    … Expand
  4. blognorg
    Aug 5, 2012
    5
    I'll start off by saying that it's not a terrible game, and a 5 by my standards is only moderately below average. I often enjoy games that I would call a 7, or even a 6. There is some enjoyment to be had in this game, but not much in my opinion. First off, the I didn't find the story compelling in the slightest. This is for several reasons. The whole zombie apocalypse has been done toI'll start off by saying that it's not a terrible game, and a 5 by my standards is only moderately below average. I often enjoy games that I would call a 7, or even a 6. There is some enjoyment to be had in this game, but not much in my opinion. First off, the I didn't find the story compelling in the slightest. This is for several reasons. The whole zombie apocalypse has been done to death, and the "spin" they put on it just didn't do it for me (i.e. calling zombies "shadows" doesn't add much). While the art itself was solid, I didn't care for the cutscenes. The comic book-esque, still-frame visual style clashed with the straightforward dialogue and it came off as a little cheesy. Also, I just didn't care for the main character; it couldn't sympathize with his plight, and his constant whining about his family annoyed me more than it instilled sympathy. The secondary villains weren't explained; they just seemed to be there for no real reason other than to give some variety to the enemy types and set pieces. A lot of the story felt like filler; it didn't really feel like a logical string of a events (save a few). Much of the game just seemed like a series of placeholders that the developers filled in hopes to change up the gameplay. And the story element suffered for it. Finally, I thought that the twist ending was laughable, but I'll spare the spoilers. I could live with that, though. I've enjoyed plenty of games where I didn't care about the story; my biggest qualm is the gameplay and design. For starters, I didn't care for the controls. They weren't necessarily broken; they were just unintuitive. For instance dropping down from a ledge in pretty much every game that I've ever played has been down and jump... not this game. That, by itself, doesn't seem like a huge issue, I know, but many things like that began to compound. Another thing is that ledge-grabbing was treated more like a prompt, rather than actually jumping and grabbing a ledge. In some instances, I would end up jumping underneath a ledge because I pressing a direction instead of standing right below it and just pressing jump. When you are hanging on a wall, you press jump to climb up, unless you are just switching to the other side, then you press right (or left). Again, this may seem benign, however there are parts in the game where that distinction is not always clear, and your life literally depends on knowing that. There are countless instances where I didn't feel my deaths were my fault, but rather because of an unintuitive, and slightly sluggish control scheme. I would like to preface this next section by saying there are a few clever puzzles and design choices, but it seems like for every one thing they did right, they did two things wrong. Something that annoyed me until the end of the game was the prompts and indicators. Everything from ledges, to doors, to almost everything you could interact with was highlighted in some way, even in some areas where they didn… Expand
  5. ca6
    Aug 9, 2012
    6
    It's a clunky game, I'd only recommend it if you've played through Shadow Complex and loved it and want something similar (yet not nearly as complete) while waiting for the sequel.
  6. Greenmember
    Aug 8, 2012
    7
    Deadlight is one of those games to come out that has so many things to love, but it's bogged down by a few shortcomings to make it truly great. The cut-scenes are of that of a moving graphic novel, somewhat similar to the InFamous series on PlayStation. While I like that it gets a little boring while telling the story, which is very interesting. The game goes along pretty well. While IDeadlight is one of those games to come out that has so many things to love, but it's bogged down by a few shortcomings to make it truly great. The cut-scenes are of that of a moving graphic novel, somewhat similar to the InFamous series on PlayStation. While I like that it gets a little boring while telling the story, which is very interesting. The game goes along pretty well. While I didn't go all out and beat it in one sitting, I did clock in 2 hours and 7 minutes with most collectibles by the end of the day that I bought it. The game is gorgeous though, it borrows a shaded feeling from 2010s Limbo and the platforming elements and slight graphical flair of 2009s Shadow Complex, which both are also xbl arcade games. There is a portion or two of the game that got really tedious as well, namely the underground part and some long running sequences. The score of the game, which lingers in the background is a beauty to behold when it does catch the ear. Overall I liked the game, but a 15 dollar price tag and limited play ability drag it down. There are some great moments to be had but this one might be better saved for "Deal of the Week" sometime in the future on Xbox Live.… Expand
  7. ActRaiser
    Sep 8, 2012
    6
    Basically a modern 2.5D (as they like to call it) platform game, very very similar to Limbo, Shadow Complex, and the Prince of Persia Remake.
    It's got great graphics with very detailed and lovely backdrops, with the obligatory zombies causing mayhem everywhere, although they are called Shadows in this (LAME!).
    The music is good too but the voice acting is poor to downright awful.. the    Basically a modern 2.5D (as they like to call it) platform game, very very similar to Limbo, Shadow Complex, and the Prince of Persia Remake.
    It's got great graphics with very detailed and lovely backdrops, with the obligatory zombies causing mayhem everywhere, although they are called Shadows in this (LAME!).
    The music is good too but the voice acting is poor to downright awful.. the graphic novel style, barely animated, cutscenes don't really work that well either, they are ok but they are not that well drawn or animated. Coupled with the crappy acting the presentation lets it down a bit (they bring to mind the godawful cutscenes from Renegade Ops on XBLA).

    But it's a playable game, and you will want to see it through to the end.. There are a few irritating parts and sometimes you can die and feel cheated, but overall it's solid.
    My overall playtime was 1 hour 57 in total but that doesn't count all the time dying and restarting from checkpoints. Also I went through the game again to get all the collectibles in order to 100% the game so that added another couple of hours.

    It's expensive yes, but if you don't mind splashing out the points for a weekend's entertainment then I recommend it, otherwise save your points for Mark of The Ninja instead.    … Expand
  8. saphari
    Aug 4, 2012
    7
    Maybe the best about Deadlight is its sound atmosphere. The graphics are okay-ish, like Limbo in realistic and with colors. Gameplay is thrilling in the beginning, but gets repetetive and later in the game there are a lot of trial and error scenes. Maybe therefore it's a good thing that the game only lasts two hours. Although I have to say that I found the story line compelling aboutMaybe the best about Deadlight is its sound atmosphere. The graphics are okay-ish, like Limbo in realistic and with colors. Gameplay is thrilling in the beginning, but gets repetetive and later in the game there are a lot of trial and error scenes. Maybe therefore it's a good thing that the game only lasts two hours. Although I have to say that I found the story line compelling about Randalls family.… Expand
  9. Kuraditosin
    Aug 6, 2012
    7
    In all honesty Tequila has created something truly unique. XBLA game, 1200MSP. It's 90% enjoyment and 10% frustration. Deadlight can be characterized by the fact that it's worth more than the sum of it's parts. Zombies are the theme of hundreds of games and 2D sidescrollers have been done since the NES. But Deadlight is created within a 3D world in a 2D setting - the attention to detail isIn all honesty Tequila has created something truly unique. XBLA game, 1200MSP. It's 90% enjoyment and 10% frustration. Deadlight can be characterized by the fact that it's worth more than the sum of it's parts. Zombies are the theme of hundreds of games and 2D sidescrollers have been done since the NES. But Deadlight is created within a 3D world in a 2D setting - the attention to detail is astonishing, sometimes you have to stand still and die just to admire the small bits. The biggest flaws show themselves when in the tightest situations - the game asks for precision not achievable with the currently implemented controls. I mean the close quarters combat is satisfying - the man's a park ranger, not a serial killer, so it's only logical that he cannot take on a horde alone. On the other hand the clunky controls can be a real pain when outrunning a machinegun-totting chopper and having to memorize jumps. Which brings us to the last flaw - the game throws you into situations where you have to quickly cope with mechanics you might have not yet come used to. However the graphics are awesome, the characters are believable, story is great. I myself thoroughly enjoyed Deadlight. 1200MSP isn't all that much for a few hours of great entertainment in my eyes. If you like zombies, a stark setting, a surprisingly good story and sidescrolling, then you owe it to yourself to give Deadlight a go!… Expand
  10. SUPERFLY
    Aug 2, 2012
    6
    DO NOT BUY THIS GAME..... YET! Deadlight has been released as part of the xbox live summer line-up for 1200 microsoft points.... and that's the problem! 1200 yes 1200 points for a game that provides approximately 2 and a half hours of gameplay from beginning to end. The game itself is great. It's Limbo style platforming with a dash of zombie shooting added to the mix, but that price isDO NOT BUY THIS GAME..... YET! Deadlight has been released as part of the xbox live summer line-up for 1200 microsoft points.... and that's the problem! 1200 yes 1200 points for a game that provides approximately 2 and a half hours of gameplay from beginning to end. The game itself is great. It's Limbo style platforming with a dash of zombie shooting added to the mix, but that price is outrageous. The only reason you'll go back to this game after finishing it is for collectibles you might of missed, or if you're into the speed run thing. Otherwise 2 and a half hours and that's it. Do yourself a favour and wait until the price drops to 800 points (even then I think you're paying top dollar). Good game, terrible rip off price.… Expand
  11. wesker2012
    Aug 2, 2012
    6
    Cool, original game concept, great atmosphere, very immersive, but game is too short. Could have been fleshed out a lot more.
  12. TheNutman69321
    May 17, 2013
    6
    Pretty good game for killing an afternoon. Unfortunately that's about all the fun you'll get out of it as it is criminally short. You'll have the entire game and achievements done in about 4 hours. I would have given it an 8 or 9 if it wasn't so short. Wait for a price drop if you're going to get it.
  13. Iky009
    Feb 3, 2014
    7
    Good game..............................................................................................................................................................
  14. drlowdon
    Apr 6, 2015
    5
    Deadlight is a 2d platformer set in post apocalyptic world in which zombies (or ‘shadows’ as the game calls them) and gangs of crazed humans roam the land. Right from the start the setting, and indeed the plot, aren't even remotely interesting or original but in terms of gameplay the game does seem to get things right. Traversing the environment at speed avoiding the enemies and obstaclesDeadlight is a 2d platformer set in post apocalyptic world in which zombies (or ‘shadows’ as the game calls them) and gangs of crazed humans roam the land. Right from the start the setting, and indeed the plot, aren't even remotely interesting or original but in terms of gameplay the game does seem to get things right. Traversing the environment at speed avoiding the enemies and obstacles using a neatly introduced moveset is initially good fun despite the finicky controls. Unfortunately things soon become bogged down with dull puzzles, trial and error sections that will kill you instantly (resulting in a 10 second loading screen) and sections for which the controls are simply not precise enough for.

    There is some enjoyment to be found here but overall there are too many frustrations for me to recommend it and, even with its short 4 hour running time, I’d had enough of Deadlight by the time the end credits rolled.    … Expand
  15. poklane
    Mar 25, 2015
    6
    Deadlight is fun if you don't take it too seriously. It is a jump platformer with some zombie shooting that you can play through in less than a day. The visuals are very well done, but the story and acting are so bad that I'm not sure whether they are intentionally bad.
  16. HaloFever
    Apr 25, 2014
    6
    Deadlight is barely on the good side of games worth playing and games not worth playing. The look of the game is gorgeous. Though the gameplay is 2-D, the world has deep 3-D depth and a high level of detail. Many AAA titles lack this level of polish. The gameplay is traditional wall jumping platforming descended from the original "Ninja Gaiden" and the excellent NES Batman game. However,Deadlight is barely on the good side of games worth playing and games not worth playing. The look of the game is gorgeous. Though the gameplay is 2-D, the world has deep 3-D depth and a high level of detail. Many AAA titles lack this level of polish. The gameplay is traditional wall jumping platforming descended from the original "Ninja Gaiden" and the excellent NES Batman game. However, the animations are overdone, and the player character is slow to respond to commands. The player character is also rather tiny in the world where ledges and platforms can be difficult to see.

    The meat of the game is actually not so much the frustrating platforming controls so much as the melding of the story with the presentation of the gameworld. And this is where the game really stumbles. The voice work is overdone and except for the voice of the player character, the voice work is terrible. The old man in particular seems to be voiced by someone reading the script for the first time. The motion comic cutscenes add to the problem, because staring at still images lets you think about the moribund length of the dialogue. I am never a fan of motion comic cut scenes, however, as I would prefer all elements of a game be playable in the game's engine.

    The story and gameplay also take a turn for the worse in the middle of the game as the player character enters an extended sewer level. Why do games present a rich, living world only to sour it with a sewer level? Sewers just aren't fun. Stop putting them in games. The sewer highlights the game's worst flaw, loading screens. Everytime you stumble and die, whether carelessly or unintentionally because of the sluggish controls, you have to endure a minute long loading screen. A third of the game is spent in loading screens. The brutal loading screens slow the running and platforming sequences to a crawl and disincentivize replays. Seems to me that instead of reloading the level, the game should just move the player character from his position of death back to the last checkpoint. A game with no loading screens would be more fun, and fun is good.    … Expand
  17. youlouz
    Mar 15, 2015
    7
    This game is very fun, however it gets a little boring toward the end, and is surprisingly realistic for a cartoon game. Definitely worth playing! worth the money, but I wouldn't put this game at the top of your shopping list.

Awards & Rankings

54
#54 Most Discussed Xbox 360 Game of 2012

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
68

Mixed or average reviews - based on 79 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 79
  2. Mixed: 49 out of 79
  3. Negative: 5 out of 79
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Oct 29, 2012
    70
    Strong atmosphere in an extremely stylish platformer is spoiled by some frustrating parts and overall shortness but yet Deadlight is definitely worth trying. [Oct 2012]
  2. Gamer.no
    Oct 27, 2012
    60
    Deadlight is an amazingly beautiful game. The combination of a simplistic foreground and incredibly detailed backgrounds is breathtaking. However, the gameplay isn't as elaborate. It relies heavily on trial and error, especially in the second half of the game. This made the game both frustrating and boring.
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  3. Pelit (Finland)
    Oct 14, 2012
    73
    Delivers good story with oppressive atmosphere combined with stunning 3D visuals on 2D action spiced with great music, but trips over stiff gameplay and repetitive puzzles. [Sept 2012]
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