Deadlink Review

Deadlink is a cyberpunk roguelite FPS developed by Gruby Entertainment and published by SuperGG.com. I’ve been playing tons of roguelite titles over 2023 (which also includes another cyberpunk roguelite shooter) and this is the latest one to have caught my interest. Inspired by the brutal action found in DOOM (2016), the controlled chaos of Hades, and the aesthetics of Cyberpunk 2077, let’s see if it comes together into one great game.

The story is that you are a brain in a jar, part of a government agency that takes care of rogue megacorporations in the only way they’ll understand: through indiscriminate violence. Using the Deadlink interface, you’re able to control disposable robots called “Combat Shells”, and it’s your job to ensure justice is upheld where the law cannot reach. Although, first, you’re gonna have to prove that it actually works through simulations before they send you out to deal with the real thing. Lots and lots of simulations.

Now, I think the writing is pretty good. The characters, while a little generic given the setting, are enjoyable to listen to and have different dialogue for tons of situations, although they do begin to repeat themselves after a few runs. There’s also a lot of world-building in the game, with tons of exposition about your enemies, weapons, and even the implants you equip. It’s actually really interesting and it’s one of the few times I’ve ever read through a game’s codex for more information. I didn’t even do that in Mass Effect! Also memes. There are some memes referenced throughout the game, but it happened infrequently enough that it didn’t get annoying.

As for the presentation, it definitely uses its cyberpunk aesthetic well. The characters are detailed in a way where you can tell there’s a story behind their looks, the enemy designs are nice, and the environments are clear but great to look at. From the dirty streets of the yakuza-controlled downtown to the clean halls of the Femto nanotech corporation, you’ll enjoy spraying blood and giblets across the floors and walls of these places. And the music is pretty good when it isn’t being drowned out by gunfire and death screams.

Speaking of gunfire and death screams, you’ll be hearing them a lot as you run through simulations, so let’s get you into a nice and shiny Combat Shell. Combat Shells are essentially character classes you choose before a run, and they come in a variety of models that drastically change how you play. The Soldier has a grappling hook and a shotgun, allowing them to either charge in guns blazing or get out as soon as things go bad. The Hunter is more focused on stealth and trickery, swapping places with enemies and going invisible to escape gunfire. The Engineer is all about situation control with hacking and turrets. Finally, the Juggernaut… just kills stuff really, really well at close range. These four shells are slowly unlocked over the course of the game and they're all fun in their own way, but I did lean towards using the Engineer. It was actually the class I beat my first run in.

Onto the gameplay. As mentioned above Deadlink draws inspiration from the likes of DOOM (2016), where standing around is only going to get you killed, enemies are fast and relentless, and you’ll need to juggle your resources and cooldowns while you fight. It even has a Glory Kill-like mechanic in the form of marking enemies. You can do this with either your current abilities or just by throwing a grenade. Once an enemy is marked, killing them will make them drop ammo and shields. This achieves the same goal as its inspiration: if you’re losing, you should fight harder as the only health point that matters is the last one and as long as you keep replenishing your shields through marking enemies, you still have a chance to complete your run. 

And this can be made easier by using implants, because it isn’t cyberpunk if you aren’t installing different crap into your body. Implants will improve your Combat Shell in a number of ways, from making you invincible for a few seconds to sending out homing missiles of various elements, and you’ll gain them pretty consistently, either because there’s no other option when moving to the next room or it’s in the store. However, they are limited by the fact that active implants only trigger if they are properly powered and made to activate on certain actions: for example, smashing a C-Ball (Construction Ball) or swapping weapons. It really makes you think about what you slot in and what you ditch, as there are only so many implants you can equip at a time. There are also other options you can do to improve your character during a run, such as modding your main weapon, upgrading your Combat Shell's abilities to make them more effective, or simply levelling up your implants to make them better. However, it is all based on the rooms you choose to enter, so a combination of luck and strategy is involved.

When you inevitably die, you can still improve your chances of beating the game by purchasing upgrades using the accumulated XP (Expedited Provisions) and TTs (Turing Tokens) you’ve gained from the previous run. Don’t worry, nothing chosen is permanent as you can refund everything you’ve spent at the press of a button. These meta upgrades range from general combat and survival upgrades, increasing your options available during a run, giving you starting items, or making individual Combat Shells even better. The upgrades are pretty interesting and fun, but I do recommend taking the time to grind a little at the start of a fresh save. The more interesting upgrades are locked behind higher tiers so it's better to save up TTs so that the game can really get rolling. And hey, once you finish buying everything, XP and TTs are still useful. Certain NPCs that appear in between rooms will take those currencies and allow you to either gain and improve implants or let you gamble so you can slightly increase your chances of survival.

Now, let’s talk about what happens after completing your first run as it isn’t the end quite yet. Instead, you’ll unlock harder difficulties, which will decrease and increase some stats in exchange for better rewards. You’ll also eventually unlock “Extant Existence” at some point, an endless mode where it’s only about lasting against an infinite wave of enemies in a set map for some decent rewards, which is good for some quick grinding. There’s still plenty of stuff to do and the gameplay is fun enough to stick with it, I have nothing else to say otherwise.

Onto technical performance, it did wonderfully. The game ran perfectly on Epic settings with no glitches in sight and quick loading screens. However, I did notice that before every boss fight, the game would stop for a second or two before letting you move on. That probably could’ve been smoothed out a little better.

Deadlink is freaking amazing. Sure, the repetitive nature of roguelites will turn people off, but that comes with the genre. This bloody cyberpunk massacre is wonderful to play, I think the characters are good, the world-building is really interesting to go through, and there’s always a new goal to go after. It took me a little over 15 hours to beat my first run, so this should be more than worth your time and money.

Deadlink is available now on Steam.