DIMM009: Deadlock
I know I'm supposed to be writing the next video but I cannot stop thinking about Deadlock so I must yap about it for a little bit.
If you don't know, Deadlock is a new valve game. It has been a kind of open secret, as there was a pseudo-NDA for talking about the game early. As far as I know, the only punishment for breaking this was just being banned from the game. But now, Deadlock actually has a steam page, so the NDA has been lifted and people are finally posting videos about it and talking about it openly.
You get access to it by someone inviting you to the game, and just the other day the invites reaganomically trickled down to me. As of writing this (8/30/24 at 11AM), there are about 100,000 people playing this game right now, making it the 11th most played game on steam, and they haven't even announced it yet.
Now, when I saw this game, I initially thought what everyone else thought, which is "this is what they've been doing? this looks like actual shit." It's essentially a 3rd person hero shooter in the style of a MOBA. The competitive hero shooter genre has been played out for so many years that new ones just blur in my mind. I tried League of Legends a couple years ago and really didn't get what MOBAs were all about. It sounds from the pitch like its just some kind of wicked abomination of every popular game genre for the past 10 years.
But somehow, against all odds, Deadlock has me hooked. Believe it or not, a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena makes you feel like you are in an actual war. There are side objectives and events and gaining ground and it contributes to this real investment in winning the war, which is something that other hero shooters can't really achieve. This game is something else seriously.
The thing that has made me love this game is, of course, the movement. In classic valve fashion, it looks super simplistic, but can get super complicated if the player puts in the time. It seems as though its just a dash, but you can actually dash-jump if you time it right to fly though the air. Then you can slide to get more distance, or bunny hop on the ground, or double jump to go higher. Some heroes have abilities that increase movement, and all of them can have their stamina greatly increased with cards. Just yesterday they added wall jumping to the game, which is a whole other thing to consider in this movement hierarchy. It is pretty rare that I use it, but it does work out sometimes.
I have been playing Kelvin a lot (I call him Kevin), and apparently nobody likes this character. I guess I get it because he's a lot like Mei from Overwatch, in that he uses ice to trap and slow down enemies to allow for a stronger player to go in for the kill. I play more on the support side of the spectrum, but I've seen some Kevins go full DPS beam striker, and they do really well. He has this funny Frozone ice path that paired with the fleetfoot ability is some of the fastest movement in the entire game.
I made a small video about Kevin just to get it off my chest. I’m sorry i’m addicted
I really like the idea of having all of the abilities available to you for any hero, making the individual heroes not really matter that much. This is a big problem in Overwatch 2, where the hero you pick has huge ramifications on how the game is going to go. 99.9% of the time, Junkrat gets countered by Pharah and there's nothing you can do about that. Whereas in Deadlock if you’re getting countered, you can buy yourself out of it. If your team needs you to be a healer, buy it, they need more DPS, buy it. Since you can't switch heroes there are a lot of ways to play any hero to suit what your team needs.
I think that this depth is really what I like about the game. They hand a lot of power over to the player to decide how they want to play the game, which is a characteristic I really like about Valve. I've spent a ton of time trying to decide what my optimal build is (my current Kevin build is called "Annoying Support Kevin") and it feels like everyone is gonna have their own tiny little nuances in how they personally play the game, and I think that'll give it a lot of depth to investigate.
I cannot stop thinking about Deadlock, it has taken over my life, I am probably about to go home and play it some more. If anyone reading this needs an invite, just shoot me a DM on twitter I'll hook you up.