ok maybe im biased because ive accrued somewhere north of 5k hours in tf2 and played at comp level at some point (not invite level, entry level HL), a game also made by valve, however, i’ve also never touched a moba or a third person shooter before so i feel like my preference for valve’s design philosophies in multiplayer games, are balanced out by how clueless i am with mobas/TPS. wow that was an embarassingly long ramble of an introduction, bodes well for the rest.

anyways, so what the heck is a deadlock? to summarize, a bizarro tf2 mixed with dota, set in a (very) cursed alternate reality 1950’s (60’s?) NY, after an undisclosed magic macguffin caused the astral plane to spill over in the material plane in the late 19th century. Oh and then the CIA decided to cause a resonance cascade in the 30’s using warp crystals thus causing the astral plane to have even greater influence on people and things, because even in magic world the cia is a bunch of bumbling fuckheads. Btw NY is literally called the Cursed Apple in game. Now, so far the lore is practically non existent and since the game has literally entered semi-open Alpha (you need friends to invite you), things will likely change dramatically over the coming year, but, through my 4hour session and by listening to some voice lines, it seems the people you fight as have had unfortunate events derail their lives; one guy lost his body and is now a chubby human sized iron giant, another has his hand stuck to an evil book and is also a demon, theres a lady (guy?) person who’s literally made out of goop. You seem to be fighting on behalf of gigantic metal things dubbed “patrons” who seem to grant your team powers and “souls” (more on that later). The goal is to rush enemy lanes, royally fuck up their golems (guardians and walkers) and then zerg rush the enemy patron and apparently summon YOUR patron to the physical plane (from the few lines ive heard patrons say, this would likely be disastrous for the world at large…).

Ok now that the setting’s out the way, lets get to the good stuff. Theres about 20 classes in the game so far, more are sure to follow and per the genre theyre divided in a few categories: tank, dps, healer etc. Now the cool thing about deadlock is that every class has regen and you can basically build ur character for specific scenarios, to do this you earn currency (souls), by shooting cute little golems that zerg the 4 lanes making up the map (only one map so far). Once you earn enough souls you can trade them in shops accross the map for things like: larger magazines, faster cooldowns, better abilities, etc. I havent played every class yet but so far all classes ive played have been straightforward and pleasant to learn. Speaking of pleasant, this game is a joy to play, its responsive, and as expected from a valve shooter, the movement is CRISP. You can cross the map quickly by combining strafing, air dashing, and using rails similar to those found in bioshock infinite (the minions attacking boss lanes also use them). Its also easy to pick targets and understand whats going on, some abilities might take a bit more time to grasp and use correctly but the REAL challenge of the game is the shop.

The shop is divided into three categories: Vitality (health), Damage (gun) and Spirit (Magic). health items boost your characters tankiness and speed, gun improves your weapon and spirit improves your abilities. Its easy to be confused because theres a lot to unpack especially if youve never played Mobas before but because valve actually knows what fun is, theyve laid it out in easy to read and understand formats. Essentially you want to pick items that cater to your character’s strengths and slowly purchase more and more powerful items (this becomes important as matches drag on and deadlocks happen). Yeah the title of the game isnt just for show, deadlocks are a real thing, and when both teams are matched, one player fucking up can, and will lose you the game. If competitive play isnt your thing i dont recommend this game, it wont hold your hand, and it wont help you understand how things work; its valve design 101, design a game so well, you can let people alone and they will figure it out themselves.

thanks for reading this stupid post, im going to sleep, its 3 AM. If you want to play, just pm me your steam friend code and ill invite you. You should get the game in ur library a few hours after i invite you. I’ll edit this rough draft when i play more and will repost every time i improve it.