Zombie games have been a staple in the gaming world since the dawn of time, with titles such as Resident Evil and others releasing at a near-constant clip. One would be mistaken to assume that such games would have been obsolete by now, with gamers moving on to more difficult targets, but alas, games like The Last of Us and Call of Duty still champion the walking dead, and here we have another side-scrolling horror game called Deadlight.
Deadlight, which launched on Xbox 360, was marred by horrendous performance issues back in the day. The game adopts the morbid storytelling of games such as Limbo, with interesting hand-drawn cutscenes like in Alekhine’s Gun. It’s a beautifully remastered game, just from the art direction alone. But with so many side-scrolling platform games on Xbox One today, does this one hold up after all these years?
Well, it’s reasonable to say, yes. From a storytelling aspect it’s quite deep, or at least it’s trying to be. It’s the type of game that takes itself too serious, with cliché twists and some bizarre reasoning behind some of the things that happen in the game.
The game is centered around Randall Wayne, a two-dimensional (both literally and figuratively) protagonist that ended up separated from his friends. The world was destroyed by a post-apocalyptic event in 1986 after a patient was infected by an unknown virus that turned almost everyone into the walking dead, also known as shadows in the game. The story plays off in the desolate streets of Seattle. The protagonist is also looking for his wife and daughter as he continues through the streets, with some flashbacks to before the tragic events that caused the apocalypse. However, at the end, he discovers something that he blocked out of his mind due to PTSD.
As for the story, it’s quite cliché in its execution. It’s one we’ve heard all too often, at least in some zombie apocalypse titles. They try to mix it up a little with different angles, but Deadlight just goes all in with the tropes of old. One cannot blame them however; there’s only so much you can do with zombies.
The protagonist sets off in pursuit of his friends and somehow ends up in a strange battle against the New Order, a group of bandits trying to kill everyone that’s actually alive. It reminds me of the reasoning behind Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation trying to murder everyone who might have survived out in the world just because they can. Along the way, Randall encounters several characters that help him along. The Rat, a weird old man living in the sewers puts you in a life endangering test to make sure you can survive before he lets you into his lair. It’s beyond idiotic to me, for when you get past all the tests, you only get to go find his son, and then he barely tells you anything useful. The protagonist could have just walked the streets, and he would have been safer.
Gameplay mechanics are quite solid and I enjoyed playing through the game, even though it’s quite short. I did, however, have some issues with the combat. For instance, when you take on zombies the protagonist tires quickly, and when they do get a grip on you, you die within an instant. The game offers you a chance to get away, however, this is more of a formality, as the zombies more often than not overwhelm you. Other than that the game gives you a decent amount of headroom. It offers you both a gun, and an ax (if the Rat doesn’t take it from you, and for some reason fails to give it back after your test), and both are quite effective.
Graphically the game is gorgeous, with the city of Seattle filled with nice details. The background is a quite low-resolution, but with the foreground so pretty, one rarely notices. The characters are shrouded in darkness for some reason, and the zombies take on the Limbo approach, with most of them only dark figures with shiny beady eyes peering out of the black. It conveys the desolation of the post-apocalyptic world perfectly, and it should be applauded for that.
Summary
As far as zombie games go, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Some titles have gone on to try and make them more fun like we’ve seen with Dead Rising, but for the majority of these games, they’re tired old Xerox copies of each other. One would be hard-pressed to truly find an original game in the genre, and Deadlight isn’t any different. It takes the story of how the world fell into the apocalypse and turns it into a two-dimensional platform game.
It is quite fun in its execution and gives you a few solid hours of gameplay. The game doesn’t stretch the player too much with elaborate puzzles. For the most part, it clearly defines what needs to be done to solve some gameplay problems. As for the graphics, it’s quite beautiful and desolate and I wouldn’t mind a third-person rendition of this game, as the two-dimensional world can become boring after a few hours.
If you’re into not killing many zombies, and solving simple puzzles with a been-there-done-that story, I would suggest you get Deadlight. I for one don’t seem to know why they actually remastered this game since it’s better left on the Xbox 360, where it’s more relevant. Back then the market wasn’t this saturated with these experiences but now this title feels like another one in the pile.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.