Science-fiction themed first-person shooters can feel a dime a dozen. I would bet anyone reading this review has long lost count of the number of times they’ve taken up heavy arms against an alien or robotic threat that outnumbered them multiple-hundreds-to-one. Deadzone: Rogue may look like an unassuming first-person shooter on the surface, but through superb gunplay and excellent utilization of the roguelite formula, I was left kicking myself for not discovering this game when it arrived on other platforms last year.
As a man who awakens alone on a space station with no recollection of who he is or why he’s there, your only option is to push forward through dozens of rooms swarming with enemies. Thanks to terrific gunplay, regardless of which weapon you equip, blasting through Deadzone: Rogue’s bite-sized rooms is an exciting delight. Developer Prophecy Games has found the sweet spot for its aim assist, creating a rewarding gameplay feel whether you’re sprinting around with a shotgun or popping heads with a sniper rifle. Your weaponry, especially early on, is largely dependent on the loot either dropped by enemies or picked up at the end of each room, and the feeling of building out your kit brick by brick, room by room, is among the most rewarding feelings I’ve had in gaming this year.
As you work through the multitude of rooms in each unlockable Zone – either solo or cooperatively – you accumulate various weapons, items, perks, and more. The fact that every bite-sized room rewards you with a new upgrade, and multiple enemies per room drop not only resources but also equipment and weapons, provides a constant upward trajectory. Whether I swept through a room like an unstoppable killing machine or barely made it out by the skin of my teeth, I was always eager to roll the dice and see what rewards I could pilfer.
I loved settling on an elemental assault and then selecting perks to amplify the damage and effects of that specific element, even using scraps dropped by enemies to re-roll the elemental affinities of my weapons, melee, and grenades. At one point, I kept dying in a particular room because I was simply overwhelmed by the relentless onslaught of too many enemies. Deadzone: Rogue allows you to not only level up your character and arsenal through permanent upgrades between rounds, but also form strategies to address your shortcomings in particular rooms; in this case, I started selecting perks that granted companion bots that fired at enemies and drew aggro, allowing me to distance myself and thin the herd to manageable numbers. However, if a run is too easy or challenging, you can always tweak the difficulty level, which impacts the rewards you receive, either breaking down roadblocks or creating an enticing risk/reward calculus.
The enemies start simple enough, with robots that walk slowly or charge at you in a straight line, but as you progress through each unlockable Zone, you encounter more sophisticated, powerful, and grotesque creatures. Before I knew it, I was battling teleporting robots, zombie-like synthetic organisms, self-destructing orbs, and spiders that swarm and blast projectiles. As you shoot through each Zone, you encounter skill-check rooms with Elite enemies; these foes serve as barriers in early attempts, but by the time you reach the end of the Zone, they eventually appear alongside normal minions, aptly putting on display how far you’ve progressed in the span of one run.
Each room lasts just a couple of minutes (or less, if you’re quick), with successful runs concluding around an hour after you embark. But you’ll likely spend many hours in the lead-up to that successful run as you learn the ins and outs of each room, as well as slowly upgrade both your character and your skills. There were certainly times when I had failed in a particular Zone so many times that I dreaded repeating the early rooms for the umpteenth time, but the gameplay feels so good, I ultimately didn’t mind – except for certain rooms that require light first-person platforming. Those rooms felt bad the first time I played them, and only felt marginally better upon repeat playthroughs. Thankfully, those aren’t common, but whenever they popped up during a run, I was ready to be done with them before I even entered the room. And though the boss battles are engaging and inventive, they sometimes border on being bullet-sponges.
Once you conquer a Zone, you unlock the subsequent Zone with new rooms, enemies, and bosses to face, as well as side challenges for the Zone in which you were just successful. Though I was laser-focused on beating each zone individually, I appreciate the excuse to return to older Zones to try my hand at extra challenges with different gameplay modifiers, like perks that encourage you to get up close and personal with your victims.
Through its stellar use of the roguelite formula and ability to build your loadout in such rapid fashion, Deadzone: Rogue provides a compelling shooting experience that I look forward to firing up for a few runs every day. But it’s not just the structure that has its hooks in me; the shooting mechanics, varied enemy types, and the compelling narrative mystery all coalesce into one of my favorite shooters in recent years.