A review of Valve’s first new game in 10 years, Deadlock. Why everyone is so excited about it, even though it hasn’t even come out yet

It’s been a few days since the official announcement of Valve’s new team shooter, Deadlock.

Even before this moment, the book talked about many editions, and players shared information from closed testing with the conference. Even before the announcement of the online game, there were 40 thousand people, and today more than 100 thousand gamers play it around the world. And this is taking into account that the game is still in closed alpha testing status.

For 10 years now, the company has not released any completely new games until Deadlock (let’s not use the disastrous Artifact). We are not seeing a sequel and are joining existing franchises, but we are talking specifically about a new title.

Today I’ll tell you what’s special about Dead End and whether it’s worth spending time on. Spoiler: yes, but there are many nuances.

What is this game?

Dead end — is a tactical MOBA shooter in which teams of 6 vs. 6 players fight each other. It is essentially a mix of Dota 2, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2.

Gamers fight on maps divided into four lanes. Along with the gamers, three NPCs (creeps) go into battle, attacking the guards. The ultimate goal is to capture the enemy base.

Each player is given a choice of 21 characters (new ones are used every 2-3 months), each has its own excellent abilities and characteristics.

For example, Dynamo is the strongest team hero, and he has everything to win. He can lift enemies into the air, heal himself and his teammates, pull enemies and stun them, and move you and your friends 9 meters in the right direction. Or, let’s say, Vindicta – pulls enemies to a thrown stake, flies, has an attacking raven and makes an external shot from a sniper rifle.

In general, there is plenty of variety in terms of team leaders.

The gameplay is varied, but there are questions

In essence, this is Dota 2 with a 2-person view. You control your own character, who can interact not only with enemies, but also with his own mobs.

The core mechanics here resemble a cross between Overwatch and Team Fortress 2. You still have a set of maps where you have to determine different heroes with their abilities. Skirmishes on every console, and skirmishes are constantly tense. One of the heroes even reminded me of the engineer from TF 2 thanks to his turrets (though they can’t be upgraded in the same way).

The essence of the game is to pass 3 lines of defense. On each of them you are met either by guards (analogous to towers from “Dota”), quadropods (slightly stronger), another row of guards and a base nexus, where you need to demolish energy supports and suddenly kill the base boss.

On average, one “skating” lasts from 20 to 40 minutesmost often – 25-30.

Players can gain character upgrades in three categories (four if they take the basic set of pre-selected abilities): Weapon, Vitality, and Mystic. They enhance combat weapons, control health and healing speed, and increase mystical damage.

While the combination of hero shooter and MOBA elements may seem standard, Deadlock goes beyond a simple “mix of genres”. This masterful game combines two genres. One of the main reasons why this combination works so well is Dead End’s choice of a third-person shooter, which provides players with the best observation of behavior compared to the usual first-person perspective. If the game had continued in the first-person format, moving around the world, especially given Dead End’s independent verticality and emphasis on mobility, would have been somewhat difficult.

Additionally, Deadlock is caused by characters having more health and doing less damage as a result of things like Overwatch or Valorant. The game also causes damage to be nerfed from a distance and prevents players from damaging objects from too far away, which encourages constant movement and makes the marching tactic much less effective.

This is what the selection of buffs, abilities and veins looks like

It works the same way with guards. They are invulnerable from afar, but you have to touch them almost right away.

You must always be in movementbecause of this, the speaker almost never dies down. And here the emphasis is not only on increasing the impact, but also on advancing your team along all lines. This is an important element that forces you to always monitor the mini-map situation.

The balance may still suffer, but this will definitely be fixed.

The main task of the Valve project is that it is in the alpha testing stage. And it is even difficult to tell. Most of the mechanics look refined and brought to mind.

Yes, there are some flaws, some bugs, balance issues (when pumped up, some characters are impossible to defeat). For example, Seven, when fully pumped up, slows enemies by 40% and deals 70 damage at a time. But maybe these are my nitpicks. Of course, it takes much more time to get used to all the heroes and their skills.

Either way, this is a closed testing, where players only get access by invitation from other players. And they have a direct connection with the developers, who monitor all the feedback, polish and finalize the project.

When exploring the walls outside the borders, you can use classes with two legs creeps, which for killing them varying numbers of souls. They are scattered around the map, although they are supposed to be secondary resources for players when they move between lanes. However, they are not everywhere. On the map remains lots of empty spacewhich could indicate that new NPCs will be added or something else is in the works given the updates.

It’s still too early to judge the game. But it’s definitely worth a try.

Unfortunately, there was no trailer or anything like that on RUTUBE, so here’s some random gameplay for you

This isn’t a full review of the game, as Deadlock is still in testing. For now, I’m sharing more of my impressions and the main mechanics that can hook players around the world.

Overall, Deadlock is a fun team shooter that has already taken 15 hours of my life. And it will take even more with its action-packed and interesting elements.

Yes, the project is still raw. He has enough flaws (although they still need to be looked for and looked for). Not all texts have been translated into Russian; the soundtrack may be missing somewhere.

However, you can play the new game quite calmly and cheerfully. Ask your friends or acquaintances for an invite, it free. So why not give it a try right now? The game is only available on Windows PC, but you can also run it on Mac with emulation.