Review – DeadWire – Gamerview

Thirteen years ago was the launch of a game that would launch the distributor’s name Devolver to heights, Hotline Miami, an ultra-violent pixel art game that captivated and challenged millions of players around the world. To this day we see a reflection of his impact on the industry, whether through DLCs, Easter eggs or games that try to emulate his success with different visions, such as , which served as inspiration for scenes from Jhon Wick! Now it brings a more cyberpunk vision to the table.

Produced by Shotgun Anaconda and distributed by The CoLab, DeadWire brings the titular Wire on missions through the underworld of organized crime, where accompanied by his informant Noodle and his mysterious boss, they attack drug spots and organized crime bosses. Starting with just a pistol and becoming increasingly lethal as the levels progress, DeadWire is an interesting take on the Hotline Miami style, but is it as impactful?

Running try/catch

DeadWire’s story and its narrative style try to follow the Hotline Miami theme, with vague conversations, where Noodle tells Wire and the player what should be done in each level. On some screens you just need to kill all the enemies, on others you need to get to a specific location and steal a document, destroy something or simply hack a server, PC or notebook belonging to the city’s gangs.

Wire is represented as a fictional vision of a hacker, instead of just trying to go unnoticed, he wears a green jacket, a black mask and some hi-tech accessories, to convey that futuristic look. Noodle, although it doesn’t appear once, follows the same design. The boss of both obviously received a large amount of inspiration from Faraday from Cyberpunk: EdgeRunners, both in his visual presence and design.

The story is somewhat confusing and dispersed, unlike the two games mentioned previously where dispersion and confusion were used in a succinct and regulated way, meaning that the scarcity of information generated curiosity and the intention of discovering the plots coming from the player. In DeadWire, the excess of information at the beginning, middle and end of each level makes the game bloated with useless information, which can leave the player little interested in the general narrative.

Well, if DeadWire “fails” to deliver a captivating and interesting narrative like Hotline Miami and The Hong Kong massacre, obviously its gameplay must be more refined and polished, right? Unfortunately, this is another part where the game ends up trying to be too refined and ends up leaving everything at an average level and not very unique.

Taking the first steps in .cmd

DeadWire is a hacker fiction, so we have to hack our way through the levels, using Wire’s ability to create connections between certain elements and objects in the level. By clicking the right mouse button, the player accesses a black screen, where they can create so-called connections between enemies and doors, enemies and explosive barrels, switches with enemies, etc… If the item is in yellow, it can probably be linked to something.

Therefore, this item that connects to something will receive a response if the object it is connected to can have interactions with Wire bullets, that is, you can explode a barrel with one shot and this will cause a button to be activated, or kill an enemy and this will cause a door to open! The idea itself is extremely interesting and well applied in certain points, but there are flawed moments, like the garage level where only with God Mode I managed to cross a laser as nothing interacted with it!

The fact that only Wire bullets can make DeadWire objects have some interaction makes the game limited to limited mechanics, after all, your bullets don’t travel across the entire screen, which means this can be a major obstacle, as I mentioned above. Furthermore, the fact that the hack mechanic is just these connections, makes the whole idea something simplistic and not very interesting to explore. You can even kill two enemies connected to each other by killing just one of them, but over time even that gets boring.

I’m not saying that the game should have hacking mechanics similar to Watch Dogs or Cyberpunk, after all, expecting this from an indie game is laughable to say the least, not to say completely unreasonable, however, the game could present puzzles and even show the basics of network infrastructure or breaches of security systems. Unfortunately, where they should have done more, they did less. Even the powers and abilities we gain later fail to engage the player, making the game much easier and less challenging!

The art of the future

The level design is excellent, I have to admit, the tight corridors and positioning of elements and enemies create an excellent challenge for the player against the enemies that, when they decide to act and not just stand still, makes DeadWire a very fun experience. The art style itself is very similar to the experience of seeing Hotline Miami for the first time, with that mix of professional art and something “crazy”.

Unfortunately, the soundtrack and sound effects are also very weak in DeadWire compared to the graphics and art. Where the bright and pulsating colors draw attention, the sound of gunshots and explosions comes out “chocho”, unlike the impactful sound and visceral soundtrack of Hotline Miami and The Hong Kong Massacre, which leaves the player’s heart in their mouth with each shot, with each sound of the skull being shattered by a bat or copper pipe.

DeadWire is an interesting attempt, it hits the points that marked the games mentioned in comparison to it, but it fails in something that many other indie and AAA games generally fail, which is the famous, “less is usually more”. Instead of focusing on solid, impactful and thought-provoking gameplay, it focused too much on creating a convoluted and bloated story. I hope Shotgun Anaconda’s next projects rethink where they should focus and bring a better experience with the same visual appeal, if not better!