"Who turned out the lights!?" Deadlight- One Less in the Backlog Review

This was the free game of the month on Xbox Live. "It ain't free, it ain't me!"

Deadlight was the free game of the month for us Gold subscribers, worth the free price tag. Deadlight is a left to right platformer with some climbing and exploration.

The story is lame. Typical, man must find family and must wade through the dead..., sorry, shadows, that's what they call the zombies. Glowing eyes and out for your flesh; they are zombies. Bad ripoff of zombie genres and plot lines. Hell the main character is a sheriff, sound familiar? You must reunite with your group and find your family, huh? The divergence that makes this story original is minimal and strikes at the end with little fanfare or climax. There are clues/flashes set through the story and by the end you pretty much guess what has happened. Your "group," is minimally realized, interesting mid-plot character that you must find secrets to explain his back story.

They must train the cops to parkour and feats of daring do in Seattle of Deadlight. The platforming is good for the most part of the game until the difficulty spikes near the end with sequenced events that must be done with rapidity. Tackle bust wall, get off floor, hit a full run whilst the building is crumbling while doing consecutive jumps with slightly sloppy/unresponsive controls, and then shooting somebody who already has a bead on you. The highlight in this game is the platforming for me. Was fun, yet some of the room exits were sometimes confusing. You find yourself jumping off a wall like a rat in a box. Really thought this was going to be more of a Shadow Complex experience. (If you haven't played this, it's Metriodvania type game, backtracking and secrets galore, great game.) Would have been neat to take the experience to a 2.5 dimension with diversions and zombie killin' with those background sets. Hell, the zombies walk from this area.

Graphically it's pretty. Anything post-apoc is great in my book. Rooms in letter-box and screen filling run sequences give it a very grim and dirty feeling.

Overall this game is alright, it is not a MEH, yet not overly GOOD INU. Little on the short side, short sighted story, and yet a capable platformer for what's it's worth. Good enough for free.