Deadlock

Originally Posted 9/24/24

Cartoon image of a street corner in a city. You can see a blue demon in a police outfit leaning against the wall of a store. The word 'Deadlock' appears in the center of the image

Brief Overview

Quick Overview

To preface all of this, I want to say this game is still in an invite only beta as I'm writing this review. My thoughts may change as time goes on, but I wanted to give my initial impressions and thoughts on it.

Deadlock is a 6v6, 4 lane, third person shooter MOBA. Most of my MOBA experience comes from playing League of Legends and Smite, so that's what I'll be using as a frame of reference for most of this review. I think currently Deadlock is in a pretty good place as it feels unique enough where I would want to play it over other MOBAs, and there are some quality of life stuff I appreciate it has. There are also some areas where things feel lacking, and so I worry about if I'll play it long term. It almost has an Overwatch vibe to me which, personally, I'm not a fan of.

In Depth Review

I want to start with just going over some of the basics of Deadlock, and things that make it stand out to me compared to other MOBAs.

The Good

  1. 6v6 4 Lanes: This one is new to me - I'm much more used to 5v5 with 3 lanes, and so I think it's interesting that they designed this around slightly more players and more lanes.
  2. Melee Mechanic: So not only is there a button where you can do a melee, or charged melee, but there's also a parry mechanic. I've not seen it come in too handy yet, but there's been one or two games where I've been able to parry someone's melee attack and it saved me.
  3. Shop in Lane: At your furthest tower, there is a shop nearby so you don't have to go all the way back to base to buy items. This shop closes once you lose your outer most tower. I believe DOTA has something similar, but this is a really nice mechanic to just stay in lane during the laning phase. Your larger minions also heal you a little bit when they arrive in lane, and so this also helps you stay in lane early.
  4. Item Slots: The game features 3 main categories for items: Weapons, Vitality, Spirit (I may be slightly off with some of the naming here). Weapon items focus on your weapon, Vitality your health and defenses, and Spirit on your ability damage. You can have 4 items in each category, and some early items upgrade into late game items. As the game progresses, and you reach certain milestones, you unlock up to 4 "flex spots" which can have an item of any type in them. I think this is really unique as it gives you a lot of room to build well rounded characters (or at least, have some items in each category). One thing I'll mention here too is some items will give you either a bullet shield (I think that's what they call it) or a spirit shield. It took me the longest time to figure out they're represented by either an orange or purple meter next to your health once you have items that give you them. Some of these items will have effects like "While you have a spirit shield, gain x stats" or something.
  5. Farm Denial: This is also a mechanic I believe is in DOTA, but you can deny enemies farm. When you kill a minion or player I believe, you get souls (in game currency basically). An orb also appears above whoever you killed, and slowly rises up. When it reaches the top of its path, it explodes and gives you more souls. While these orbs are floating up, the enemy can shoot it and deny you the extra farm. I think this is an interesting mechanic that adds some more depth to the gameplay and gives you something more to keep track of. I also like how you do still get some farm from last hitting minions, so they can't completely deny you farming.
  6. Character Selection: I swear I've seen this in other games, but I'm blanking on where exactly. But basically before you load into queue to find a game, you choose which characters you want to play. You can rank them from basically "most want to play" (purple) to least want to play (White). So you pick as many characters as you want to be purple, gold, or white, and the game will try to assign you one of the characters you've chosen, starting with purple. This is sort of nice because one area people would argue a lot in in things like League was choosing which character to play.
  7. Lane Selection: Is automatically assigned to you. This is also nice because it cuts down arguments. People will sometimes ask to switch if there's a bad lane match up or if they're playing support but was put in a solo lane for some reason. But overall people stick to their lanes in the laning phase. It also seems to try and put duos in the same lane. At least, my brother and I have played a handful of games together and it almost always puts us in a duo lane.
  8. Rail System: There are overhead rail lines going through each of the lanes. As you push up, the line extends further into enemy territory (or vice versa). What I think is interesting about this is you have a rail boost you can use (with a pretty long cooldown) that will speed up your return to lane, which can be really useful to defend objectives or get back into a team fight.

The Bad

  1. Tower AI: So because this is a third person shooter, you have quite a far attack range, especially compared to something like League of Legends. The game does promote you being closer though as your damage drops off with range. Some characters are built to be more at range though and so there are some items that you can get that help reduce the damage fall off. But this becomes an issue when paired with the Tower AI. As far as I can tell (and I'm willing to be wrong here), the towers do not target enemy players if they attack you while under the tower (unless there are no minions nearby). In games like League there's an instant switch where the tower begins targeting an enemy champion if they hit you, but that doesn't seem to currently exist in Deadlock. Or, at the very least, it's really easy for enemy players to simply attack you outside of tower range and not have any consequences. This presents a problem because in games like League, if you're behind you can just farm under tower. But that's not really viable here, and so I don't know what you're supposed to do if you're behind. There is a jungle sort of area you can sort of farm, but yeah most games I've been in are either stomp or be stomped.
  2. Leave Mechanic: This one could be good or bad depending on how you look at it. If you have someone leave your game, everyone else can then leave without penalty. But I also think if you just reach a certain point in the game this also becomes an option (again, a bit uncertain here on this one). And it just sort of... sucks? Like, I get on one hand if you feel like you're going to lose the game anyways it's good to just leave. But on the other hand like... just sucks to feel like you can come back and realize most of your team has left.

Wrap Up

Overall I enjoy the game and will continue to play it. It's definitely more enjoyable with friends, and I want to keep learning it. It's one of those things though I definitely need to learn what you're supposed to do when you're behind in this game.