Deadlight is yet another game made in the vein of using zombies to make it more interesting. But instead of some sort of first person shooter, Deadlight is a cinematic platformer. Now is the combination of zombie survival and cinematic platforming a good idea? Yes actually, but let us delve deeper into why that is.

Story

Deadlight's story is basically how every zombie survial is. Some crazy virus gets loose and resurrects all of the dead as flesh eating zombies, which in this game are called shadows. Now while the whole zombie thing is overused I have to knock it them for including the nature of humans in this rather impossible situation. It is also a story of a forgotten past, a past that was so painful that our protagonist, Randall Wayne, can't even look back at to remember it. Throughout the game he will be haunted by this memory as he gets closer and closer to someplace safe in a city of the walking dead. Now, I liked the premise of the journey of a man who has painful memories and inclusion of the dark nature of humanity during an apocalyptic situation. However, that quickly got ruined for me by bad voice acting along with an equally bad script.

Sound

Being a dark tale, Deadlight does not have any music that would sound remotely cheerful. The majority of the game is backed by this somber soundtrack that instills the sorrowful feeling that you are walking through a broken and dead city filled no hope to speak of. There is another soundtrack that makes a few moments feel like you know what this place but you don't want know. Music wise I think the game does a great job, and as for sound effects that's great too. Zombies sound very clear and well done, and the various sounds of the world sound never close to realism. However, I hate the voice acting in this game. Randall's voice acting sounds like the kind of voice acting that wants to be serious but you just can't take it seriously. The other characters' voice acting is a lot of hit and miss. However, I think that the voice acting sound so bad if the script didn't sound disjointed with itself, and didn't try so hard to sound dramatic.

Graphics

Dealight's graphics are pretty good for an Xbox live arcade game. The models of basically everything are nicely crafted and equally as well animated. However, I will say that the game can be too dark in some places, which makes progress somewhat difficulty. It also doesn't help the game takes the name shadow quite literally, as the zombie are just dark with the player barely being able to see them. Cutscenes are played in the animated graphic novel way, which I don't really like. But the artwork is very nice, and makes me think that whoever drew them should also illustrate for graphic novels.

Gameplay

Being a cinematic platformer Deadlight is frustrating at times, with jumps that you think you'll but end up missing by an inch. There's also the frustration of trying to figure out how to get up somewhere, but you see what to grab because the game is so dark. Also let us not forget about the zombies, who will instantly kill you if they swarm you, which makes even harder to figure out a section. Thankfully the puzzles (if you call them that)are not very hard. I was able to figure them out after dying so many times, then finally seeing what have do. You know how most cinematic platformers are. Your biggest is of course are the zombies, and the sluggish controls, but mostly the zombies. You have several things that you can do to defend yourself against the zombie horde. You can yell at them to trick to gather to one spot while you jump over them, or you could trick them into falling to them. Those moments always made me chuckle and remark at how stupid zombies truly are. You may also tackle the zombies, but that never worked for me as the zombie always ended on top. You can try to defend yourself with an axe, but that tactic is rather ineffectual and quickly drain your stamina and makes you sluggish. Your best bet would be firearms, though I would wait till the aim reticule is at their head then fire for insta-kill as ammo is rare. You are also get a slingshot but that useless after using for a entire area of the game then once in another. Plus it's rather awkward to aim the slighshot, though the same could be said about the guns. Even with all that there isn't much else, the only real collectible is the lost pages of your own diary.

Deadlight works pretty well as both a cinematic platformer and a zombie survial game. The puzzles are not that difficult, and when you do fail it's mostly because you miscalculated. Of course the game is pretty dark at places, so that makes it harder to progress. That along with the terrible voice acting and script, made my journey through the dead city of Seattle much less enjoyable.