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There is no shortage of free-to-play shooters today, with Ubisoft’s XDefiant released just yesterday and being touted as a “COD beater” by some. But, when Valve attaches its name to a game, that is cause for the entire gaming community to take note. When it comes to legendary developers, very few can match Valve, who are responsible for franchises such as Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Portal, as well as creating Steam, the most popular online store for PC players. Although the game hasn’t been officially revealed yet, Valve is working on a new shooter titled Deadlock, and gameplay footage has been leaked.
In a recently leaked video, we got our first look at Deadlock and a glimpse at the 19 different heroes in the game.
In the footage, we get to see one of the Heroes use a zip line to traverse the map before the movement and shooting mechanics are shown off. While looking at the footage, I can’t help but think that Deadlock just looks dead boring. Its movement feels reminiscent of games such as Team Fortress 2, and while Team Fortress 2 is a beloved game, it was also released in 2007 and is outdated by modern standards.
Deadlock looks to be an interesting and fresh take on the MOBA genre, which is typically played in the isometric top-down view seen in titles such as League of Legends, Arena of Valor, and Valve’s own Dota 2. This looks to be more in line with games such as Overwatch in its presentation but from a third-person perspective. It will be interesting to see how the lane mechanic of MOBAs works in a third-person shooter.
But, despite its interesting concept, Deadlock doesn’t look like a game that has yet to be revealed in 2024, and looks closer to a well-made mod. It will be interesting to see how the game develops and more importantly, how it plays. But, from the small amount of footage we’ve seen so far, I’m not impressed.
