Last-hitting is so mind-numbingly boring in most MOBAs. The first fifteen minutes of the match are wasted on this little dance picking off lane creeps right before they die to ensure you get the gold from their death. Games like Heroes of the Storm or Gigantic have done away with last-hitting, or even creeps entirely, but they lose that satisfying sense of progression you get from slowly racking up cash to spend on powerful items. I admit it’s part of why these games work, but frankly, I’ve been sick of it for a long time.
With thousands of matches between League of Legends, Dota 2, Heroes of the Storm, and Smite, I was sure I was over this whole MOBA thing. If I have to kill one more lane creep, I thought, I might just lose my mind. When I saw Deadlock’s multicolored lanes and waves of creeps, I was worried it’d be banal—late to a party Valve itself helped start some 15 years ago. But I quickly realized Deadlock is not Dota, nor is it Overwatch or Valorant; it’s something completely novel which flips the MOBA on its head, not by stripping anything away, but by expanding on it and implementing a full decade of lessons learned.
My favorite example of this is last-hitting. Dota used to have the genre’s most interactive take on last-hitting because you can also deny enemies last hits by killing friendly creeps before they can. The problem is denying is not intuitive; new players struggle to last-hit in the first place, let alone last-hit their own wave to properly manage a lane. In Deadlock, last-hitting is two-fold: you need to kill the creep to get half its cash, and then shoot the soul orb that floats out of it to get the rest. But if your opponent shoots the soul orb first, they get it.
Immediately, laning is a part of the video game I signed up for rather than a dull prologue. Trades with your opponent are the emphasis; from the second you both arrive in lane, it’s a head-to-head game of Duck Hunt where the quicker draw always wins. And while this mechanic has some fine print, it all adds richness. Because income is shared with nearby teammates, support characters can join in on the gold farming other games reserve for item-dependent carries. Because melee last-hits cinch a full payout without releasing a soul orb, short-range tanks like Abrams aren’t compromised against characters with long-range harassment.
Deadlock is an iteration on the MOBA, but it’s not an incremental one. While so many games have come and gone angling to “reinvent” the genre by shifting the camera angle or tweaking a few mechanics, this game is so stuffed with new ideas it’s difficult to appraise just how much depth it all lends.
Take the map, for instance. PC Gamer staff writer Harvey Randall had plenty of astute things to say about Deadlock's lanes, and that geometric genius extends to the whole Cursed Apple. Other MOBAs have a jungle, the space between lanes where players farm gold by killing hordes of NPCs. Deadlock has a concrete jungle of its own, but that over-the-shoulder camera allows for some devious design.
Immediately, laning is a part of the video game I signed up for rather than a dull prologue.
For one, the map is highly vertical, with skyscrapers and dangling ropes allowing for dastardly escapes across the Z-axis. Building interiors are filled with dead ends, stairways, tight corridors, and distracting apparitions; running away has never been more fun in a MOBA than right here, and it’s owed in part to the excellent map.
It’s also owed to Deadlock's advanced movement, which is more reminiscent of modern shooters than the RTS mods making up most of Deadlock’s DNA. There’s a universal melee bind as well as parry mechanics and a stamina gauge. Air dashes, extended rolls, dodges in each direction; it all adds a rock-paper-scissors tactical richness to every encounter. If I want to engage I might roll in and use an ability, risking a melee counter-attack; but if I react in time, I can parry and practically guarantee a kill, or opt for a more cautious dodge roll and save my cooldowns.
This might all sound like it invalidates gunplay, and it kind of does, relatively speaking. For instance, two of my favorite heroes, the duo Mo & Krill, have a piddly gun that’s only there to poke and secure kills. The real meat of the character is in their ability to tunnel beneath enemies and knock them all into the air, disarming them and locking one down with an extended stun. Headshots and long bombs do play a role, but they’re always second to securing the economic lead, using powerful abilities to win teamfights, and effective rotation around the map.
Deadlock takes a format that seemed to crystallize and stagnate with Dota 2’s success and upheaves the status quo.
Each lane comes equipped with zip lines, Deadlock's method of fast travel between spawn and lanes. Other MOBAs offer limited teleportation, a speed boost when leaving base, out-of-combat mounts and so on. But Deadlock’s solution is to let players zip around at lightning speed from spawn to each of its lanes—so long as they don’t get shot off of it and stunned for an easy kill.
Each team controls the length of their zip lines by pushing toward objectives in each lane, so rather than trivialize all the fighting happening below, that precious mobility becomes yet another resource to fight over. The more lane you control, the faster you can get there.
There’s a ton to be excited about with Deadlock, but most prominently, I am excited that this MOBA pushes the genre into genuinely new space. It might look from the outset like just another hero shooter or even just another MOBA, but Deadlock takes a format that seemed to crystallize and stagnate with Dota 2’s success and upheaves the status quo. It’s not “like League of Legends, but with guns” or “if Dota had a different camera angle;” it’s a properly new thing altogether, and I feel like I’ve barely charted the depth on offer here.
