Deceit 2 Review – Directionless and Underwhelming (PC)

Deceit 2 is a new game but hardly feels as such. Following the same overused concept found in games such as Dead by Daylight and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the premise of Deceit 2 just isn’t innovative or refreshing enough to keep players engaged for long. At the end of the day, it feels like playing Among Us but horror. On paper, that sounds great, but somehow this game just doesn’t live up to what it could be. Too many instructions, overwhelming UI and HUD, odd party set-up, and performance issues are just some of the many factors that hold this game back. Let’s dig deeper into things as we review Deceit 2.

Deceit 2 is available now on PC for $14.99 and is coming to Xbox Series X and PS5 soon.

Story – Bland and Uninspired

Borrowing many tropes from Lovecraftian horror, serial killers, and Satanism makes the game’s horror elements feel a bit cliché. As mentioned before, Deceit 2 feels like Among Us but for some reason, it’s needlessly complicated. Upon booting up the game, you’re presented with a long cinematic that showcases some narrated gameplay and cutscenes. Although skippable, this cinematic feels redundant and unnecessary as it dumps a lot of information on players all at once. Instead, a simple interactive tutorial would’ve sufficed.

In short, despite the clear inspiration from popular horror genres, it somehow feels as though the developers themselves were uninspired. Presenting horror elements in a basic, corny manner gives off the impression of surface level knowledge regarding said genres. The world itself seems dry and really ordinary, at times even feeling like a mod for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Zombies.

Below you can watch the 4-minute cinematic that explains how the game works via narration. In an age where most have diminished their attention spans due to social media, I can safely say that not many people want to sit through four minutes of talking before playing the game. Imagine if at the start of Among Us, they presented a 4-minute video, explaining the entire game’s lore and how-to-play. Not ideal.

Gameplay – Needlessly Confusing

Other than the fact that everyone was bored out of their minds during lockdown, the key factor that made Among Us so popular was just how accessible it was to the public. Not only was it easy to play, the concepts were dumbed down and the gameplay loop flowed nicely. Everything had a purpose and you’d understand how everything works after playing just one round. The same cannot be said about Deceit 2 as it tried to incorporate too many features that just feel out of place.

Main Gameplay Loop

The game itself feels dated, it’s like a game that would work amazingly had this come out on the PS3 or Wii U. Unfortunately, we’re in 2023 and the standards for games (even indie) are high. It’s not all bad, there are a few instances where the game shines, showcasing its distorted potential. For example, the tasks work well. They aren’t anything special, but they get the job done. However, except for that, the gameplay loop is too fast-paced and overwhelming. You get thrown into the action, and suddenly players are firing guns and everything turns red.

Creature captures and kills player, while the other players vote on who they think is Infected.

This ‘red’ is part of a feature called the ‘In-Between‘ which can be summoned by the Infected players. Doing so spawns in a demonic, infected creature that chases down innocent players until it captures and kills one. A ritual then starts and a voting screen appears, forcing players to make a decision on who they want eliminated. Overall, this whole gameplay loop is extremely incohesive and feels clunky. New players will struggle to understand what the ultimate aim of the game is as they try to simply survive the perplexing chaos that ensues around them.

Relating back to my point of players suddenly firing guns. Once players spawn in, they can immediately head to the ‘Peddler’ and purchase a gun. Getting shot with said gun leads to your obvious demise, eliminating you in the process. This is an incredibly flawed concept as players can simply troll and grief by shooting anyone. The game doesn’t make sense at times and the pop-up instructions are mostly inordinate and unclear. Everything just screams counter-intuitive, especially the UI and HUD.

Party and Lobby

The ready-up party lobby is littered with flaws. First, you can only play with 6 players minimum, which is extremely odd considering you only need 3 players in games like Among Us. Granted, it won’t be fun to play with 3 players only, but it still gives you the option to. The available public parties are scarce, often only being available in Russian or Chinese. This is not to mention the tacky layout of the lobby and the amount of times you get booted out of a readied game.

Ready-up lobby screen in Deceit 2.

The lobby is similar to that of Call of Duty: WWII Zombies, yet it feels emptier. Staring at the uninteresting, poor-quality character models and the color red isn’t quite eye-candy. It feels as though someone applied a filter that makes everything look bloodier because even the mist is red. There isn’t much contrast in color, making the menu screen look mushed together and hard to navigate.

Graphics – Nothing Extraordinary

The graphics are decent but nothing special at all. In fact, a lot of the characters, monsters and items are poorly rendered. The aesthetic and overall vibe are solid, providing a spooky ambience full of creepy and bloody objects. Yet, at times the graphical quality of this game is ridiculously silly. The model of the creature is basically ripped straight out of the Counter-Strike Nexon launcher and the guns feels like flash weaponry from Counter Strike Portable. Furthermore, most of the immersion is lost once you encounter the frequent FPS drops, performance issues, and wonky character models.

In-game screenshot from Deceit 2’s Steam page.

As you can see from the screenshot provided above, the graphics look like cheap The Stanley Parable visuals. On top of that, the interactive pop-up above the object is not really clear, making items hard to spot. That being said, the lighting was great and although the map was small, it actually felt spine-chilling. The dark, confined spaces reminded us of the Call of Duty: Black Ops zombies map Verrukt, as it induces claustrophobia and the fear of being followed. 

Audio – Out of Place

Main menu music is extremely jarring, loud, and unnecessarily dramatic. You’d think for a game going for this demonic aesthetic that the soundtrack would involve soft, eerie music that makes you anxious. Instead, players are greeted with an obnoxious theme that makes you question whether you launched Deceit 2 or Medal of Honor: Vanguard.

Sound placement is also genuinely questionable, as loud sound effects play at bizarre times, adding to the overall confusion you feel whilst playing the game for the first time. The music itself wasn’t bad, it just didn’t fit the aesthetic of the game. In terms of voice chat, for some reason the quality is off. Proximity chat works, but it’s far from top-notch, often times you are unable to hear other players effectively. This is not only due to the audio but also because of how quickly everything is happening all at once in game.

Final Verdict – Below Par

Despite its glaring flaws, Deceit 2 still shows some promise if the developers can keep updating it, overhauling large aspects of the game. It’s predecessor Deceit 1 was a lot simpler, proving that the developers, World Makers, can produce a solid title. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem like the case with Deceit 2 as it lacks a lot of what makes games like Dead by Daylight and Among Us so memorable. The fact that it is basically the recycled concept of Among Us-style games and yet we were still flabbergasted and confused, is really telling about just how counter-intuitive the gameplay loop is, especially for new players.

Deceit 2 was reviewed on PC with keys provided by Zebra Partners.