Death Point review
:: INELEGANT INFILTRATIONPrice: $5.99
Version: 1.2
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Death Point is a sort of throwback stealth title in the mold of something like Splinter Cell. This is to say it's a game that demands stealth perfection that is usually only achieveable after a certain amount of trial and error. For anyone nostalgic for punishing stealth games, Death Point can be a decently fun time, although it has other problems beyond its challenge.
Stay in shadows
In Death Point, you take control of one of two agents that managed to survive a mission gone horribly wrong. Your job from here is to escape the clutches of your enemies, reunite with your partner, and exact revenge. If this sounds like a pretty boilerplate plot, that's because Death Point is very much unconcerned with telling an original (or even intelligible) story. You wander from location to location with very specific objectives around killing foes and not being spotted, and that's all that really matters.
You control your agent from a top-down perspective using dual-stick shooter-like controls, though shooting is not something that happens all too often. Death Point is mostly about staying hidden behind corners and walls, and only striking enemies once you're right on top of them. You get access to guns, of course, but more often you'll find yourself doing melee takedowns, using smoke grenades, or just fleeing from enemies to seek shelter in a locker until the alert level lowers. You know, pretty standard stuff for games made back when everyone was trying to copy Metal Gear Solid.
In-flirt-trating
As you creep in the shadows, you are constantly talking with your partner agent, and your banter with her is the primary way that Death Point delivers its story and additional objectives. Oh, and did I mention that your partner agent is a busty blonde in a revealing catsuit that is constantly calling your character “hon” and exchanging uncomfortably awkward sexual-charged one liners with him?
The whole thing is laughably bad at first, but then evolves into an experience that is both annoying and uncomfortable. While Death Point's stealth design might not be to everyone's taste, the storytelling here seems like it would appeal to literally no one. It's just poorly conceived and executed, and it's made even worse by how often you have to hear the same bits of it over and over again whenever you die and restart at a checkpoint.
Trial (and error) by combat
Death Point is not one of those stealth games where the stealth ever really feels optional. Every level is teeming with guards and turrets that can usually make quick of you if you're running around out in the open. Even when you're being careful though, it can be pretty easy to trigger alarms, making Death Point a lot about playing levels and sections of levels repeatedly.
This isn't inherently a bad thing. After all, many stealth games have had this kind of design philosophy and have since become beloved. In the case of Death Point though, the repetition is often hard to endure for a few key reasons. The first is the aforementioned dialogue that you have to suffer through, but there are also times when Death Point denies you a stealth option, which is when the game is at its absolute worst. If that weren't enough, the game has a pretty sparse checkpointing system that makes you restart whole levels whenever you fully close the app.
The bottom line
There is some satisfaction in Death Point's stealth action, but all of it comes with a bevy of caveats. Mechanically, it is capable of delivering experiences reminiscent of Splinter Cell or Hitman, but its story, characters, and design all get in the way. This makes Death Point hardly worth checking out, even if you're a big stealth-action fan.