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After a year of waiting, Xbox owners can finally play what may be the best game of 2021. death loop, which had PlayStation 5 console exclusivity for a year despite Microsoft buying Bethesda a few months ahead of release, arrived straight to Game Pass yesterday (September 20). Honestly, it’s the best game on the service right now, even if Metal: Hellsinger, Death Gate, It takes twoand House Flipper are absolute stunners.

After trying out for a few hours on Xbox Series X – and inevitably getting hooked again – it’s clear that the latest port of death loop looks, feels and plays in exactly the same way as its predecessor from Sony. Admittedly, the user interface has been marginally improved, even though this is a product from Microsoft that predictably binds the Memories menu to the view button, rather than the DualSense touchpad.

Yet the very same DualSense — which I think is by far the console’s biggest tech selling point — is responsible for making death loop all the more captivating on PS5, essentially the definitive experience of last year’s GOTY contender.

It’s also not because of those adaptive triggers, but to his credit Deathloop May give this functionality its most appropriate FPS outing yet, thanks to a light combat environment where you often spend more time setting up your shots under pressure than considering your initial tactics. It also makes the silent but deadly and necessary PT-6 Spiker all the more real in your hands.

Instead, it’s all about the PS5 controller’s tiny mono speaker. While Astro’s playroom is essentially designed to showcase every incredible feature of the DualSense, no PS5 game has come close to recording this little noisebox in such a perfect way as death loop.

You are contacted from the start by primary antagonist Julianna Blake (voiced to perfection by Ozioma Akagha), who plays with you from the first moments of the game. She also regularly chooses to hunt you, usually when you least expect or want it. She will contact you via a rickety radio, usually at the start of each part of the game. For Xbox Ownership death loop debutantes, these blunt and often brutal conversations go as expected: through your TV.

On the PS5, however, her voice comes from the DualSense. It takes you deeper death loop‘s drop-dead beautiful and wonderfully daunting civilization, forging an even stronger relationship with your familiar yet confusing foe. Her voice is an eerie experience when ripped off your screen, filled with sarcasm, condescension and hatred. It’s like she’s right behind you at all times, or closer than ever.

The speaker, which isn’t half as bad as on the DualShock 4, is still on the tinny side, making it sound disappointing, spicy, or downright weird in other games. In death loop‘s technologically strange world – where incredible leaps in science have been made on the largest scale, but simpler things like walkie-talkies are still firmly rooted in the same sixties from which it derives its beautiful art style – the sound quality couldn’t be better suited if it was actively planned between Sony and Arkane.

This perfect convergence of real-world technology and in-game limitations is reminiscent of the iconic ‘Clean House’ mission from 2019 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, when the game’s visuals provided the perfect meeting in the middle effect. While the MW reboot was inevitably held back by an expected graphic eerie valley, this was more than enough to exceed players’ expectations of the monochromatic green limitations of night vision – to me it’s the most realistic console game ever looked even if it was because of real ones technological limitations. The same rules apply here.

death loop is still a real treat on Series X, and can’t be missed by anyone with Game Pass yet to explore the lost paradise in Blackreef. Next Years redfallalso made in collaboration between Arkane and Bethesda, will hopefully yield a pseudo-successor that’s just as compulsive, even if it doesn’t look half as classy.

If you have the luxury of choosing, buy a cheap second-hand PS5 copy from death loop, or get it through PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium. Controlling Colt’s many lives is one thing, but having Julianna’s voice there is almost essential.