How do you make music sound cool? How can you explain why the soundtrack to, say, any of the spy films of the 1960s still sound cool decades later? How can Foxy Lady still get into your body and make you groove so much, 55 years since Jimi Hendrix laid down those slick licks? Jungle, Thundercat or Lil Nas X might be able to tell you – but so can the people behind the soundtrack to Deathloop, one of the most effortlessly classy-looking (and sounding) games in years. Arkane's mind-bending sci-fi thought experiment is a masterclass in cool.

The Bafta games awards took place at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on Thursday night, honouring 2021's creative achievements in video gaming. It was the first time the ceremony had been held in person since the pandemic and brought together the international video games industry to celebrate a range of titles – some with multimillion-dollar budgets, others made by teams of fewer than 10. The biggest winner of the night was the PlayStation 5 sci-fi shooter Returnal, which won accolades for audio achievement and music alongside the prestigious best game award. The lead actor in the game, Jane Perry, also won the award for performer in a leading role for her portrayal of steely space scout Selene. Performer in a supporting role was won by Kimberly Brooks, who played Hollis Forsythe in the psychedelic action game Psychonauts 2. Many of the games nominated were developed under challenging conditions during the pandemic. "This was a really hard game to finish," said a developer of Forza Horizon 5, picking up the award for best British game – one of several winners to show their emotions after a difficult period for the industry.

On paper, Deathloop sounds like another entry in the seemingly endless parade of games, movies, and TV shows about time loops--a period of time that repeats again and again and again, until our hero can figure out how to reset the flow of time and move forward once again. Much has been written about the ubiquity of these stories: There's Russian Doll, Happy Death Day, Palm Springs, and The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, to name only a few recent, well-known examples. A glut of time loop games from over the last half decade include titles as diverse asThe Sexy Brutale, Outer Wilds, Minit, Elsinore, and Gnosia, among those most acclaimed. This year in particular is stacked with games in which players must return to the same time and place ad infinitum, from Returnal to 12 Minutes and The Forgotten City. Time loops stories are clearly in vogue right now, but they aren't new.

Although Deathloop has been well received by critics and fans, the game is far from perfect. It has been criticized for a handful of issues, from its lack of accessibility options to the problems plaguing the PC version. Many fans have been pointing out just how "dumb" the game's AI is, especially for the bullet-fodder enemies that are the Eternalists. This isn't Arkane Studios' first time working on an immersive sim, so some fans are disappointed at how simple the AI is. However, there's one key to the game's AI that it seems like a lot of criticism is missing: despite how dumb they are, the Eternalists are nothing if not consistent.

Both probably need no introduction, as they're the crown jewels of publisher Bethesda Softworks's lineup. Both are solidly considered open-world role-playing games. But they also include many features of the immersive sim, from interacting with physical objects, all the way to areas and regions designed to be entered via multiple pathways. If, for some reason, you haven't tried any of these and you're looking for something more expansive (they're multiple times larger than something like "Deathloop," if not as tightly designed), every game in the series is worth a look. For the Fallout series, look to "Fallout 3" or later, when Bethesda took over the franchise.

Unfortunately, "Deathloop" indulges the habit -- not unique to games -- of dabbling in deep questions in ways that are ripe for excavation across subreddits and video essays, but are not necessarily engaged with or even felt in the course of play. There are hundreds of lines of dialogue, primarily conversations with Julianna, that alight upon what it means to live a good life, the ways in which perspective can reshape what a "good life" means, being amenable to change, and living in defiance of cruelty and evil. But the game is about those moments in the same way a car is about its stereo system. It may be nice to have. It may even be essential to you.

Here's how that manifests in gameplay: Knowing that my progress would be lost upon death, and knowing that there was a time limit in which I had to complete my assignment of killing all eight bosses, in my early hours with the game I would often beeline to the objective, retrieve the information I needed to progress the game's plot and return to the safety of my home base in the island's tunnels, which acts as a checkpoint. Forget looting, forget exploring -- time was of the essence. I moved fast and didn't linger because I didn't want to die and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining how time works. And learning how time operates in "Deathloop" is quite literally a game changer.