A Lethal League Review -- If Only This Title Had As Much Creativity As This Game People Would Like Me

Written By: Tyler
Platform Played On: PC

Anybody who knows me knows that I appreciate innovative games, or at the very least games that take an old idea and re-imagine it in original ways. It could be a terrible game and I would still give it props for trying something new. A unique idea is grounds for at least a three or four out of ten, regardless of how crappy the rest of the game may be.

With Lethal League, we have a new multiplayer based game that is an intriguing mixture of Pong and fighting games, with a hip-hop paint job all over it. And luckily, it is not a terrible game.

You can play with up to four players, but you can't actually hit each other like you would in a normal fighting game. Instead, there is a ball and you have to hit your opponents with it like you're playing dodgeball. The ball will fly around the screen, getting faster and faster, until eventually it's basically just a blur. Your basic attack is a normal swing, a volly swing that hits it up in the air, and a smash.

The core mechanics may seem simple, but don't think that there isn't depth here. Each character has a special ability, and there are a couple moves -- like parrying -- that you may not even know exist unless you read a tutorial (like me). You can power up your swings, and using the variety of attacks is key to being successful. It has a lot in common with Super Smash Bros in the sense that it may seem like it's just chaos on screen, but don't confuse dynamic with confusion. This game isn't about button-mashing, and a skilled player who is aware of their surroundings and the trajectory of the ball will beat someone less familiar with how things work more often than not. But at the same time, there is always a chance you can win.

You're going to want a controller if you play it because I found the PC controls really awkward. I generally don't think they work with fighting games anyway, but maybe some strict PC gamers will be able to handle it more than I could.

Lethal League is a little light on content, but unlike a game like Titanfall, it is not a full-priced game either. You can choose between five characters, each with their own ability, look and feel, and there are different skins for each that you acquire as you level up.

There are only two match types; one-on-one and a free-for-all with up to four players. The four player mode is infinitely more fun because I appreciate the organized ridiculousness of it all. It gets fast and hectic in a hurry, and it's when Lethal League is at its best.

There's a challenge mode that acts as a story only there isn't really a story, so you just go through a series of different fights, against the characters in the form of singles competition or even handicap matches. I do have to admit, that the final boss was a nice touch, but ultimately you play this once and then there's no real need to play it again.

I'm more forgiving of the lack of content because they're an indie studio, it's a cheap game, and I love the premise so much, but unfortunately it already seems to suffer from the same thing a lot of online indie games do: a lack of community. There are people who play it, but I tried connecting to a game for two minutes today and couldn't. This will only get worse as time goes on because it is not Call of Duty and sustaining a fanbase will be difficult. It's a real problem, but it's not one that detracts from the talent of the team or the game itself... it's just the reality of popularity or lack thereof.

Lethal League oozes style, and is one of the best games of the year in that regard. The way it blends music and visuals is a sight to behold.

Firstly, the music is incredible. It's an awesome mash-up of 8-bit chiptune and hip-hop, and sounds much cooler than that may seem. Or maybe you're the kind of person who likes Nerdcore and that sounds great to you anyway. It's not like that, but it's legitimately awesome and some of the music -- such as a track that starts with, I think (but could be wrong) Bulgarian chants -- really gets you in the mood to fight. I don't know if there's even been a fighting game with a soundtrack this good. That could be hyperbole, so maybe I should pull it back a little: there hasn't been a fighting game with music this good in at least five years. Maybe ten. Regardless, the soundtrack is awesome.

The visuals follow suit, with a sort of graffiti tinged animation style, also helping with a hip-hop feel. If you haven't noticed, rap is clearly an influence here. This is even more evident when you look at the bottom of the screen and there is a boombox. The Lonely Island would be proud.

There is a lot of variety in the few stages that you fight in. Be it a street, or outside of a factory, there is a lot of detail put into the environments that you Pong each other to death in. Look into the background and you will see buildings, or a sunset, all drawn carefully and lovingly. The developers knew what they were doing with the visuals. Luckily, everything flows together well, and character animations are fluid.

Lethal League is the type of game you should definitely seek out. While it is low on content, it is still an enjoyable game and I hope the developers end up adding more at a later date. It's a special game, one that messes with genre conventions to present a slightly twisted, stylish, unique take on the games it was influenced by.


Rating: 8.5/10
Verdict: Low on content, but the gameplay, visuals and music are all outstanding and interesting. Unfortunately the strength lies within the online realm, and it's an indie game, so the community will not be big for very long... if you can even call it big now.

A Gods Will Be Watching Review

Written By: Tyler
Platform Played On: PC

Rating: 6/10
Verdict: It's got an amazing premise, and solid ideas for fun gameplay, but it's unfortunately held back by some poor design choices.

Gods Will Be Watching is the expanded version of a Ludum Dare game. In the original, you were tasked with surviving for forty days by managing your resources, making hard choices and possibly sacrificing people for the greater good. Even though I never played the Ludum Dare version of the game, the level from that version is in this one, and a lot of people were excited for the full game. I was excited too because I thought it looked like a cool idea... the kind of thing that indie games get a lot of recognition for. If it isn't outright innovating in at least some miniscule way, it's doing something that is very uncommon these days.

The concept of the game is that with each chapter, you are thrown into a different environment, with different goals, and you have to control your team in order to successfully complete the mission. This will involve a lot of clicking on the different characters. You will manage them and also keep an eye on the resources you have. There is a lot of variety in the missions, as one has you taking hostages, one has you being tortured, one has you walking through a desert, and much more. 
 

So I started a new game...

I have some pretty negative things to say about the game, but I have to admit that I absolutely adore the premise of the game. I love that the game throws you into a mixture of different kinds of situations and expects you to figure out how to best solve the problems while never holding your hand, and at best, only giving you a little bit of information on how to proceed.

I also give a lot of credit to the artistic side of things. While the pixel-art may turn off some people, and many have proclaimed that Gods Will Be Watching -- and other games of its ilk -- have terrible graphics, you have to compare it to other games with the same style. Because I do that, I can safely say that there was a lot of work put into the visuals and it shows. The characters are about as detailed as they can be, which is an important element because the game relies a lot on visual cues to inform you how the characters are doing. It's a testament to the talent involved that it is usually pretty easy to tell when the people are feeling a certain way.

...then this happened, a few times, and I was very confused.

The environments are varied and beautiful, with a lot done to breathe life into them. You may only see one room at a time, but they are a joy to look at and really add to the atmosphere, especially some of the outdoors levels. The indoor levels do a satisfactory job of making you feel claustrophobic and shut-in, like a survival game should. 


At first I was going to say that while I enjoy the soundtrack, I'm glad I didn't buy package on Steam that included both the game and the soundtrack, but as I write this review I'm listening to some of the tracks on Youtube and I'm changing my tune a little bit. At first I didn't think the music stuck out, but in retrospect it may have been because I was so caught up in making decisions that I didn't pay a lot of attention. Now that I sit here and listen to the songs individually, it's very clear that the music does a good job of (usually) making you feel like you may be going insane. Since the nature of the game is that things get tougher and tougher as they go on, and you're constantly being pushed to the brink, it makes sense that the music reflects that, with a lot of the songs slowly building... like your insanity.


There are minor issues with the game, such as some poor English, but those can be brushed aside because there are flaws that are much bigger; such as the lack of narrative-cohesion and how tedious it gets.               

Gods Will Be Watching attempts to tell a strong narrative but there are some painfully obvious hiccups in that. For the most part the story is fine; you play as a group of people who are trying to stop the "terrorists." It's a game that tries to tell the side of both factions and does a good job of explaining that things aren't black and white in a conflict such as this. I really have no gripes about the plot as a whole, but they've done a terrible job of making your actions have any kind of consequence. You can literally lose a member of your team during a mission and he/she will be there the next mission. I lost Jack during a torture scene, and I was still talking to him during the rest of the chapter. I thought I was just talking to a ghost, and while I think that's a bit of a cheesy mechanic to employ in storytelling, I accepted it. Then in a future chapter, people were talking to him and he was performing tasks like he was alive. I could sacrifice people and they'd just show up next level. This is pretty much unforgivable in a game like this and breaks the immersion immensely. They really needed to fix this because once you figure that out, outside of accomplishing the challenges, who cares if so-and-so dies? And really, the challenges isn't enough glue to hold it together when the game is so story-driven.
 
Take a look at the first image on this page: I picked it for a reason. Unfortunately I chose "Exit Game" more than I would have liked when trying to play through it. I read preview after preview, watched video after video, of professional critics being in awe of how bad the game made them feel, or how intense the missions were. I can see why someone would get sweaty when playing this because it does expect you to multi-task a lot. Ultimately though the game gets bogged down in tedium because a) I don't think the choice-making is that interesting and b) the chapters are too long with no mid-level checkpoints.

You could spend 45 minutes playing a level only to die and have to start it over again because there is no saving in the middle of a chapter. The problem with this is that the game isn't exciting enough to warrant that. The first time you play a mission it's fresh and there's a joy in figuring it out, but then it becomes routine and the choices you make are more static than kinetic, and this gets highlighted when you die. You will end up falling into a pattern at some point, and their solution for that seems to be to add parts in each mission that are insta-death. These are random and there's nothing more frustrating than having to play something for so long only to be killed by something you have absolutely zero control over. The game stresses that you are the master of your own destiny in a lot of ways, but then the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I understand that in real life anything can happen, but this is still a poorly thought-out design choice. With that said, I can get past the random death but I have a much harder time with it when it takes so long just to get back to that point again in a replay.

I kept turning the game off because I just couldn't bring myself to do it again. That's where the game loses probably two points for me, because I can't get past this aspect of the game. There is a great idea in here, but it was implemented poorly.

Gods Will Be Watching had a lot of promise, and some people clearly enjoy this game more than I do. As it stands, it's actually one of the bigger disappointments of the year for me so far. It's only $10 on Steam though, so by all means give it a shot... it may appeal to you more than it did me.

Naked Bald Men And KOSers -- My (Long-Ass) Rust Alpha Impressions

Written By: Tyler
Important Info: http://www.rustmap.net (it's the map, duh)

Rust is in Early Access Alpha, like seemingly every game that comes out on Steam these days, but I didn't start playing it until recently. Up until a month ago, my computer couldn't actually run it, but I didn't get Rust right away even when I got a new computer because I'm not an Alpha guy. I appreciate the idea of it in the sense it can help fine-tune a game, at least according to what the gamers want, but I don't really have that much of an interest in playing an unfinished game.

But Rust -- and DayZ, though I haven't gotten that -- was a special case for me. I love and hate the idea of it. Since I've never played a game like this before, meaning a survival game with a lot of emphasis on PvP, Rust is intriguing to me. Take Minecraft and DayZ and throw them together, get rid of zombies and ta-da, you got a game that sounds awesome.

Yet also kind of, potentially terrible. This could be a game that's destined to either "Best Game Ever" or "Rage Quit On The Daily" status. What do I mean by this? Glad I asked.

The building is simple. You gather resources and build a house. Games like Minecraft have been doing this for years, and I spent a fair amount of time playing Terraria. I like this gameplay innovation and enjoy that more games do it. These resources also add to the survival aspects because you have to kill animals and cook your food, while keeping yourself warm and safe from the elements. You can craft various weapons to protect yourself. It's still in basic stages but it's fun, though I don't know for how long because there isn't a whole lot you can do right now.

Oh yeah, there's also perma-death so if you die, you lose everything you have on you.

The selling point for Rust was the PvP, at least for me. The idea of meeting randoms in a post-apocalyptic world, not knowing if they will be friendly or hostile, is a turn-on. Seeing how a social infrastructure would form is fascinating. Will you meet someone who will be part of building a village in order to survive? Will a giant group of people just walk around slaughtering everyone?



I was going to piece together a highlight video of me playing Rust, but this hasn't happened yet (keeping it open for the future though) for a couple reasons.

• Elder Scrolls Online is now out so I have to put time into that, while still trudging through Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls.
• There aren't enough highlights to even warrant a video at this point.

I would imagine my first reason is pretty self-explanatory but it's the second point that will make up a lot of this post, conveniently separated into a day format to fully express my views and feelings towards this whole thing.


Day 1 - Play For Maybe 5 And A Half Hours... Enjoyed Maybe 30 Minutes

My brother and I buy Rust because it's about teaming up more than going alone, at least in theory. Pumped to play, even if it is Alpha, we fire it up. We spawn in an area we obviously aren't familiar with as a bald man with a rock, and we wonder how to invite each other so we can play together.

Only you can't. So we walk, walk, walk and walk. We occasionally die from either animals, because we think that our rock can kill some of these, or humans that are better equipped than us. Hell, sometimes other noobs with rocks attack us too.

When we die we respawn in an area we still don't know. We wonder if there's a map... nope. No compass, nothing. We are out in this brand new area, completely unaware of the environment. Lost, confused, but not yet angry, we both travel, trying desperately to find one another. We notice that there's a road, so we walk the road because we figure that's out best chance.

Bad idea. That's a perfect area for people to kill us.

So we walk around some more. Even though there are buildings populating the area, they're mostly all just wood with metal doors. Sure, they're different sizes, but everything looks the same in this game. I understand going for realism, but it's very hard to navigate in this game, especially for someone like me who is apparently terrible at navigation. Since it's a game and not real-life, it would be nice to have a compass or something. Though later I learn that you can follow the sun and moon, but I can't be bothered to do that because I suck.

If people aren't killing us, they're asking us if we're friendly. Sometimes people kill you regardless of what you say.

Eventually I find someone nice who gives me some stuff, like a gun. This is almost two hours in, and while I'm aware that meeting friendly people is basically dependent on when you're playing, it's nice to see someone who isn't trying to kill me.

I still haven't found my friend, and this guy says I can stay there but I tell him that I'm looking for my friend, I say "Thanks for the stuff" and I go on my way. Luckily I eventually find my brother and the game is fun for probably half an hour. We manage to craft a single sleeping bag that I use because my brother knows that I always get lost, and we go out to get more cloth (which is needed to make sleeping bags). For those who don't know, the sleeping bag is a god-send. It is what you use to set up camp, meaning when you have a sleeping bag, you can now respawn at that sleeping bag.

We also build a small shack with a wooden door and a box to put our stuff in. We have no materials to make a metal door.

The best encounter of the night is when we're walking by some houses (who are our neighbours), and it gets tense. There is someone on top of the roof, and we hear them talking. The basic conversation goes like this:

Them: There are people there.
Us: We're friendly. [We keep running, but they keep talking about us]
Them: Is that a gun? [I still have a gun at this point]
My Brother: Yes, this is a gun. [He admits later to me that he figured that would either make them back off or make them come get us... it was badass how he said it to them though]

It's a small moment, but it's where Rust shines.

Eventually my brother dies and we're separated once again. We continue looking for one another, repeating the process from before, and at one point he's in an area that has absolutely nothing there. Eventually we quit for the night and we don't even think we like the game.

"Make friends." That's... arguable.

Day 2 - First Ever Raid, But We Enjoy The Game


I get a few texts while I'm at work from my brother who says that there is a map online, and that some servers allow you to teleport to people. There are also starter kits in some servers. We apparently hadn't chosen one of them, but we choose not to start over again because we do already have one sleeping bag laid down. Surely it can't be too hard to find each other and make another?

We turn on the game and we've gotten raided. It was our fault -- we created a wooden door which is pretty easy to knock down. Everything we managed to get is gone, and it's frustrating, but we knew something like this could happen.

But this is where a big complain of mine comes into play. The idea of raiding houses is fine and probably necessary, because this kind of thing would happen in the real world. But I wish there were some sort of system set-up that you could be notified, at least if you're sleeping in your house, when someone is raiding you. Think about it: in the real world if you're sleeping in a house and people are banging down your door, you'll probably hear it. I'm not a game developer, and I'm not sure how you'd implement anything to help, but I wish it existed. Though it's not realistic, it'd be nice to be told who raided your house.

We start over again, and eventually find one another. I think this is the point that we put down another sleeping bag, and I could be wrong here, but I think I enjoyed playing the game the rest of the night. Sure you had people who kill on sight (KOSer), but I believe I started meeting people. I'm not that social in real-life, but I seem to like mingling in this game. We have some neighbours and sometimes the area they're in is a death trap, but mostly it's pretty cool.

We get resources, build up the house, and I believe this is where we put in metal doors.

One encounter I remember is when I walk up to a house and there's a guy standing there. This is the basic conversation.

Me: Yo. What's up?
[Someone else walks out of the building, I think I'm going to die]
Guy 2: Woo we have a party!
Me: Yeah!
[Another guy arrives, with clothes on. I think I'm going to die]
Guy 3 (With Clothes): Hey, what's up?
Me: My gay life mate is back at the house so I'm out here looking for a good time.
Guy 3: Oh daaaaaamn. Want to come back to my place? I have lots of animal fat to show you.
Me: Oh that's tempting. I have a giant rock.

Time passes, having gay talk.

Me: Well I have to go now guys, I'll be back later for the orgy.

I laugh and tell this story to a friend when I see him. Rust makes you want to act gay if you're a guy because you're a half-naked (though you can choose not to censor your giant wang as far as I know) bald man. I don't know. Just seems right.


Day 3 - The Most Fun I've Had In Rust

It's not a day unlike the others. We mine resources, my brother gets really into building a house, and I'm apparently a social butterfly because fuck survival, I want to party. #YOLO

I have a lot of fun on Day 3. I make a friend, who I won't call out here because I learn some things about him later on. We keep running into each other, and he could easily kill me but doesn't. The first time I meet him he asks me what's up and I say I'm trying to figure out who raided my house. He laughs, and I tell him I'm a detective on a case. He could have very well have been the one who raided me.

While we're talking someone shoots at him. But not me. Later on I wonder if the guy shooting was protecting me. We try to find the guy, I say I'll try to draw him out because I don't have anything anyway, but me and my friend end up getting separated when he says he's going to go around the mountain.

So now Detective Tyler has two goals:

• Find out who raided my house.
• Find out who shot my friend.

When I eventually see my friend again, I ask if he ever found the guy who attempted to murder him. He said no. I say, "Well I guess it's a cold case then."

• Find out who raided my house.
• Find out who shot my friend. [cold case]

Eventually him and I have a rave party at night using his flashlight and my torch. We go about our merry way.

My brother has an idea of who it was that raided us. Whether it's true or not, he hatched a plan to infiltrate them. It was going to be the biggest betrayal of all time.  We would have done it too.

What I noticed on Day 3 is that the chat is helpful. People often expose KOSers and people who are raiding. It's very helpful. I see my friend calling out a guy called cjmason, who I'm assuming is a KOSer. Since I'm supportive of my friend, I tell him that I will also help kill cjmason. My brother agrees to as well. Now we're out for blood.

• Find out who raided my house.
• Find out who shot my friend [cold case] -- Though now I think it's cjmason.
• Find and terminate cjmason.

At one point I have a heart-warming moment. A noob comes up to me and asks if we can team up. "I'm just going home," and he asks if he can come with. He sounds like a kid but he's super polite. I want to help him but my brother doesn't know if we should let people in. To my brother's defense, I didn't tell him how nice the kid sounded, and I agree that maybe letting someone in is a bad move. I end up losing the guy, and I go back home.

Then we make up our minds that if we see the guy we should help him. So I do actually find him again and we give him a place to stay. We give him a metal door and a sleeping bag. We're amassing an army.

The last memorable encounter I've had with someone is when I went to see one of my neighbours. He tells me he got raided before, and I feel bad because I was totally there before, man. He tells me who did it.

It was my friend.

I tell him that that guy was friendly to me, but he is clearly not a fan of my friend. The plot thickens. I add "Ask my friend about his secretive past" to my To-Do list but I haven't done it yet.

So the rest of the night is basically just normal stuff. Getting wood, bashing rocks with a rock, killing animals, getting lost at night, building a house.  As the night goes on it becomes less fun, with different people online, but I end the night having enjoyed Day 3 immensely.


Day 4 - I Don't Really Like Rust Anymore (Again)

Someone tried to raid us but because of the build of our house and metal doors, they didn't succeed. We had a pretty good tactic that seemed to work. Awesome.

Most of the time I spend playing Day 4 sucks. People are annoying in chat, everyone is a KOSer, I call someone a dick and he tells me he hates me... it's hard to get anything going. The people I enjoyed talking to aren't on when I get on.

I quickly stop wanting to play but I keep going anyway, running out into the wilderness to see what I can find.

It was always entirely possible that the people would ruin the experience for me. I think my main problem is that there aren't any real consequences. Since it's a game, you can't fully nail that feeling of "surviving in a post-apocalyptic world," so people kill without remorse or consequences.

It's hard to know how people would react if they were thrust into this position, but I'm going to wager that people don't go on murderous rampages because a) most people haven't reached that level of dickdom and b) because it's beneficial not to be a dick all the time. There are consequences in the real-world.

In my experience if you see a guy with a gun, most of the time you're going to die. They kill people who only have rocks seemingly just because. It's not that I'm angry, it's that I get a little frustrated because it's hard to enjoy this game I paid for. Ultimately it's just a game though, and I realize this, which is why trolling and griefing don't really work on me. It does get really old constantly getting killed though.

It's not that I don't want people to kill other people. That's part of why the game is tense, but everyone on Day 4 seemed to think it was the only way to play.

Rust could be so much. In my mind I imagine people resurrecting a walled village where people take turns protecting the fort, while other people go out for resources. I don't know if Rust will ever get to this level or not, but I'm still fascinated by the potential.

There isn't anything remotely good to report about Day 4 until the end. My brother meets a neighbour who is apparently a "squatter" (haha, awesome). I eventually come back and also meet the guy. He gives us a gun! He's super friendly and we show him where we live. He compliments the work that my brother has done on building the house because my brother put his heart and soul into that.

We add him to our Steam friends list, we chat a bit. He tells us he has to go shower and then he'll be back, but we had to go shortly after.


The End Of Rust (For Now)?


This is the end of Rust for me right now. I don't know if I'll go back while it's still in Alpha or not. Like I said earlier, I got Elder Scrolls Online and Diablo 3 to play through. Other games will pop up as well.

There are other small encounters with people that I didn't mention, but I think I mentioned the best ones. 

I'll definitely check out Rust once it hits its official launch because I want to see how the world grows and develops, and I'll admit that the relationships that I started to cultivate are urging me to go back, but when I look at it objectively... I enjoyed maybe half my time with Rust.

I'm not giving it a score because this isn't that kind of article, but if you're like me and watched funny videos with The Chief and expected it to be like that... you'll be disappointed. Outside of the KOSers and hackers -- which I forgot to mention until right now -- there is a lot of doing the same old, same old. Right now I don't think there's enough content, outside of the social interactions, to warrant playing a long time.

Rust has a lot of potential to be awesome, and despite my frustration towards some of it, I truly believe that it will be.

Just a Quick Post About Path of Exile Being Released Today!

Written By: Tyler Selig

Are you a fan of Action RPGs/Hack n' Slash games? Do you want to play one that does a few things a little bit different than what you're used to? Do you like FREE? You'll want to get Path of Exile later today (approximately 3 and a half hours as of this post) on Steam or at their website: http://www.pathofexile.com/

Honestly, this is one of my most anticipated releases of the year. I only played the beta a little bit because I just wanted to experience it when it officially releases, but I loved the beta.

So this is just a quick post to urge people to download this. And if you end up liking it, throw some money at the developers who seemed to put a lot of care into making a free-to-play game that isn't pay-to-win and promises to deliver a quality experience.