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A frantic dance of survival, cooperation, and resource management | Early Review - Lethal Company

2K View2023-11-23

✨Overview

Lethal Company is a first-person survival co-op game with a unique combination of survival, cooperation, and resource management, focusing on meeting quotas as objectives and navigating through eerie environments. The game was released in Early Access on October 24, 2023, and is rapidly gaining popularity recently. The game is designed around a maximum four-player co-op experience, but it is also playable solo or with more than four people with the use of mods.

📖Premise

As a contracted worker for a mysterious space-faring company, players are tasked with scavenging random scrap from abandoned, industrialized moons. Aside from the premise, there isn’t really not much of story here, although there are bits of lore the developers have already implemented for players to piece together and form theories on.

🎨Graphics and Presentation

Lethal Company has a look similar to PC games from the 90s, blending old-school graphics with modern first-person movement. The game has a creepy and mechanical feel, using 90s-style graphics with low-detail models, basic text, and a somewhat irradiated filter effect. The use of retro colors and metallic tones creates a scary atmosphere, especially in the run-down and dark hallways and rooms. Playing the game gives you a strong sense of fear and tension, especially when separated from your comrades.

The animations and physics are wonky and funny looking, and I’m not sure if that is part of its intended charm or something that will get realistic over time. For now, it at least balances the tension with its own brand of chaotic and goofy fun.

🎮Gameplay Overview

Lethal Company's gameplay is a carefully orchestrated dance of survival, cooperation, and calculated risk-taking. The core objective of the game is to meet profit quotas within a limited timeframe by collecting random scrap from moons. Players can land on a chosen moon once a day, and after the third day, you must meet the required item value quota or suffer disciplinary action.

The gameplay is not solely about individual survival; it emphasizes collaboration as players can choose to guide their crew from the safety of the ship or venture into dangerous environments together. This cooperative element adds depth and a layer of intensity to the overall experience. This is similar to the format seen in the game Phasmophobia, where one player can stay in the spawn to provide intel while the rest of the team go out on the field.

♟️♟️Is it strictly cooperative or is Singleplayer possible?

This game is clearly intended for a cooperative experience because playing in singleplayer or even as a duo, while possible, places you at a significant disadvantage. The objectives, loot, and the speed of time don't adjust accordingly. A single player can only carry so many things at once, specifically up to four small items and just one big item. As a result, you must make more trips back and forth to your ship, and looting is significantly slower.

The cooperative element enables players to work together to be able to efficiently scour the procedurally generated levels for scrap, and not die trying. As players meet quotas, they earn credits to spend money on gizmos. The Company store introduces an array of tools, from lights to stun grenades, enhancing the strategic dimension. Players can also buy a walkie-talkie to communicate over long distances and even teleporters to extract with ease.

📞Immersive proximity voice chat: “Just follow my voice”

Why buy a walkie-talkie when you have Discord, though? It’s because one standout feature is the dynamic proximity voice chat with really good positional audio implementation, with matching sound modulation depending on your location; perhaps a long hallway, a cramped room, or an open landscape. It fosters real-time communication that adds a layer of realism and excitement to cooperative play.

Voice is an integral part of the game and can even help you navigate the labyrinthine buildings. Just follow your teammate's voice, and you're going to be fine... probably. A friend following you from behind, and suddenly his voice cuts out, is both a hilarious and terrifying experience. With this, the use of third-party voice chat applications like Discord or Teamspeak are highly discouraged.

⚔️Combat

Combat is not the primary focus, and hide-and-seek encounters with alien monsters add a thrilling twist to the gameplay. Each creature presents unique challenges, requiring players to tread carefully on these abandoned moons. Audio cues and detection methods distinguish these encounters, creating a dynamic experience where players must approach each situation thoughtfully. The game still offers an option to dispatch some of these creatures, but it’s still a very risky maneuver.

🏗 Progression and Level Design

There are three tiers of moons you can visit, each based on difficulty and reward, providing players with a clear path for advancement. The final tier requires in-game credits for access but potentially offers more risks and rewards. As players face more challenging monster combinations in later stages, intense cooperation becomes crucial. As you survive for more days, the quota increases.

The game uses procedural generation for the interior of the buildings which will comprise 90% of your gameplay, the procedural generation system is already serviceable for the gameplay, but it still needs a lot of work in terms of being believable and logical. There’s lots of dead ends present with senseless empty hallways or catwalks leading to nothing. It takes away some of the immersion, so I hope this is a priority for the developers.

☠️Is it really scary?

True, it’s a horror game, but it’s more of a mix of monster and survival horror tropes. It’s not really scary compared to let’s say Silent Hill, or Alan Wake, and it’s probably due to the fact that the game is designed to be played cooperatively up to four players and more with the help of mods. The experience is much closer to something that lands in the middle of Left 4 Dead and Phasmophobia; Not as action packed as Left 4 Dead, but not as terrifying as Phasmophobia. Here, you’re encountering real tangible threats in the form of alien monsters, and you have friends alongside you doing some stupidly fun stuff.

Having said that, the game is still scary and creepy. They absolutely nailed the atmosphere, I love the way tension is built and how fear is instilled for the players. It’s all organic both literally and figuratively. There are still jumpscare moments which I usually hate, but not in this game; here it’s much more natural and procedural; no cheap scripted cliche ones to startle the player.

📊At the end of the day, It’s still in Early Access

Having been impressed a lot by its concept and execution, it’s important to note that this game is still in Early Access, more specifically, only released a month ago as of this writing. There’s a lot of room for improvement here, from the performance, which was less than I expected for my system, to more gameplay mechanics, optimized level design, and general polish. There’s tons of fun to be had already, especially with a max party or even more with mods, but don’t expect it to last for hours on end like well established long running coop games with years worth of content.

⚖️Conclusion

With its unique blend of 90s-style graphics and modern gameplay dynamics, Lethal Company stands as a promising breath of fresh (or irradiated?) air in the survival and cooperative genres. The core elements of scavenging together through eerie dilapidated buildings, using proximity voice chat as an integral part of the experience, and properly managing resources to meet quotas create an immersive gameplay loop that is already well worth its current price for the fun it offers, and it will only get better as more updates come, hopefully.

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