Lethal League from Team Reptile is an indie fighting game released on Steam 27th August 2014.
Perception Check is a video review series joining Non-Fiction Gaming, see more of Aus Casual Gamer’s videos on Youtube.
Transcript:
Platform fighting games have always had a tough time on PC, due to consoles doing it better at times or the lack of party play ability. Lethal League brings the genre to the PC incorporating the basics of a party fighting game. Developed by Team Reptile, this independent title has great potential to break up any competitive Counter Strike LAN party with some light-hearted, old school platforming fighter fun.
Without a doubt, titles like Super Smash Brothers have heavily influenced this game to a point where memories from the Nintendo 64 days came rushing back with every win and loss. The title relies on a generating a fast-paced round by combining moves to speed up the oversized baseball that is key to knocking the other players out.
The unique gameplay design is created through the 1 – 4 players all smashing a baseball as fast as possible to knockout the opponents. This is a title that requires little mastery to play but takes skill and practice to achieve some sort of dominance over all others. Each character has a unique skill set with a special attack when their hit meter is full; this generates gameplay that can be dynamic and über fun.
The graphical style is similar to Team Reptile’s previous title, Megabyte Punch, the pixellated style is quite nice when playing this game for an hour or two but becomes a little tiresome through extended amounts of play. Each character has been designed quite well; the unique style to every character makes it quite easy to have a favourite and to be completely honest, Candyman is a badass.
The feature that makes this game worth playing through is the levelling system; this system allows you to generate experience when completing a fight online or against the PC. The system unlocks different cosmetic skins for the characters as you move through the levels, this is dependent on what character you are playing with at the time of the level up.
Sitting above the gameplay and graphics, the audio design is absolutely amazing. The soundtrack for this title compliments so well with the gameplay and the graphical style of the game. Moving through each level the track changes and you cannot help but get into the game that bit more than you did before.
The characters voice acting is quite spot on with no real issues when playing through the entire game. The soundtrack needs to be a purchasable option on Steam so it can be placed under the Hotline Miami tracks in my iPod.
The only letdown for this game would have to be the price. The Australian purchase price sits at around 14 dollars which makes it quite the pricey game for what it is. The only advice would have to be buy it during a Steam sale because undoubtedly this game will be featured for seasons to come.
Personally I would like to see some sort of community around this title with a sort of leader board or even showing the display names of who you are opposing during the online play.
Conclusion
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Overall this game provides a mindless breakup from the hardcore competitive gaming scene and saw hours of time wasted. If you think you’ll enjoy the scene pick it up for the $14 or wait around for the sales that will happen at some point. I give this title a solid “fun time to be had with friends”.
