Lethal League, the seventh inning smackdown
Photo: reptile-games.com
Have you ever played ping pong then decided to just start wildly bouncing the ball around the room and just keep it going? Apparently the developers at Team Reptile had the exact same idea. Lethal league is best described as a mixture of ping pong, racquetball and baseball all thrown into a 2d fighting game.
When you first play, there will be a ball in between you and your opponent. The objective is to continue to volley the ball back and forth until someone gets hit. And unlike tennis, there is no “out of bounds.” When the ball hits the side of the screen, it keeps going. Every time you hit the ball, it goes faster. This can lead to the ball moving very quickly and flying across the screen.
The game has six unique characters to choose from. Each has a distinctive way to jump and move around the screen. For example, ‘Latch’ (the big lizard guy) can cling to the wall and hit the ball while he is holding on to the wall. ‘Sonata’ has a double jump, and ‘Raptor’ can jump off of the wall. After a player hits the ball four times, they can do a special move. This includes switching the direction of the ball, holding on to it and throwing it later, or even letting it pass through walls.
The simple fundamentals hide the true depth of the game. It is very easy to learn how the game is played and how to win, but as you play more, you learn new tricks to more likely beat your opponent. These mainly include ways to confuse or trick them into making a bad decision. Say, one player can take it upon them to continue hitting the ball over and over without letting the opponent hit it. This does two things: their special meter will have more charges, and the ball will be going faster than the opponent is ready for. When you hit the ball, you choose if you want to hit it straight up or down. So you could be hitting it down for the entirety of a round until your opponent expects you to hit it down, and instead you hit it up and they get hit.
This game has one of the best soundtracks I have heard in a long time. Each level has a different song, and each one fits the art-style game play and backdrop extremely well without distracting from game play.
My biggest gripe with the game is the limited ways to play. You can either play with friends against the computer or random people online. A good majority of the people online are more serious about the game and are much more skilled than entry level players. This leads to a sub-par experience for the new player. So if you do not have other people you know to play with and get better with then its pretty hard to play casually and have a positive experience online. The offline campaign mode is enjoyable but is very repetitive and has a low replay value.
I feel that the best experience you could have with this game is to play it almost exclusively with a friend in order to watch your individual play-styles develop. Lethal League is available on a PC/Mac gaming platform called Steam for $13.99.
