lethal company is the first time in an Ever that a trending new multiplayer game has impressed me and rivaled the Certified Hood Classics like valve's games or... yeah no valve's games. i don't tend to play multiplayer shit! i think what sets lethal company apart is atmosphere. the game is immersive from the first moment you start a save file and see the scratched, murky helmet hud. you don't notice it as much in multiplayer, but in singleplayer i just sat there and took it in the croaks of the ship's hull and the gentle whirrs and tippity taps when you use the computer (though eventually i do play the game). while the abandoned buildings are almost always repetitive (for readability reasons), the outdoor areas of these planets are sick. coming out of a long expedition to not only see, but HEAR that night has hit, is super impactful. increase that impact about tenfold when the ambiance is interrupted by the stomps of a forest giant. the microphone detection (thereby requiring you to be quiet) almost forces you to soak it all in.
so of course, with a game this amazing, a ripoff was soon to follow.
if we get an onslaught of mediocre "lethal-company-likes" in the wake of that game's success, i'm going to be pissed - though i will say that i think content warning is worse than a cut-and-dry ripoff would be. a number of the developer's decisions actively confound me, such as including human fall flat movement physics... in a first-person game. why? for what reason? does this add anything other than a slight sense of detachment from my player character? great, yet another entry in the endless list of popular multiplayer games that needlessly combine trends to create gimmicky experiences with little-to-no replay value. you might laugh at it with your friends, but only because you'd laugh at anything this stupid with them.
oh, and we didn't end up laughing at it. we ended up fighting, because this game punishes you heavily for exploring. this makes the second refund on my steam account. at least the monsters were cute.