Lithium City is brought to us by Filipino indie developer Nico Tuason as his first major release although he's developed other games through Flash that are available through his website and for free, no less! It's a pretty diverse catalog that ranges from platforms to space sims to squad tactics games. All of them with the PC slant on things, which makes sense that a PC game would be his first major publication to the world.
But an action-adventure shoot-y stab-y beat 'em up? An interesting choice.
So what is the plot of Lithium City? No idea, sorry. The game doesn't really give you one outright and there are only very scant clues to piece things together with. In the first level, you play a pink-haired young woman with a katana who can move like lightning (the dash - press Spacebar) but who dies if a bullet so much as looks in her general direction. Actually, the hit direction is one of the things I really can't rag on the game for as it's fairly solid - more on that later.
My main criticism of the first section is that A) you move at a sluggish pace unless you're dashing which, seeing as you seem determined to escape from the facility you're in with gusto, you'd think would be a priority to move quickly and B) there is nothing in this game that even vaguely resembles a difficulty curve. You are given the basic controls through a few quick bits of text and then are immediately thrown to the wolves...not literally, of course. All your enemies in the game appear to be humanoids of some description.
I don't think a little tutorial level is asking for all that much, honestly. I don't want the hand-holding that so many games seem all too happy to do these days seeing as they think that their target audience have been having out in a smoke-filled garage snorting paint for twenty years, but there has to be some kind of balance between that and going "Okay, here's what you do, byyyyyyyyeeeee!!!!!" and then immediately throwing you right in front of the firing squad.
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| Some reviews have compared it to Hotline Miami. This game isn't nearly that evil. |
The combat is described as a being fast-paced and action packed, which I'd say is accurate. As pink haired woman, you move with your dashes and slice and dice you up some bad men with guns. As blue haired woman, you punch, shoot, and beat down with a pipe enemies and it is very flashy and impressive with all of it's visuals well polished. In fact, pretty much all of the games visuals are neatly polished in that 1980's neon cyberpunk-y sort of way.
Unfortunately, the combat has a nasty habit of increasing input lag to almost comedic levels while smack in the middle of it, particularly when facing multiple opponents. It's as if our rainbow-haired protagonists are the Microsoft Task Manager on quaaludes. I normally wouldn't mind this so much, but when you're attempting to avoid being killed by laser grid doors that exist for some reason and you frantically press the key to do so and there's no response...watching yourself die becomes a very, very annoyingly boring prospect.
When you die you erupt in a shower of sparks based on the color of hair your protagonist has. The first time it happens, it's amusing to watch. The 1011th time, it becomes very much less so.
The fact that weapons target where the mouse is pointing rather than where you're facing is a bit of a pain in the ass as well. It took more than a few bullets, fists, and pipes to the face for me to figure that out and I'm not ashamed to admit that. This doesn't really become an issue until later on when enemies start moving through environments independently of you, but it's still something that's good to note early on.
Of course, this brings me to the sinister truth behind Lithium City's supposedly action-adventure genre: it has puzzles. Isometric perspectives in general are something that I'm not the biggest fan of. I'm happy to say that Lithium City does have very clearly defined regulations as to where you can and cannot go and it's obvious from the level design, so definite kudos to Mr. Tuason there. However, the puzzles are where I start to get irritated, because there is no point in knowing where you're going to go if you never actually managed to get here.
The puzzles don't start really kicking in until Chapter 2, and they are very unforgiving. While blue-haired punch girl or PHPG as I'll call her now, can take a few hits before she's toast (unlike PHSG - Pink-haired sword girl), when she takes damage she has a few seconds where she's unable to react rather than a game potentially showing some mercy by giving you a few pitiful nanoseconds of invincibility in order to get your bearings and give it another go.
This is best demonstrated in a section I like to call "laser grid hell". Normally, the dash allows you to phase through environmental hazards such as said laser grids. However, in one particular section on a conveyor belt going through several it becomes harder if not near impossible to dash for reasons that aren't exactly clear. To drive the point home, there are massive boxes that are being sent down the conveyor belts and if you happen to be stuck too close to either the box or the beams you may as well kiss your blue-haired ass good-bye.
...that is your ass that happens to be attached to a body with a head covered in blue hair.
...for the love of god, please don't make fan art.
I honestly feel like a bit of an ass for being so hard on the game. Nico Tuason seems like a really nice guy and considering the game itself is a labor of love done by him, I don't really want to trash his game like I would something from a team of tens to hundreds of people working on a game to be published by a Triple A company like EA. This also is a first professional effort by him and I'm all about supporting creative efforts, it's the philosophy by which I've backed the last two Kickstarters that I did. That said, there are a few glaring flaws that I really can't ignore.
The input lag is a solid pain, the lack of any sort of difficulty curve beyond throwing you in the deep end, the puzzle sections that lack any margin for error. Also, something that could mitigate at least some of those problems and help with keeping the pace going - more checkpoints! The game has checkpoints at certain sections, but there are some gaps between them that ends up making the spaces in between feel like battles of attrition.
On the other hand, I absolutely love the art style, the fighting is nice and involving, and the music is pretty great to top it all off. The difficulty frustrated me, but I kept coming back to it for more and probably will again after this review goes life. The lack of story is a bit of a bummer, but patches to the game have been made as recently as early July at the time I'm writing this, so maybe we'll see more development as time goes on.
As it goes, Lithium City is pretty alright. For a first major game release from Nico Tuason (described in it's trailer as "The Last Flash Game" in a touching tribute to his roots), it's definitely not a bad one and even the things that I've complained about I have seen done a lot worse elsewhere. I can give it a tentative recommendation and I will be keeping an eye on Mr. Tuason's career with great interest.
Lithium City is brought to us by Nico Tuason for PC through Steam.
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