This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded toĀ Let Them Come: OnslaughtĀ on the So Videogames Podcast, EpisodeĀ 484.
Weāre going to start with a bang. Weāre going to gonna start with a really good one. And this is actually going to be a full review as well.
This is Let Them Come: Onslaught. this is an indie jam. It is a survivors-like, kind of like vampire survivors where you have a character who auto aims and auto shoots. You control the character walking around the landscape. This one, I donāt know if itās necessarily a sequel. It doesnāt really seem like a sequel, probably just set in the same world as the original Let Them Come, which Iāll get to in a second, but let them come, onslaught.
Okay, spoilers, I loved it. I thought it was pretty great. I could not stop playing it, and I basically played it until I beat the entire thing. I just didnāt really take a break. I mean, I took I went to bed and I like went to the bathroom and I drank water and stuff. But like, thatās all I, I didnāt play anything else in between my sessions, which is kind of unusual for me. I usually jump around, but this one was just really, really well put together.
So I will say it doesnāt reinvent the wheel. And in fact, I donāt mean this to sound negative, but it doesnāt really bring anything new to the table. But what it does is ā it just does everything perfectly. It was like so immaculately playable and so fun and so well done. I just could not stop playing it.
So you begin with a very brief cutscene of a spaceship flying. A giant alien strikes the spaceship with its claw, the spaceship crashes, and then you are the injured soldier. Youāre holding your arm. Youāre bleeding out. Your leg is hurt. And so you limp around the battlefield, isometric perspective. you begin with a auto gun, which is like a little mechanical gun that floats around you. It kind of rotates around you like in a circle, and it will shoot whatever alien is nearest it has, I think 2 or 3 shots. Then it reloads, shoots again, and then you kind of limp around the battlefield.
As you look for power ups, you can find stuff like, chests with health or currency, youāll find towers that give you a temporary attack boost. Youāll find some towers that will give you special effects on the battlefield. Like itāll make you run faster for a while or give you shield for a while or something like that. And then you just gotta like walk around and, you know, just like all the other survivorslikes, you kill guys, you get experience and you get new weapons. You can have five weapons at a time. And that includes your starting weapon, which you can change later.
even though this game doesnāt really do anything new, what I really like about it is just like itās all so balanced and like the flow of the game is just so good. I think they have dialed in on the right number of enemies to come close to you. the right speed of walking, like the difficulty feels really good. Thereās a normal and hard. I beat the game on normal. I didnāt bother with hard because I was like, itās fine. I mean, I donāt really need like extra challenge, but I think normal gives you a pretty good challenge and lets you really think about your build. It really matters in this. And I think what it adds on to that is like, the weapon variety is really good.
I donāt like every weapon, but I feel like thereās a pretty good diversity in weapons. And I feel like each weapon has enough flavor and personality to it that you donāt just feel like youāre doing nothing. So, for example, you start with the auto gun, which is great. Later on, you can get a blaster, which is like, itās kind of similar to the auto gun, but when you stop moving, the rate of fire goes way up. So it kind of incentivizes you to like stop and pop, which is sometimes a strategy, sometimes not. You get like a giant hammer that swings around. You get drones that do like flybys and they strafe the battlefield. You got a laser gun that shoots only in front of you. You get, uh, some mines which can freeze enemies. I honestly, I think thatās like one of the best weapons in the entire game is the mines. Uh, you can also get grenades. you get like spears that actually focus on bosses. You also get a sniper rifle that also focuses on bosses, which is something you donāt really see that often in these games where a weapon will key into larger enemies only or larger enemies first, uh, which I think is pretty neat. And so thereās, thereās other weapons as well, but I think you really get a feel pretty quickly for which weapons work for your particular style.
You also have three total characters to choose from ā the soldier, his super ability is that he can dash, which is the most common ability for games in the genre. You get a psychic person whoā¦ God, what do they even do? I didnāt use them for very long because I didnāt like them very much. And then you get a little droid who can go into like an overdrive mode where all he loses defense, but then goes really high on offense. Uh, and one thing thatās cool about him is like when you get him buffed up a little bit, he does vacuuming of all the experience on the field. So you can go into like a high attack mode and then also suck in all the exp thatās around you, which is pretty neat.
but I did defeat the game with the soldier. I found that the dashing was just too clutch. Getting out of trouble in a hurry just was so, so good that I just had to go back to it. But I really like it a lot. I think that the weapons are great. I think you get a good sense of, wow, you can level each weapon up to like nine levels, and when you get to the ninth level, itās like this totally unhinged super ā you know, super powered version of something like, the auto gun turns into like a Gatling gun and it swings around super fast. the hammers go crazy. The spear, the spear you get, itās like a giant spear. And I ended up using this to beat the boss. Actually, itās a boss focused weapon. A giant spear looks like a lance at first. You have one, and then you have like, three. And then they go a little faster, and then they explode. When you get the lance to like the level nine version, itās like ten stabs, just like stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, and then it blows up at the end. Itās like super mega powerful. And like, if you know youāre going to be doing a boss run, like you definitely want to have that one in your corner. So I like the way the weapons feel.
I think the progression of each weapon upgrading feels really good. Thereās also a huge skill tree, and each of the things you get for the skill tree feel pretty significant. For example, you know, you can up your HP, you can up the area at which you suck XP in, you can increase your attack. And itās not just like 0.01 or something. Itās itās like 15%, 30%, 45%. Like it feels substantial. you can feel a difference when you do these upgrades. Thereās other things as well. You get like a revive or you get increasing the amount of experience. If you grab it within like three seconds of it dropping on the field or thereās, you know, thereās a, thereās a whole slew of stuff, all the stuff in the the skill tree feels pretty good and can really kind of tweak the way your character plays. one of them can really incentivize, like moving around one of them incentivizes staying still and can kind of like subtly tweak your build in ways depending on which character you are.
I beat the game all the way. Thereās four levels and you can beat the game without beating the boss. In fact, you can beat each level without beating the boss. You get in, you got to play each level for 20 minutes. At the end of 20 minutes, a nuke goes off and then you win that level. But itās possible to have the nuke go off and not have killed the boss. So you got to like beat the level. Also, kill the boss once you beat all four levels and kill all four bosses, that is. Credits. Roll. Game over!
Itās not a huge game. I think I finished everything in like maybe three, three days. you know, youāre probably looking at like eight, ten hours of gameplay depending, which is fine. I think itās a perfect size. It gets in, it does what it needs to do, shows you all its tricks, you have fun doing it, and then you get out. Itās just so well done. And if you want to play more, you can just keep grinding for, uh, you know, currency. You can get all the unlocks, you can play the hard mode if you want. Thereās a few other things to unlock if you beat the hard mode levels, which I did not do. but I did roll credits on normal and I just, I just think itās just, itās like, so well done.
I think the graphics are great. The kind of vaguely pixely version of graphics that look pretty nice. Stylized musicās great, controls great, characters are fun. Weapons are great. I mean, everything about it is great. Itās not itās not like breaking boundaries. Itās not breaking new ground. Itās not going to do anything that you havenāt seen in survivors like do before but everything about it just feels super tuned and super fun. And I literally could not put it down until I had beaten it. Had a great time. Loved it a lot.
And since I rolled credits, this is going to be my official review for Let Them Come: Onslaught. Going to give itā¦ Going to give it an 8.5. I think Iām going to give it an 8.5 because Let Them Come: Onslaught is a top example of the survivorslike genre. Itās balanced and itās well-thought-out. It has great weapons, great progression and great unlocks as you go. Everything about it is just done to perfection. It doesnāt break new ground, but what it does is super, super good. And to me that is like an 8.5. I would recommend this one to anybody who likes survivorslikes or if anybody has never played a survivorslike, I would even actually recommend this one as well. I think this is great for a one size fits all, awesome game time experience. Loved it. Thumbs up. Let them come. Onslaught was really, really good. Had a blast.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Tuatara Games and published by Digital Bandidos. It is currently available on PC, PS and Xbox. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. ApproximatelyĀ 8 hours of play were devotedĀ to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.Ā There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore and Intense Violence. Honestly, this rating feels unnecessarily excessive. Itās just a lot of overhead action with little detail when it comes to gore, and the survivorslike gameplay is fairly well abstracted. In my opinion, itās a āTā for teen at most, and even that is stretching it a bit.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: there is no spoken dialogue in the game. All information comes via text, and text cannot be resized or altered. There are no audio cues relevant to gameplay, so the experience is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, this gameās controls are not remappable. There is no control diagram. The left stick moves and the face buttons control the special ability of each character (dash, defense up, etc.) In menus, the left stick moves and the face buttons handle confirm/cancel functions when leveling up.
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