In the wake of him jettisoning his own prior employment to join everyone else (when popularity-speaking he was the only one *not* struggling), this is hilarious & I love the irony
What fascinates me about Lethal Company is the enemies. Those giants Yahtzee mentions are generally unkillable, but there's a clip of someone getting picked up by one only for a random-ass sandworm to eat the giant and save the player. The coilheads are blatantly inspired by the Weeping Angels (and that SCP monster game, obvs), but dealing with them in high stakes situations in co-op with other bizarre threats thrown in makes the old idea fresh. The game is definitely carried by player interaction, and whether that's a failing or not is subjective. But if there's one thing I hope other games copy from it, I'd like to see more creative rules applied to enemies and their behavior.
I haven't played lethal company but the enemies kinda remind me of the enemies from rainworld, where each is governed by a different way of moving and the AI interacts differently
I thought the same thing, but I think Rain World goes the extra mile with its simulation of an ecosystem. It feels more like the world goes on without you whether you die or not.
"carried by player interaction, and whether that's a failing or not is subjective" Not always subjective. I've heard a lot of games criticism lean heavily on the "If it's only fun with friends, maybe it's not a good game" shtick, but many games just aren't designed to be played alone. Having friends to goof with can make a bad game bearable, but some games are just great with a party and dogshit alone because some game mechanics necessitate more players. That's not a badly designed game, that's just a game designed FOR multiplayer. I do hope for more variety in Lethal Company, though, and above all else I don't like "unfair" enemies. It's much more fun to puzzle out threats like a coilhead in the same room as a slime, than it is to just be forced to leave every time a ghost girl pops up.
Lethal company is the reason I will forever believe the "don't notice the creature in the room till it's eating your face off" trope in movies after watching my friend seal himself on the ship with an eyeless dog, only to turn around and stare it in the face as it charges him.
Thus felt like it was only possible and believable because it involved 4 Games Journalists all reaching the same situational awareness at the same moment
When the horror reaches such an absurd pitch, you can't help but laugh at it. And the injustice of the game conditions reduces personal investment in it, and they can drift to critical detachment or black comedy. That it leans into the latter is one of the game's strengths. Losing really is fun in this game.
@@mennymoto I wanted to dispute that with you, but I can't without determining the intent. I'm not sure that it isn't horror. Are you sure that it isn't horror?
@@mennymoto I dunno, the moment I hear the spider scurry towards me and see that fucking model my heart sinks so much I'd argue it is quite a horror game...
I think its important to note with Lethal Company that while this doesnt take away from Yahtzee's general minor criticisms, it seems he just barely scratched the surface in terms of monster/enviroment variety which for obvious reasons means he probably missed out on the truly horrifying creature types and experiences the games have to offer. Thankfully the dev also seems to be intent on keeping the game updated with new content for now (christmas update) so hopefully with consistent attention given to it the game will have a healthy lifespan and turn into one of those cult classic games you boot up with your friends every now and then to get scared shitless and/or laugh your ass off together.
The monsters are only surface deep... If you see a monster, you're dead. Usually straight away but occasionally you can sprint to an exit and that's it. Level over, go home. Waste of time.
@@happymoomoocow It's the typical contrarian. You could see his/her comments in other threads trying to justify why they didn't enjoy the game, let alone play it. It begs the question of why? Repeating the vicious cycle of "I hate game therefore everyone should know", it's like an attempt for praise. What's worse is how it disregards constructive criticism in favor of simplified and even false statements. An equivalent to: "I'm right, you're wrong".
Massive corporations could never take over the cozy-game niche because they can't put genuine passion into their work anymore. It's hard to care when you've been crunching for 6 months.
It's incredibly hard for you to work on a game for 4 years and maintain a good level of motivation and passion, but it can be done. Now try and do that level of work in 11 months.
@@Fedacking ... Yes and no? The closest they can get is the farming genre, and even that is usually in the area of double A or B team developers. It's really about what you can market, and the only thing that big corporations can market for is action adventure. Of course, it could be said that a good number of mobile games are comfort games, but if you look at both their design and marketing, it becomes clear quick that they don't really get it, relying on shocking, dramatic or infuriating ads to sell the most generic slop you've seen. TLDR: greedy companies can't comprehend advertising cozy games, so you'll likely not realize that they're trying to get into the market.
@@onebear6504Yeah, it wasn't Yahtzee. It might have been Frost. Regardless, it was damn hilarious, especially since just before I had asked "who is going to die first" and then an easily avoidable total party kill is the first instance of death two minutes later.
Tip for Bloodwest: The guns aren't as loud as you'd think and the hidden artifacts are very useful for making a more personalized build. The bow isn't so much the quiet one (Though it is) as it is the economic one, since as long as enemies are a few benches away from both you and the target, they tend not to notice the death of their nearby comrades.
I'm not sure if its a mod (or if its part of vanilla) but I played Lethal Company yesterday and one of the monsters (I think it was the girl) would use what we said in the session to bait players towards them. It was honestly terrifying, imagine hearing a friends voice saying "Hey, X come here" and you go towards the voice and it's just a monster...
@@Kaimax61 Actually it's not limited to the most recent audio. I've been using it with some friends and we've heard it repeat things we said three planets ago. So it remembers anything you or anyone else has said within that play session. Once people log out or close the game, it forgets it. We also figured out that different players hear different things and not at the same time. The audio cues are player specific.
I'm kinda surprised, but also kinda not that Yathzee didn't enjoy Lethal Company or didn't give it much in the way of praise. On the one hand, it's definitely not his type of game from what I could tell, on the other, I'm surprised he didn't appreciate the simple, but very well polished gameplay loop and some of its most interesting aspects. LC nails sound-design in a way few games do, with the proximity chat having filters to reflect position, distance, situation and even area the player is in and the rest of the SFX seem to have the same amount of care put into them. Also the monsters all have specific behavioral patterns and ways to approach and that makes it really interesting to game out, it's random (and sometimes bullshit) but there usually is a solution or something for anything Also with how the dev says they wanted to update it for a year or so, I feel like LC could have a lot of staying power as a "game with friends" especially with the modding community it's building
Yeah I agree, I think them going in expecting it to be a streamer bait kind of games made them not try to push the gameplay deeper, i mean yeah the beginning is scary spooky kind of games but as knowledge of monster and behavior adds up and planing and strategizing with risk/reward reflection comes into play, and yet, the amazing random situation keeps happening, turning around and seeing your friend getting snapped by bracken or walking around and having a coil head stopping 2 feet away from you never get old.
@@moi1407 Always going to be hard to push the gameplay deep in a multiplayer setting, especially on stream. Gameplay depth and multiplayer rarely mix, which is generally why I just don't tend to like multiplayer games.
idk, I'd say it as much as this unpolished game can be praised from Yathzee? His points of critique are on point for me. And he did talked about "good laugh" and "fun with friends" which is probably pretty much what this game was aiming for.
I think why lethal company so good, it's because how simple it is, grab trash, return to ship, rinse and repeat, sell everything. Now, lacks a lot of depth, but what it makes it so compelling its the story telling, that you create with your friends and what we watch online, so many situations and so different each time. I just hope that it does not go the Among Us route....
@@Krushak8888Getting so big it takes over RUclips while the dev fails to keep up with demand, I guess, and then everyone gets bored and it limps along on past glory?
Yeah, I feel this mini review is missing what really makes Lethal Company shine is it's flavor and variety. Like you say, it lacks depth at the moment, but it's simplicity makes it easy to learn but hard to master. It feels different from the standard multiplayer game, like the creator leaned heavily into flavor and fun first. The recent comedy and tragedy masks, along with the nutcracker enemy are both comical and terrifying. The nutcracker's muted shotgun blast from another room while also hearing another player's voice cut off is something I don't think I've heard in a game before. It feels a little too real. The masks are amusing to find, with a surprising Invasion of the Body Snatchers twist to them. This dev is creative. I disagree that Lethal Company was designed strictly for streamer bait. It's too weird and goofy to be such a cynical product. And love or hate FNAFs, that game stood out when it was new. Streamers and clone games will always follow the new big trend.
Lethal Company falls into a weird subgenre I like to call “Horror Solo; Comedy Multi” where playing it alone is somewhat stressful and mildly frightening, but multiplayer is mostly trolling and giggles. The only other game in the subgenre that I know is Phasmophobia
I think the two weapon slots in Blood West forces you to you to plan encounters ahead of time. Often the zombies are deaf and blind enough that you can get away with the pistol for a silent takedown, and if not you have to make a choice between the knife and bow, with a gun as your oh-god backup options. I had several instances where I successfully planned out which parts of a larger group to kill with what that made me feel pretty clever. I also really like how the difficulty scales, in that eventually you feel like the basic goomba is a pushover that you can just mow down. And then, once you've let your guard down, you're rudely reminded that he still will chew through your health bar in a few hits if you let him catch up.
These kinds of Coop multiplayer games aren’t about the mechanical depth, they’re just a sandbox for players to have encounters and react to. In that way, they’re stream bait, as well as fun ways to kill a few hours with friends. I think Lethal Company has enough legs to maintain some popularity and player base, but it will be reliant on new content and environments being added over time.
I think what Lethal Company does in spades is take advantage of the moment. Like none of the humor is forced, it's all organic rising out of the situation. Same with the horror.
I think this might be one of my favourite Second Wind series, especially of the Yahtzee bunch. The fact it's cut from streams means the atmosphere is slightly less over-the-top crass-is-funny atmosphere, and I love the actual insights from somebody with clear experience with what they're talking about in the insert narration. It's a really great way to learn what on a _technical_ level makes games work or not work, with the "deep dive" example making it easier to get the point. Also, having the other Second Winders in the stream sections both provides an additional perspective as well as just making it feel... I dunno the right word, but more chill? That's not quite the right word, but I like it regardless ❤ Anyways, it feels like on a maturity level, Yahtzee's series go FR -> SR -> YT, and as an adult viewer, I appreciate the more mature, nuanced look this series provides. Crass-equals-funny is good in small doses, but nuance and insight is _always_ engaging!
Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog!!!! I share his hatred for that damn song. I worked as a home healthcare aide for a few years and one client loved that "song" so we had to watch the show over and over day after day until eventually the lyrics ended up being forever seared into my brain!
I agree with this. Right now Lethal Company is at its best if you don't know what you're doing very much. Its at its best with good friends and bad game knowledge.
The Developer also made some other, fun single player scary experiences. The Upturned is an experiment in "what if it was scary but not horror" which is largely successful but fails towards the end because the game gets extremely tedious.
The Let's Play (Or Try lol) with the Yahtzee criticism in between is awesome! Really enjoyed this one. On a another note, I'm very happy to support you guys. And am really proud of you for what you've accomplished on this new channel already. I wish you all the best as your new channel continues to grow! 😃
The Lethal Company stream was great, and it finally taught me what its all about, because all ive seen of it before then were clips of internet people shrieking and screaming at it obnoxiously! I always watch the streams, and i always watch these edited ones too, because theyre good to see the best bits again, and also to hear some extra thoughts.
I, for one, liked the Bonehoard, that is, the _Thief: TDP_ crypt on level 3, featuring zombies, haunts, traps and a buttload of treasure there to adorn the dead. At the time, this was the closest one truly got to a classic dungeon crawl, and I felt damn clever both clearing the zombies by leading them to traps and then evading the trapsnto get the loot. It's not as amazing as Constantine's wizard house, but still the kind of fun hard to come by these days.
I picked up blood west after seeing a bit of this stream and am really digging it. Stealth+ resource management tickles my gamer brain in exactly the right spot
Dreamlight Valley looks more like "Song of the Evertree" with its use of wibbly wobbly dark tendrils of thorny vines as the thing you need to go around clearing out. Pair that with the bright tone and banal conversations with talking objects and one could be forgiven for thinking someone was cheating off the others' homework.
Remember Disney ToonTown? That was a good game. Started as a skunkworks project, established a lot of great standards for f2p MMOs appropriate for children. Maybe Disney forgot about it.
Lethal Company is the latest in a long line of games I'm going to refer to as "I'll get to it when it's done", or "Valheim Syndrome", because it's a fantastic time with people you like playing games with - and then you run out of content and it got way bigger than the devs were ready for and so waiting on updates might as well be the same thing as forgetting the game exists for a few years.
I think one of its best selling points for people is how unique it is in the current gaming landscape. Its essentially a 4 (or more if you mod) player horror/comedy roguelike where you balance work ethic with not wanting to die. Youre playing risk versus reward as you try to get as much loot as you can to meet the ever increasing quota while dealing with the rogues gallery of monsters that seems to continue building, seeing how many workers you can safely sacrifice to get as much as you can without risking jeopardizing every piece of salvage youve gotten. Or the knowledge that everything could dissolve from smooth sailing to absolute chaos in the matter of seconds. And as opposed to other RUclips Haha games, there does seem to be a genuinely good game underneath the surface that can only refine with more development. But even with whats here, this game is a legitimately good horror game as it doesnt rely on loud noises and jumpscares to carry its horror. It builds tension, it doesnt hold your hand or play a music flair every time a nonster enters your line of sight followed by an orchestra in your ear. However, even horror alone, tegardless of how amazing it is, can get old really quickly once you've seen it all enough. Thats where the comedy aspect comes in, largely in part thanks to the community of players who can immediately relieve the tension but stepping on a whoopie cushion or having a hilarious death right before your eyes due to a great implementation of proximity chat cutting off said chat the moment they die. And with the plethora of mods available for the game due to how excited the community is to build upon whats already here, it could take a long while before the game starts to truly die down like other haha games. Whether this post ages like wine or milk though I have no clue.
1:11 The Coffin of Andy and LeyLey is not fun to stream at all and it has overwhelmingly positive reviews, therefore it is just really really good. Yahtzee has spoken
As of now, Lethal Company is p safe from running out of surprises with both the occasional official updates and the massive modding community it's gained.
Lethal Company is definitely firmly in the Horror Comedy genre, it is not meant to be taken 100% seriously, and the design is far too deliberately goofy for that. I don't get the feeling we are laughing at the game but that we are laughing with the game. It is also the first game that I know of that can pull off both horror and comedy well enough to actually earn the title.
Seems like a pretty ideal approach for what's clearly meant to be a multiplayer co-op experience and also may or may not be a spectator sport on streaming. Goofy and scary is just a tricky balance, though.
wow, didn't realize you had covered blood west at all! for me it kind of clicked when I got the coin artifact to let me switch weapons in inventory without death. that and a few levels in the stealth skill and a magic item to boost it a bit more, if that's your style id look for stuff like though. first boss can drag a bit though, at least if you are stealth focused 100%
I do hope there will be an FR on Blood West. I am playing it right now and enjoying it quite a bit. I also really welcome the idea of indie developers making immersion sims, as the AAA developers have pretty much stopped doing that.
The Disney commentary gets me every time 😂 I lost my taste for their money grubbing bullshit years ago so it's always fun to hear someone else's opinions on the matter😊 Cheers all! 🍻
I don't think that it's fair to put it on the same scales as other horror games, I feel that it's more of a comedic experience wrapped in a horror game package
It is interesting going back to Yahtzee's critical thoughts on a game after it gets a decent amou t of updates or you see more interesting takes and thoughts about it. Makes it kinda wanna see him go back into it and give more thoughts.
I gotta disagree wholeheartedly with Yahtzee's opinion on Lethal Company only being popular because streamers play it I love this game, and I don't even watch streamers. Word got around about it in my friend group, and now something like twelve of us regularly play it.
I saw someone playing a bit of DDV and there was something about your character having once been king of Dreamlight Valley in their dreams as a child or something, but they got depressed as they grew older and forgot about it and everything went to shit afterwards and the game is presumably about rediscovering that oh-so-marketable Disney Magic™ as an adult. It looked like the player was given purple skin, black angel wings, and shadowy mist effects on their body for this sequence while doing favors for bad guys, like stomping on flowers and knocking things over. So that's probably about as edgy as that game gets. Odd if the game really is aimed at adults, but then, I guess they didn't want to traumatize people by having a character say something like "By the way, are you still drawing porn of me?"
I think the light work and life sims ended up an indie thing because the mainstream abandoned them, there was definitely a point when Harvest Moon was everyone's go-to. The gaming industry from 2007 to somewhere in the mid-2010s is kind of a weird story. The industry expanded massively in terms of market and reach, going mainstream in a way it'd never done before, but at the same time the focus of the largest studios narrowed, killing some genres off entirely until indie devs or smaller studios picked them back up years later.
Yeah animal crossing, the sims, and harvest moon are all 30 year old franchises. AC is still trucking along with that weird resurgence of popularity during the pandemic, the sims fell into all the worst money hungry tactics of its parent company and burned a lot of its good will, and lastly harvest moon's studio fractured and both halves went on to be shells of their former selves. Wonder what other mostly forgotten genre's will become the new indie gems.
It is a pity, since the horror comes form all of the shenanigans just abruptly ending and finding that you are completely alone and have to make it out. Though I still find it a miracle that Yahtzee even played it
I know Lethal company is the hotness and gets clicks, but I feel a little bad for Blood West not being in the title. I'd prefer if the title of this series mentioned all the games talked about, but I also understand if the labeling is for algorithm purposes.
I'm not gonna lie Dreamlight Valley. Just looks on fun to play the character. Moves makes me feel like it was originally like a point in click Sims game.
I think the more Yahtzee plays Lethal Company, the less he'll think of it as streamer bait and the more he'll see it as the genuine product it is. Lethal Company is like a human being, it's fun BECAUSE it's flawed, that's what makes it so god damn fun - what it lacks actually makes room for dynamic black comedy storytelling. For example, I was once deep into a late game quota with friends. We had been taking everything completely seriously and it was the final day on Titan. We'd been saving scrap the whole time to meet each quota, but this time we were going to have to collect 3,000 worth, and the scan said there was only about 4,000 available. So we split up into teams of two and entered the main entrance and fire exit at the same time. The fire exit contained a land mine which I promptly stepped off of, killing me and my teammate immediately. As for the other two, they eventually found us dead in the fire exit and attempted to bring our bodies back, only to get immediately killed by two coil heads at the same time. It was complete bullshit, and we laughed all night. It will forever be one of my fondest gaming memories. Lethal Company will have lasting appeal regardless of whether or not it gets "polished", because it's just such a dynamically entertaining game where all outcomes are fun.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Yahtzer would be the person who watches his friends die from the safety of the ship and say"eh, I didn't really like them that much anyway"
Yahtzer
"more money for myself... and others, but mainly myself!"
In the wake of him jettisoning his own prior employment to join everyone else (when popularity-speaking he was the only one *not* struggling), this is hilarious & I love the irony
So basically me?
I heard Yahtzer still works for The Escapist
The irony is that Yahtzee is a pretty lethal company employee. He helped kill The Escapist when they had it coming, and we love him for it.
Oh, dayum. xD
What fascinates me about Lethal Company is the enemies. Those giants Yahtzee mentions are generally unkillable, but there's a clip of someone getting picked up by one only for a random-ass sandworm to eat the giant and save the player. The coilheads are blatantly inspired by the Weeping Angels (and that SCP monster game, obvs), but dealing with them in high stakes situations in co-op with other bizarre threats thrown in makes the old idea fresh.
The game is definitely carried by player interaction, and whether that's a failing or not is subjective. But if there's one thing I hope other games copy from it, I'd like to see more creative rules applied to enemies and their behavior.
I haven't played lethal company but the enemies kinda remind me of the enemies from rainworld, where each is governed by a different way of moving and the AI interacts differently
@@alpal4245 haven't heard of that one, but that sounds cool! I'll have to check it out.
I thought the same thing, but I think Rain World goes the extra mile with its simulation of an ecosystem. It feels more like the world goes on without you whether you die or not.
"carried by player interaction, and whether that's a failing or not is subjective"
Not always subjective. I've heard a lot of games criticism lean heavily on the "If it's only fun with friends, maybe it's not a good game" shtick, but many games just aren't designed to be played alone. Having friends to goof with can make a bad game bearable, but some games are just great with a party and dogshit alone because some game mechanics necessitate more players. That's not a badly designed game, that's just a game designed FOR multiplayer.
I do hope for more variety in Lethal Company, though, and above all else I don't like "unfair" enemies. It's much more fun to puzzle out threats like a coilhead in the same room as a slime, than it is to just be forced to leave every time a ghost girl pops up.
Cant you break line of sight with the giants and they'll forget about you?
Lethal company is the reason I will forever believe the "don't notice the creature in the room till it's eating your face off" trope in movies after watching my friend seal himself on the ship with an eyeless dog, only to turn around and stare it in the face as it charges him.
“What’s this landmine looking thing?”
“DONT STEP ON THA-“
Comedy gold
This reminds me of when the Blues were all arguing about who dropped the grenade... only to realize that someone threw a grenade at them.
Thus felt like it was only possible and believable because it involved 4 Games Journalists all reaching the same situational awareness at the same moment
@@confluxfighterGood old times.
When the horror reaches such an absurd pitch, you can't help but laugh at it. And the injustice of the game conditions reduces personal investment in it, and they can drift to critical detachment or black comedy. That it leans into the latter is one of the game's strengths. Losing really is fun in this game.
@@mennymoto It's a horror comedy :)
@@mennymoto I wanted to dispute that with you, but I can't without determining the intent. I'm not sure that it isn't horror. Are you sure that it isn't horror?
@@mennymoto I dunno, the moment I hear the spider scurry towards me and see that fucking model my heart sinks so much I'd argue it is quite a horror game...
@@mennymoto It may be very comedic about its horror but the game still gets scary as all hell at times.
@@mennymoto I think I've discovered a key indicator. If your only winning strategy is to run like hell, then you're playing a horror.
I think its important to note with Lethal Company that while this doesnt take away from Yahtzee's general minor criticisms, it seems he just barely scratched the surface in terms of monster/enviroment variety which for obvious reasons means he probably missed out on the truly horrifying creature types and experiences the games have to offer. Thankfully the dev also seems to be intent on keeping the game updated with new content for now (christmas update) so hopefully with consistent attention given to it the game will have a healthy lifespan and turn into one of those cult classic games you boot up with your friends every now and then to get scared shitless and/or laugh your ass off together.
The monsters are only surface deep... If you see a monster, you're dead. Usually straight away but occasionally you can sprint to an exit and that's it. Level over, go home. Waste of time.
@@RiKSh4w they’re really not, almost every single one has some sort of counter/weakness to it
@@RiKSh4wComments that immediately make it obvious someone hasn’t played the game
@@happymoomoocow
It's the typical contrarian. You could see his/her comments in other threads trying to justify why they didn't enjoy the game, let alone play it. It begs the question of why? Repeating the vicious cycle of "I hate game therefore everyone should know", it's like an attempt for praise. What's worse is how it disregards constructive criticism in favor of simplified and even false statements. An equivalent to: "I'm right, you're wrong".
The Ghost Girl and the Jester really are the crown jewel of this, shame he didn't see either cuz he stuck to the early moons
Massive corporations could never take over the cozy-game niche because they can't put genuine passion into their work anymore. It's hard to care when you've been crunching for 6 months.
It's incredibly hard for you to work on a game for 4 years and maintain a good level of motivation and passion, but it can be done. Now try and do that level of work in 11 months.
Is the cozy game genre really that different in terms of passion than the rest of the game genres?
@@Fedacking ... Yes and no? The closest they can get is the farming genre, and even that is usually in the area of double A or B team developers. It's really about what you can market, and the only thing that big corporations can market for is action adventure.
Of course, it could be said that a good number of mobile games are comfort games, but if you look at both their design and marketing, it becomes clear quick that they don't really get it, relying on shocking, dramatic or infuriating ads to sell the most generic slop you've seen.
TLDR: greedy companies can't comprehend advertising cozy games, so you'll likely not realize that they're trying to get into the market.
The companies can't even be bothered to write apologies themselves and use AI to do it.
@@Stad122 Where does Animal Crossing fit into that model?
Marty and the radioactive core mightve been the hardest ive laughed in so long, so abrupt and perfect
It's like Yahtzee tries to remain apathetic but then as his mates start dying he can't refrain from cracking a smile.
At least he didn't step on the mine
He didn't know it was a mine... He thought it was some sort of mine shaped object 🤣
2:13 wasn't Yahtzee ig (legit not sure)
@@QContinuum89
That's a life lesson for Yahtzee's kids: Never step on things that look like a mine. Not even your Roomba.
@@onebear6504Yeah, it wasn't Yahtzee. It might have been Frost. Regardless, it was damn hilarious, especially since just before I had asked "who is going to die first" and then an easily avoidable total party kill is the first instance of death two minutes later.
Marty was the guy who found the landmine, said "what is this thing? I found, like, a landmine", then immediately stepped on it.
Tip for Bloodwest: The guns aren't as loud as you'd think and the hidden artifacts are very useful for making a more personalized build. The bow isn't so much the quiet one (Though it is) as it is the economic one, since as long as enemies are a few benches away from both you and the target, they tend not to notice the death of their nearby comrades.
I'm not sure if its a mod (or if its part of vanilla) but I played Lethal Company yesterday and one of the monsters (I think it was the girl) would use what we said in the session to bait players towards them.
It was honestly terrifying, imagine hearing a friends voice saying "Hey, X come here" and you go towards the voice and it's just a monster...
Yeah that's the skinwalker mod
skinwalker mod, and it's still janky, because it just copies your latest audio and repeat it without reason.
@@Kaimax61 That's not a downside. It gives the player at least a tiny chance of figuring it out.
@@Kaimax61 Actually it's not limited to the most recent audio. I've been using it with some friends and we've heard it repeat things we said three planets ago. So it remembers anything you or anyone else has said within that play session. Once people log out or close the game, it forgets it. We also figured out that different players hear different things and not at the same time. The audio cues are player specific.
I'm kinda surprised, but also kinda not that Yathzee didn't enjoy Lethal Company or didn't give it much in the way of praise. On the one hand, it's definitely not his type of game from what I could tell, on the other, I'm surprised he didn't appreciate the simple, but very well polished gameplay loop and some of its most interesting aspects.
LC nails sound-design in a way few games do, with the proximity chat having filters to reflect position, distance, situation and even area the player is in and the rest of the SFX seem to have the same amount of care put into them.
Also the monsters all have specific behavioral patterns and ways to approach and that makes it really interesting to game out, it's random (and sometimes bullshit) but there usually is a solution or something for anything
Also with how the dev says they wanted to update it for a year or so, I feel like LC could have a lot of staying power as a "game with friends" especially with the modding community it's building
Yeah I agree, I think them going in expecting it to be a streamer bait kind of games made them not try to push the gameplay deeper, i mean yeah the beginning is scary spooky kind of games but as knowledge of monster and behavior adds up and planing and strategizing with risk/reward reflection comes into play, and yet, the amazing random situation keeps happening, turning around and seeing your friend getting snapped by bracken or walking around and having a coil head stopping 2 feet away from you never get old.
@@moi1407 Always going to be hard to push the gameplay deep in a multiplayer setting, especially on stream. Gameplay depth and multiplayer rarely mix, which is generally why I just don't tend to like multiplayer games.
idk, I'd say it as much as this unpolished game can be praised from Yathzee? His points of critique are on point for me. And he did talked about "good laugh" and "fun with friends" which is probably pretty much what this game was aiming for.
I think why lethal company so good, it's because how simple it is, grab trash, return to ship, rinse and repeat, sell everything.
Now, lacks a lot of depth, but what it makes it so compelling its the story telling, that you create with your friends and what we watch online, so many situations and so different each time.
I just hope that it does not go the Among Us route....
Which is what for amoung us?
@@Krushak8888Getting so big it takes over RUclips while the dev fails to keep up with demand, I guess, and then everyone gets bored and it limps along on past glory?
@@Krushak8888 basically, takes over the videogame media and stagnates creativity for copy cats
Yeah, I feel this mini review is missing what really makes Lethal Company shine is it's flavor and variety. Like you say, it lacks depth at the moment, but it's simplicity makes it easy to learn but hard to master. It feels different from the standard multiplayer game, like the creator leaned heavily into flavor and fun first. The recent comedy and tragedy masks, along with the nutcracker enemy are both comical and terrifying. The nutcracker's muted shotgun blast from another room while also hearing another player's voice cut off is something I don't think I've heard in a game before. It feels a little too real. The masks are amusing to find, with a surprising Invasion of the Body Snatchers twist to them. This dev is creative. I disagree that Lethal Company was designed strictly for streamer bait. It's too weird and goofy to be such a cynical product. And love or hate FNAFs, that game stood out when it was new. Streamers and clone games will always follow the new big trend.
My comment was hardly a review, it's just an opinion based on what i've seen from myself playing with some friends@@bluemooninthedaylight8073
Lethal Company falls into a weird subgenre I like to call “Horror Solo; Comedy Multi” where playing it alone is somewhat stressful and mildly frightening, but multiplayer is mostly trolling and giggles. The only other game in the subgenre that I know is Phasmophobia
Both have the same proximity chat, radios, and truck cameras too
"Everybody's dead, Nick." Nice Red Dwarf reference
I think the two weapon slots in Blood West forces you to you to plan encounters ahead of time. Often the zombies are deaf and blind enough that you can get away with the pistol for a silent takedown, and if not you have to make a choice between the knife and bow, with a gun as your oh-god backup options. I had several instances where I successfully planned out which parts of a larger group to kill with what that made me feel pretty clever.
I also really like how the difficulty scales, in that eventually you feel like the basic goomba is a pushover that you can just mow down. And then, once you've let your guard down, you're rudely reminded that he still will chew through your health bar in a few hits if you let him catch up.
7:35
"...I stick my tongue right in that crack." Is an out of context quote that will now live forever on the interwebs.
It’s good to see contagious mirth spread to Yahtzee from a video game.
These kinds of Coop multiplayer games aren’t about the mechanical depth, they’re just a sandbox for players to have encounters and react to. In that way, they’re stream bait, as well as fun ways to kill a few hours with friends. I think Lethal Company has enough legs to maintain some popularity and player base, but it will be reliant on new content and environments being added over time.
How would that hurt his brand?
I think what Lethal Company does in spades is take advantage of the moment. Like none of the humor is forced, it's all organic rising out of the situation. Same with the horror.
"That looks like a landmine!" "WAIT DONT STEP ON IT" *explosion* perfection
I think this might be one of my favourite Second Wind series, especially of the Yahtzee bunch. The fact it's cut from streams means the atmosphere is slightly less over-the-top crass-is-funny atmosphere, and I love the actual insights from somebody with clear experience with what they're talking about in the insert narration. It's a really great way to learn what on a _technical_ level makes games work or not work, with the "deep dive" example making it easier to get the point. Also, having the other Second Winders in the stream sections both provides an additional perspective as well as just making it feel... I dunno the right word, but more chill? That's not quite the right word, but I like it regardless ❤
Anyways, it feels like on a maturity level, Yahtzee's series go FR -> SR -> YT, and as an adult viewer, I appreciate the more mature, nuanced look this series provides. Crass-equals-funny is good in small doses, but nuance and insight is _always_ engaging!
Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog!!!! I share his hatred for that damn song. I worked as a home healthcare aide for a few years and one client loved that "song" so we had to watch the show over and over day after day until eventually the lyrics ended up being forever seared into my brain!
My thanks and sympathies to the person editing these clips, and to Yahtzee for scripting them.
Noted: Yahtzee’s comfort zone ends where Obituary’s Cause of Death begins
Yeah that was kind of out of left field?
I was just about to comment something along those lines, was really surprised to see that Obituary artwork 😅
I could listen to Yahtzee and Frost read a phone book and be entertained.
I love how this reveals Other Frost's awesome voice is just his voice rather than something he does for the video.
It's been nice seeing yahtzee and the gang seemingly, genuinely enjoy their time while playing these games.
All being said, you do sound like you were hanging a bit of fun with the lads in Lethal Company
0:14 Oh, it’s the album cover of Cause of Death by Obituary! Thought that looked familiar 😁
I agree with this. Right now Lethal Company is at its best if you don't know what you're doing very much. Its at its best with good friends and bad game knowledge.
Nicks laugh sounds like it came from a Dark Souls NPC
The Developer also made some other, fun single player scary experiences. The Upturned is an experiment in "what if it was scary but not horror" which is largely successful but fails towards the end because the game gets extremely tedious.
The Let's Play (Or Try lol) with the Yahtzee criticism in between is awesome! Really enjoyed this one. On a another note, I'm very happy to support you guys. And am really proud of you for what you've accomplished on this new channel already. I wish you all the best as your new channel continues to grow! 😃
The Lethal Company stream was great, and it finally taught me what its all about, because all ive seen of it before then were clips of internet people shrieking and screaming at it obnoxiously!
I always watch the streams, and i always watch these edited ones too, because theyre good to see the best bits again, and also to hear some extra thoughts.
I, for one, liked the Bonehoard, that is, the _Thief: TDP_ crypt on level 3, featuring zombies, haunts, traps and a buttload of treasure there to adorn the dead. At the time, this was the closest one truly got to a classic dungeon crawl, and I felt damn clever both clearing the zombies by leading them to traps and then evading the trapsnto get the loot.
It's not as amazing as Constantine's wizard house, but still the kind of fun hard to come by these days.
"What''s this? It looks like a land mine."
*explosion
"Yahtzee, you are the laziest man on Mars."
I picked up blood west after seeing a bit of this stream and am really digging it. Stealth+ resource management tickles my gamer brain in exactly the right spot
Turkey in the straw is the ice cream song name.
Dreamlight Valley looks more like "Song of the Evertree" with its use of wibbly wobbly dark tendrils of thorny vines as the thing you need to go around clearing out. Pair that with the bright tone and banal conversations with talking objects and one could be forgiven for thinking someone was cheating off the others' homework.
Love that he still uses his ZP avatar in-game. :P
Remember Disney ToonTown? That was a good game. Started as a skunkworks project, established a lot of great standards for f2p MMOs appropriate for children. Maybe Disney forgot about it.
Lethal Company is the latest in a long line of games I'm going to refer to as "I'll get to it when it's done", or "Valheim Syndrome", because it's a fantastic time with people you like playing games with - and then you run out of content and it got way bigger than the devs were ready for and so waiting on updates might as well be the same thing as forgetting the game exists for a few years.
"it was a headshot! one can hardly get anything else!" that got me on the stream lol
For anyone interested in killing the brain worm thinking about the song at 0:53 - It's "Turkey in the Straw"
Shit, now I want to superchat the hot dog dance to annoy Yahtzee (and every other parent in the stream)
“I’m not fucking squirrels”
Yahtzee, 2023
I think one of its best selling points for people is how unique it is in the current gaming landscape. Its essentially a 4 (or more if you mod) player horror/comedy roguelike where you balance work ethic with not wanting to die. Youre playing risk versus reward as you try to get as much loot as you can to meet the ever increasing quota while dealing with the rogues gallery of monsters that seems to continue building, seeing how many workers you can safely sacrifice to get as much as you can without risking jeopardizing every piece of salvage youve gotten. Or the knowledge that everything could dissolve from smooth sailing to absolute chaos in the matter of seconds. And as opposed to other RUclips Haha games, there does seem to be a genuinely good game underneath the surface that can only refine with more development. But even with whats here, this game is a legitimately good horror game as it doesnt rely on loud noises and jumpscares to carry its horror. It builds tension, it doesnt hold your hand or play a music flair every time a nonster enters your line of sight followed by an orchestra in your ear.
However, even horror alone, tegardless of how amazing it is, can get old really quickly once you've seen it all enough. Thats where the comedy aspect comes in, largely in part thanks to the community of players who can immediately relieve the tension but stepping on a whoopie cushion or having a hilarious death right before your eyes due to a great implementation of proximity chat cutting off said chat the moment they die. And with the plethora of mods available for the game due to how excited the community is to build upon whats already here, it could take a long while before the game starts to truly die down like other haha games. Whether this post ages like wine or milk though I have no clue.
Y'all playing Lethal Company was one of the best streams for commentary though😅
if Yahtzee had gotten further into Dreamlight to meet the Forgetting then his last statement may be more accurate then he thinks
1:11 The Coffin of Andy and LeyLey is not fun to stream at all and it has overwhelmingly positive reviews, therefore it is just really really good. Yahtzee has spoken
It's pretty good yeah
oh, it's the cannibal incest game! That SW conveniently forgot to review. Along with Rogue Trader. Tsk Tsk
Honestly if he ever somehow reviews that game I hope this comment pops up lmao
5:39 that was the most fear I've ever heard out of yahtzee
Much better video quality this time, keep up good work!
As of now, Lethal Company is p safe from running out of surprises with both the occasional official updates and the massive modding community it's gained.
Yahtzi tries to not have a mental breakdown.
Can I just listen to Frost talk for a while? 😳 His normal voice makes me feel things...
12:55 I feel that man I’ve been hearing my little brother listen to the hotdog dance for six days straight non stop
I love Yahtz but man playing Lethal Company with Frost would be hysterical.
Great vid again yall!
Frost bringing us back to the late, great Bob Sagat. Love it man.
"No, help, it's on my face! It's on my face!"
Yahtz casually talks in monologues and intricate jokes
Lethal Company is definitely firmly in the Horror Comedy genre, it is not meant to be taken 100% seriously, and the design is far too deliberately goofy for that. I don't get the feeling we are laughing at the game but that we are laughing with the game. It is also the first game that I know of that can pull off both horror and comedy well enough to actually earn the title.
Seems like a pretty ideal approach for what's clearly meant to be a multiplayer co-op experience and also may or may not be a spectator sport on streaming. Goofy and scary is just a tricky balance, though.
Who was the player who thought, "Is that a land mine? Let's step on it!" 😂🤣
wow, didn't realize you had covered blood west at all! for me it kind of clicked when I got the coin artifact to let me switch weapons in inventory without death. that and a few levels in the stealth skill and a magic item to boost it a bit more, if that's your style id look for stuff like though. first boss can drag a bit though, at least if you are stealth focused 100%
A game can still be good AND streamer bait. And in this case, the game is good.
I do hope there will be an FR on Blood West. I am playing it right now and enjoying it quite a bit. I also really welcome the idea of indie developers making immersion sims, as the AAA developers have pretty much stopped doing that.
The Disney commentary gets me every time 😂 I lost my taste for their money grubbing bullshit years ago so it's always fun to hear someone else's opinions on the matter😊 Cheers all! 🍻
I don't think that it's fair to put it on the same scales as other horror games, I feel that it's more of a comedic experience wrapped in a horror game package
It is interesting going back to Yahtzee's critical thoughts on a game after it gets a decent amou t of updates or you see more interesting takes and thoughts about it. Makes it kinda wanna see him go back into it and give more thoughts.
Nice usage of Michael Whelan artwork!
Don't think I missed that sneaky Red Dwarf reference at 3:30 :D
I gotta disagree wholeheartedly with Yahtzee's opinion on Lethal Company only being popular because streamers play it
I love this game, and I don't even watch streamers. Word got around about it in my friend group, and now something like twelve of us regularly play it.
I'm doing a lethal company game night because of you Yahtzee. You fed into the streamer cycle!
I saw someone playing a bit of DDV and there was something about your character having once been king of Dreamlight Valley in their dreams as a child or something, but they got depressed as they grew older and forgot about it and everything went to shit afterwards and the game is presumably about rediscovering that oh-so-marketable Disney Magic™ as an adult. It looked like the player was given purple skin, black angel wings, and shadowy mist effects on their body for this sequence while doing favors for bad guys, like stomping on flowers and knocking things over.
So that's probably about as edgy as that game gets. Odd if the game really is aimed at adults, but then, I guess they didn't want to traumatize people by having a character say something like "By the way, are you still drawing porn of me?"
00:14 is Obituary's Cause of Death outside of Yahtzee's comfort zone? Great album. Was this intentional?
These are really great guys, thanks
Lethal Company is clear evidence that the future needs a union. They don't even get proper hazard pay.
They don't even have dental.
I think Yahtzee would enjoy trying lethal company again, but with mods. There are so many custom moons and just goofy as hell cosmetic changes now. XD
That eeor comment caught me off guard. Missed ya Yahtz
I think the light work and life sims ended up an indie thing because the mainstream abandoned them, there was definitely a point when Harvest Moon was everyone's go-to. The gaming industry from 2007 to somewhere in the mid-2010s is kind of a weird story. The industry expanded massively in terms of market and reach, going mainstream in a way it'd never done before, but at the same time the focus of the largest studios narrowed, killing some genres off entirely until indie devs or smaller studios picked them back up years later.
Yeah animal crossing, the sims, and harvest moon are all 30 year old franchises. AC is still trucking along with that weird resurgence of popularity during the pandemic, the sims fell into all the worst money hungry tactics of its parent company and burned a lot of its good will, and lastly harvest moon's studio fractured and both halves went on to be shells of their former selves. Wonder what other mostly forgotten genre's will become the new indie gems.
It is a pity, since the horror comes form all of the shenanigans just abruptly ending and finding that you are completely alone and have to make it out.
Though I still find it a miracle that Yahtzee even played it
You also put Shane out of a job in Stardew Valley, if you finish the Community Center and close the Joja Mart
I know Lethal company is the hotness and gets clicks, but I feel a little bad for Blood West not being in the title. I'd prefer if the title of this series mentioned all the games talked about, but I also understand if the labeling is for algorithm purposes.
"Playing new games outside my comfort zone."
Then why'd you use a horror inspired backdrop? He loves that shit.
what I like about Lethal Company is that it can be a great co-op horror game or a goofy gigglefest - all down to how you want to play it :]
I'm not gonna lie Dreamlight Valley. Just looks on fun to play the character. Moves makes me feel like it was originally like a point in click Sims game.
2:48 It keeps happening!
I have over 100 hours in Dreamlight Valley but in my defense I've never played Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing so I don't know any better.
As someone with no friends, this game makes me sad that I'll never play it.
I'm just pissssed they changed the Kristoff stall in DDV... Makes the game an insane grind rather than just a relaxing grind.
Oooooh. Dig the credit jazz.
Seems unfair to get credit for a headshot when the monster is literally only a head...
I think the more Yahtzee plays Lethal Company, the less he'll think of it as streamer bait and the more he'll see it as the genuine product it is. Lethal Company is like a human being, it's fun BECAUSE it's flawed, that's what makes it so god damn fun - what it lacks actually makes room for dynamic black comedy storytelling.
For example, I was once deep into a late game quota with friends. We had been taking everything completely seriously and it was the final day on Titan. We'd been saving scrap the whole time to meet each quota, but this time we were going to have to collect 3,000 worth, and the scan said there was only about 4,000 available. So we split up into teams of two and entered the main entrance and fire exit at the same time. The fire exit contained a land mine which I promptly stepped off of, killing me and my teammate immediately. As for the other two, they eventually found us dead in the fire exit and attempted to bring our bodies back, only to get immediately killed by two coil heads at the same time.
It was complete bullshit, and we laughed all night. It will forever be one of my fondest gaming memories. Lethal Company will have lasting appeal regardless of whether or not it gets "polished", because it's just such a dynamically entertaining game where all outcomes are fun.
3:29
Oh, classic ZP Yahtzee avatar. Neat.
I think having the other games reviewed on the title would help the algorithm!! (these games' would benefit from it too)
Branching out into not-so-well-liked genres is nice
Yahtzee on that Obituary cover 😂