After the likes of Deep Rock Galactic and Sword of the Necromancer, another interesting indie spins off into a bullet heaven. The 2D pixel art shoot ’em up Let Them Come goes survivors-like, and it’s a fairly unique take on the genre. This is XboxEra’s review for Let Them Come: Onslaught, tested on Xbox Series X!
Outnumbered
Let Them Come: Onslaught bullet heaven power creep is a tad different from the rest. After crash-landing on an alien planet, the player finds themselves limping, weak. They never actually get much stronger in terms of character – they merely get an “aura” of automatic defense systems/weapons to assist them with the survival. Speed, health and shield boosts do appear, but you never quite become a deity of the battlefield. Indeed, the difficulty is quite high at all times, giving the player the feeling of being outnumbered in an unknown land.
What immediately stands out, though, is the game’s artstyle. The original Let Them Come was a 2D pixel art title, but this spin-off goes 3D – sort of. The game world is in three dimensions from a top-down, ARPG-style view, with our protagonist being a low poly model, animated in an intentionally “choppy” old school way. The vast array of enemies are, however, all 2D sprites, with the rest of the game also evoking 90’s CRT monitor looks. It’s a pleasant artstyle, and one that stands out from the masses of bullet heaven titles out there. Also, there’s a banging electronic soundtrack, spanning various genres. You can even unlock songs from the original Let Them Come, so that’s neat.
Go here, go there
Besides the usual bullet heaven formula of having to survive (20 minutes, in this case), Let Them Come: Onslaught is constantly pushing players towards risky new locations. Every minute or two, a new supply drop, a sidequest or something appears, usually somewhere between 60 and 150 meters away, with the player needing to get there on a timer. This naturally encourages taking more aggressive pushes towards enemy clusters, with even various traps that can make said journey a tough one. The rewards are usually worth the effort, with powerful weapon upgrades, credits and more given.
With two minutes to go, a giant boss appears. The player doesn’t have to defeat it, surviving to the clock is fine, though of course killing the big bad foe does unlock new content. There’s 4 stages in as many biomes, a hard mode for each, a second character to unlock (with a new skill, compared to the first one having a standard dash), on top of various weapons to get and a fairly large skill tree to fill in. The latter works similarly to most bullet heaven titles, except for the fact the player needs to find blueprints for each upgrade level. So you may already have the credits for a neat boost, but you also need the blueprint for it, which you can find on any battlefield. Sounds interesting, but if anything, it just makes the permanent progression slower, with little payoff to it.
Short but intense
As said, at launch, there’s only a few maps, two characters and not a lot else to do. It takes several hours to get through the skill tree, there’s hard modes for each level, and the areas also offer an extra objective once you beat them once. However, the variety and depth isn’t quite on par with the competition as of now. Due to the high difficulty, you’re likely to take various hours to beat the game’s levels, and the intensity of the combat is really impressive. We’ll see if, in time, the game expands in scope, variety and depth.
Let Them Come: Onslaught is a quality bullet heaven experience. It offers a lovely art style, an exciting soundtrack and an intense difficulty with well-designed level progression. It is, however, a bit on the short side, with only 4 levels, 2 characters and not a huge build variety. It’s a game that is quite close to greatness, but it will need a bit more content to truly become an unmissable classic survivors-like experience. I still feel like recommending it to fans of the genre, as its gameplay loop is one of the best ones on Xbox right now.
Let Them Come: Onslaught
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Gorgeous artstyle
- Tough and engaging combat
- Awesome soundtrack
- A few cool twists on the genre
CONS
- Not much content for now
- Limited depth
- Blueprint system needlessly slows down the permanent progression
