A mysterious package, a shady assassin, and a man known only as “L”. These are the mysteries that will pull you into The Lamplighters League before the opening cutscene is finished. Set in 1932, we’re promised a thrilling ride with our protagonists: blonde femme fatale, Ingrid, and Gentleman Djinn, Lateef – at least, that’s what he calls himself.
Gameplay is made up of two phases, stealth and combat. Stealth is a real-time mode in which you control the two characters through an area – be they high rooftops or city streets. Your goal here is to remain hidden for as long as possible. You can switch to combat to perform silent takedowns and clever tricks to keep yourself hidden, switching back into stealth seamlessly – as long as you didn’t get caught.
These abilities are limited though, which means in most situations, you will eventually be forced to get into open combat. This makes the stealth phase extremely important and tactically lucrative. You can use it to scout out as much of the map as possible, and take out enemies before the proper combat begins – but every move you make brings you one step closer to an all-out fight, so you must spend your time and resources carefully.
It plays beautifully into the tone of the game. You’re not a trained armed force, you’re a rag-tag team of thieves, rogues, and general shady types who happen to have access to supernatural powers of unclear origin – it’s probably fine. Your job is almost always to get in, grab the target artifact, and get out. Fighting is an undesirable consequence of that. Sometimes you’ll even be faced with enemies so strong, fleeing is the only option.
The Lamplighters League comes from the Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider school of thought, where the thrill is in the chase. Why bother standing around having a big shootout when it’s far more fun to have an action-packed chase scene as you scramble to find a way out of your predicament? Sure, you could shoot the bad guys, or…you could shoot fuel barrels to blast a big whole in the nearby wall and run for your lives.
Your options for mischief and mayhem gradually increase as you bring more characters into your squad too. You’ll quickly meet Eddie, who can lay down shock mines on the floor, allowing you to trap guards and electrify bodies of water for multiple takedowns if you’re clever enough.
Still, you’re going to get into fights eventually, and on that front, you’ve got a lot to work with. It had XCOM-style systems to determine hits, misses, criticals, and the like, with a UI that makes everything crystal clear and easy to navigate. It has all the trimmings you’d expect: full vs half cover, action points, and of course, some good old-fashioned RNG to determine whether or not you hit.
We only got to play the first two missions in this preview, but there’s a lot more in store. With a world map, character customization, and progression, it promises to be a big adventure. What we do know from what we’ve played is that the tone is just right with gameplay that perfectly complements it. The Lamplighters League is coming to PC and Xbox Series X|S in 2023.
Written by Marco Wutz and Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
