Lethal League Blaze: A Game Alive By Community
Nothing in video game entertainment is as unique as fighting games; the genre is so large that it has become its own ecosystem independent from the rest of the video game industry. Fighting games provide the purist competitive environment, skill vs skill, where your mental strength and physical execution are pushed to the limits. Fighting games have a relatively simple concept, use your physical training (the execution) and your mental strength (the knowledge and conditioning) to beat up your virtual opponent and by extension your real opponent.
Browsing fighting games will reveal many variants on the fighting game formula. Traditional fighting games such as the ever-strong Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and the Fatal Fury/KOF franchises focus on neutral fundamentals within a defined two-dimensional space. Blazblue and Guilty Gear, examples of anime fighters, build upon high-depth mechanics and heavily reward execution. Tekken and Soul Calibur take advantage of the third dimension and platform fighters make use of a large scale two-dimensional space and a defined terrain for the combat to take place in.
There are titles that further bend the rules in order to diversify their mechanics and combat formula; Rising Thunder and Fantasy Strike aim to cater towards beginners in the community, reducing the level of execution required but maintaining the knowledge and the mental game. Lethal League and its sequel Lethal League Blaze decided to do something completely different and instead create a whole new formula for the fighting game genre.
Developed by Team Reptile, Lethal League Blaze is the fusion of baseball, Mad Max and the Sega Dreamcast. The aim of the game is to beat your opponents by striking them with a high-speed, forever ricocheting ball that gets faster and more deadly as you play. Where other fighters’ combat consists of an exchange of hitboxes between players, all interaction is done through the ball; only the ball can hurt you, only the ball can hurt your opponent, neutral is played around the ball.
Characters have an arsenal of manoeuvres during matches; from basic strikes, slams and multi-directional bunting, to shielding, parrying and being able to throw the ball. These techniques combined with the movement and special abilities of each of the 12 characters allows for unique player expression and playstyle with additional hidden tech for those who are willing to learn; if the competitive environment doesn’t interest you the game provides a casual couch party experience with up to four players, togglable powerups and special game modes to add variety to it all. All this is complemented by a loud and explosive aesthetic akin to Jet Set Radio and an incredible electronic soundtrack.
The game has received overwhelming praise from critics and fans alike, averaging a metascore of 82/100 and a plethora of overwhelmingly positive reviews by users on Steam, yet checking the late-2018 release title on PC, the current steam charts shows it reaching a 24hr peak of just 115 with an all-time peak of 2.5k — the player base is tiny. It is difficult to find a match and not run into the same player 2 or 3 times in a row, that someone to be on a similar skill level and unless you’re in the US, be in the same region; this is on top of a fragmented player-base between the various platforms with no form of cross-play. Lethal League Blaze is a prime example of dead matchmaking. Yet despite the low player count and the deterioration of online matchmaking, tournaments for the title are held on a regular basis with pots and DLC giveaways and events like CEO and Combo Breaker have held tournaments for the title.
The player base is dedicated to this title which isn’t something new, at any fighting game event you can find a group of people playing Melty Blood in any place with an outlet, but the love for a fighting game on its own wouldn’t be enough. A fighting game needs a strong community and when the player count starts diminishing, a temple helps keep the community at strength — for Lethal League Blaze and all other Team Reptile titles, this space is called the Reptile Hideout.
The Reptile Hideout is the official discord server for Team Reptile and their respective games, it provides a space to discuss the game and an alternative to matchmaking; a simple tag of console and region will attract people to start playing sets. For new players, the Reptile Hideout becomes the new introduction to the game and the community which gives them an abundance of resources to learn with and get started. On top of that, the community the Hideout has built has evolved past the games themselves, with spaces to share art, post memes and talk topics outside Reptile games; those who stay in the server stay for the community surrounding the game more than the game itself and keep the title alive and in discussion.
Multiplayer gaming is aggressively volatile when it comes to longevity, having strong and consistent online matchmaking is vital to staying alive and in the current times of a pandemic, it has become exponentially more important. Community spaces such as Discord servers, subreddits or Facebook groups act as a virtual temple for people to come together when matchmaking eventually stops working — so long as those in the community want to play and they have the space to do it, the game will keep getting played.
