Before I sat down to write up this story, I first had to decide whether or not to add Let Them Come: Onslaught to my article about great auto-shooters and bullet heavens. I’ve played a bunch over the last few days, and with it landing on both PC (Win) and console this month, I thought I’d share a couple of interesting notes with you.
What is Let Them Come: Onslaught?
This new sci-fi bullet heaven is actually a sequel to a game from a similar genre, although the first is not an auto-shooter and nor is it a roguelite. Let Them Come is actually a side-on arcade shooter about taking a last stand against an endless horde of horrible nasties. It’s decent, too.
This auto-shooter follow-up takes the same essence of last gasp survival from the original and injects it into a format more similar to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. I reference this particular game because both are sci-fi, both have striking cubed XP to grab up, and both are full of fang-toothed bugs.
While DRG leans into what makes that series so good and lets you dig, Let Them Come: Onslaught is able to take things in a slightly different direction. Here we are immersed in a fight for survival across four different futuristic environments, with an emphasis on sci-fi style and PSX era aesthetics.
Streamlined survival
Unless there’s stuff unlocked away that I’ve yet to access, there are four different maps to explore, and just two playable characters. The mission structure and roguelite progression loop is designed to extract as much value as possible from this offering, and I think the developers have done a solid job here, although I would have liked more characters to mix things up further.
The maps evolve with new threats, such as air vacuums in the space station that suck your enemies – and you if you get too close – into space. New enemies are layered in over time, too, and there are objectives on the map to grab, such as blueprints and supply crates. Doing this feeds back into the overall progression loop, so it pays to explore.
A typical run takes twenty minutes, and at the end there’s a count down to a giant explosion, and then you win by default. There’s also a boss at the end of each level, but you don’t need to beat it every time. In fact, I liked how the objectives for each run changed over the hours I spent with the game, so as you get more powerful, your focus will evolve.
Pacing and progression
The first few runs felt a little underwhelming because I was really low powered, but once I had made a bit of progress and started completing bigger objectives, Let Them Come: Onslaught kicked on. There are some really cool weapons, such as orbital lasers, electric grenades, and offensive pulses with plenty of knockback, and once you start to mix and match these, the screen can fill up with chaos.
I started having a whole bunch of fun when I started to build around some specific weapons. My favourite setup, or one of them at least, had me flinging about a light saber proton sword and zapping people with Force lightning bolts of electricity that chained between my enemies.
As far as I can tell, there are only two different characters in the game at launch, and this is perhaps where Let Them Come: Onslaught feels at its thinnest. There’s actually decent differentiation between the limping soldier and his dash out of trouble, and the floating psychic with her powerful area-of-effect stun attack. Simply put, I was left wanting more.
With a limited amount of content, I don’t think the new Let Them Come is quite at the same level as the very best in the niche, simply because I don’t see there being vast replayability here. I did, however, really like the game’s style, the overall presentation and its retro aesthetic, and the potential for building around fun sci-fi powers.
Let Them Come: Onslaught is out now on PC (Win), PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series. I played the game via access kindly provided by the game’s publisher Digital Bandidos.
