Lithium City's neon violence is a fountain of ideas that expands until it explodes. Its objective may be to clear tricky bad guys out of hostile rooms, but its justification is to force creative and spontaneous solutions out of an evolving set of kinetic problems. What's left on Lithium City's table is a full meal served in a medley of exquisite morsels.
I’m going to need you to kill all of these guys is perhaps the most popular videogame challenge. It works for competitive shooters, solo dungeon crawlers, and Madden if one were to factor in the lingering effects chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Homicide is a facet of humanity that would normally induce explicit horror but, divorced of reality through the magic of gaming, killing all these guys is an effective and everlasting mission. It’s fun to kill a bunch of guys.
This thesis is as true of Lithium City as it is anywhere else. Where Lithium City’s brand of isometric annihilation finds definition, however, is through a willingness to hatch a new idea and then let it fly away (maybe) before it was ready. It’s a game with five hours of fleshed out mechanics and suitable courses of action compressed into a ninety minute experience. When games last dozens of hours and then finally hit credits, I usually only feel relief. Lithium City’s brevity created a sensation that was, if not forgotten, absent of modern gaming: satisfaction.
Lithium City’s hook is in its movement and combat. Tsunami, a female-presenting protagonist with electric blue hair, can dash short distances for up to three consecutive bursts. She can also deliver an extremely sick hand combo. In Lithium City’s opening level, these two mechanics are employed to infiltrate rooms, sneak up behind guys, and smack the crap out of them. Lithium City’s isometric point-of-view typically presents angles advantageous to the player, creating the implicit presence of stealth. There’s always a path forward if you’re willing to look for it.
Before long, melee weapons are a part of Lithium City’s repertoire. Swords, knives, pipes, and other blunt instruments transform Tsunami’s lightning-fast combo into a labored, but more powerful, bash mechanic. The weight of these weapons leaves Tsunami vulnerable, but the dash mechanic is still an effective means of getting out of trouble. Weapons can also be thrown, but the twin-stick aiming didn’t always feel reliable inside of Lithium City’s camera.
Eventually, Lithium City’s drops the heroine brutality of Atomic Blonde and moves toward the firearm euphoria of John Wick. Pistols, SMG’s, and shotguns all offer different levels of versatility against enemy combatants. I usually opted for the shotgun as it seemed to do the job in one hit, but occasional sequences of dozens of bad guys require the player to acquire, unload, and reacquire reams of guns from wherever possible. Lithium City only goes all-out with bad guys (literally jumping in off conveyor belts) a handful of times, but it makes them count.
Until this point it would be difficult for Lithium City to create much separation from room-clearing shooter extraordinaire, Hotline Miami. Lithium City offers several hints that it has more on its mind, but its intentions were clear once I found myself in a 1-v-5 neon nightmare soccer match. And the other team had swords. Smacking around a glowing beach ball, objectively, is Lithium City making use of its own physics engine, but it’s hilarious in the context of this rampaging murder game. It’s a fun one off, and it works well enough for its brief runtime.
That idea remains the ethos for the remainder of Lithium City. There’s a wildly tense helicopter chase, risk-versus-reward conundrums with grenades, and a soothing train car catastrophe. It’s all constructed through Lithium City’s modest translucent outlines and its combination of pink, gold, and green accents never bleed out its retro aesthetic. Lithium City is calm and collected even when it starts unloading machinegun operatives and bullet-sponge brutes.
There is some frustration, though. The aforementioned helicopter battle exposes weaknesses of the isometric camera, creating confusion with the player’s position in relation to their world. Lithium City’s end game encounter selects their special moves from a pool, and it’s entirely possible to endure either all or none of the annoying javelins attacks. Part of Lithium City’s identity is wrapped inside of its brevity, however, so even these instances of frustration are quick to pass.
Excuse the dreaded personal anecdote, but Lithium City couldn’t have come at a better time. After wrapping up Naughty Dog’s thirty hour rumination on revenge and misery, enduring two dense RPGs, and enjoying the comfort of the medium’s finest storytelling devices, Lithium City’s commitment to brief but constant engagement was a welcomed throwback to a simpler time. That could mean last year or twenty years ago but in the COVID-19 era god was it wonderful to start and finish a game in the same session. Lithium City senses its limitations and gets right to the edge before the player is able to find or exploit them.
Lithium City’s neon violence is a fountain of ideas that expands until it explodes. Its objective may be to clear tricky bad guys out of hostile rooms, but its justification is to force creative and spontaneous solutions out of an evolving set of kinetic problems. What’s left on Lithium City’s table is a full meal served in a medley of exquisite morsels.
