Lemnis Gate Preview

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Lemnis Gate, by devs Ratloop Games Canada is a tactical first-person shooter at heart, but with one hell of a twist. I was lucky along with a few other of the TC staff to take part in the recent Beta and with the game being deployed across PC, Playstation, and Xbox on the 28th of September it was time to get this preview written!

Lemnis Gate – COD Meets Time Travel, Can Your Reality Survive?

If you enjoy strategic turn-based fps-styled games, read on but be warned, all is not as clear-cut as it seems!

Gameplay

Lemnis Gate comes with 4 game modes across 7 maps at launch featuring ditties such as seek and destroy, domination, retrieve XM (capture the flag), and deathmatch. With single-player, co-op, and PvP, every eventuality is covered. The team that you control currently consists of 5 operatives, each with their own class and abilities. From this description, you probably have in your mind a standard FPS-style strategy game right? well, Lemnis Gate is far from standard and attempts to break the mould with one game mechanic that I haven’t really experienced before quite like this.

Time travel.

Like it or hate the concept, Lemnis Gate is built upon the idea of being able to alter the past. Instead of the usual shooters that you are used to, here you have 25 seconds to navigate your chosen character through the arena in order to achieve your goal such as capturing a location or taking out a rival. Once you have had your turn, your move being eagerly surveyed by the opponent’s drone, it is then their chance to deploy and do similar. The gameplay is rewound back to the beginning with the enemy now having the upper hand having seen what you have done on your go. All sounds pretty straightforward so far?

Round 2 now sees your second chosen operative being deployed. Gameplay is rewound back to the start and having now seen what the enemy has done on their turn, you react accordingly. As the round progresses you see your previous agent perform the same moves as you did in round one along with your enemy’s. This is where time travel starts to really kick in.

Should one of your previous team members have been killed, thus stopping any progression from that point that was achieved in that particular round, you still have the chance to stop it from happening. Yep, you heard me. Should you manage to take out the enemy player that killed yours before the incident happened then the original gameplay timeline is restored back to how it first was. Still following me?

Ok, so this is where things start to get really screwy. The enemy, having seen that you have just prevented the kill now selects their sniper and takes out your last player that denied the kill, and now you have lost two of your players unless you can once more strategically deploy and either protect or eliminate the threat.

As you can probably imagine, as the rounds progress the arena becomes more and more full of squad members replaying their moves over and over again. This leaves you with one hell of a headache as it becomes a tactical nightmare. Throw into the cacophony that you can also play 2v2 with everyone having a team of 5 then it becomes a real fuzzy mess very quickly.

Now don’t get me wrong here. The concept of Lemis Gate is extraordinary and it really brings brains onto the field, when they are not being blasted out on a latter round. My problem was that I simply could not keep up with everything that was happening. When playing 2 teams versus you find yourself waiting for almost a minute and a half before it is your chance to do something and it is really easy to lose concentration in between as you find yourself distracted. Yes, you can tag people which makes it a little easier to track however as the timeline is constantly being rewritten it is making you also rethink what to do over and over again.

For me, I found myself after several games getting frustrated. I enjoy sequence puzzles such as the type where you must remember a certain order or gameplay and then add to it. However, with the frequent changes in the sequence, I just couldn’t keep up. Lemnis Gate does feature both turn-based and simultaneous match types however for the beta we only saw the turn-based ones.

Could this be a future ESports game? maybe, it has that arena-style voyeur charm to it which I could imagine being streamed along with a commentary as to what was happening.

Graphics & Audio

Lemnis Gate looks great graphically with a lot of detail put into both the arenas and the team members. It certainly looks and plays like a modern game should do. When players are eliminated during battles I liked how a silhouette of their original timeline still plays out so that you can be reminded as to where they should be if they hadn’t died. Similarly, the drone concept when waiting for your turn looks and feels smooth as you spy on your enemy and see what they are up to on their go.

Music and audio are on point as a futuristic battler with a driving electronic synth leading the way accompanied by drums and a thumping bass. There is something very Matrix about it all. When it comes to sound effects, each character has their own quip that they say as they are deployed while you can also invoke in-game emotes that can be played either to your team or everyone in order to taunt or congratulate.

Longevity

My brain hurt so longevity for me is sadly short. After a few games I was so muddled that I could not face another. Lemnis Gate is best played in short bursts in my opinion. When the full game is deployed and everything is available then you may have more choice than what I saw on the beta.

Final Thoughts

Lemnis Gate breaks into new territory here and it really is something that you should all try. The Matrix/Loki timeline looping and dabbling are really clever and completely alter how you play. You are in effect never really safe and any gains can be undone very easily if you lose concentration. Sadly for me, it was a bit too confusing in later rounds, but do not let me put you off. This may be your next favourite game.

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.

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Jason

Atari ST, PC & PS4 Pro gamer, Father and Rock legend.
Can normally be found lost somewhere in Bolivia during his spare time!
PSN: Psycho_sparky

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