Major ‘The Light Brigade’ Update Brings New Player Classes, Items, Levels & More

By
Scott Hayden
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4

Funktronic Labs released a massive update today to its roguelike shooter The Light Brigade (2023), which includes new player classes, tactical items, power-ups, levels and more.

Called the ‘Memories of War’ Update, the new content drop is rolling out today to SteamVR, Quest 2, and PSVR 2, including a bunch of new stuff.

Check out what’s in the update below, courtesy of Funktronic Labs:

  • The Engineer: a new player class that deploys pilotable drones
  • The Breacher: a new shotgun-wielding player class, by popular request!
  • New tactical items and power-ups to find on runs or stock up in the shop: including flare gun, cigarettes/cigars (for style), equipable helmets to block damage, new health flasks, power-up syringes, and more)
  • New hand-crafted levels between procedurally generated stages
  • New shooting range mini-game
  • Game balancing and fixes

The Light Brigade is a roguelike shooter that mashes up fantasy ghosties with real-world weapons, making it feel like a spiritual successor to In Death: Unchained. The game was already noted for a high variety of upgrades and array of WWII-era weaponry, so today’s update is really only throwing more of the good stuff at us, making the already really great game even better.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • NL_VR

    NICE!

  • JanO

    I spent so much quality time with In Death Unchained that this was an instant buy for me… Sadly it didn’t have the same appeal for me as IDU did and I got frustrated of spending most of my time in game waiting on loading screens and endlessly stocking up on munitions when I only wanted to jump into the action… I hope they adressed those concerns which I had voiced on their discord, only to be told to “get better”.

    Still, I’ll give the game another shot… (No pun intended!)

    • JanO

      Nope, still more time waiting than playing…

  • Light Brigade is still held back by a long list of issues that plagued original release. The biggest is that accursed Joystick Teleportation. Why is this a thing???

    They aren’t the only ones doing it. It’s like those old Quick-Time Events in video games that ruined so many titles, yet everybody considered them “Industrial Standards”.

    The Quest 2’s joysticks are finicky. Let the joystick go for a second and it will activate the Up motion. In a normal game, you’re avie just shifts a little, but with Teleport-On-Up, it means your avie just hurdles themselves in a random direction, often out of cover. And god forbid you turn quickly and move the joystick a little too much up or down, like say, IF A WOLF IS ATTACKING YOU!!! Happens all the time.

    What’s even crazier about that is the game has several face buttons are aren’t used for anything important. Why can’t I use those for teleporting?!?

    Beyond this bit of industry stupidity, the game is also now plagued with MANY invisible walls. They added more level clutter, but on the Quest the Pop-In distance is very short. There was one wall that wouldn’t appear for me until I was within 10 feet of it, so I’m busy pumping rounds into a wall instead of an enemy’s head. I even had one obstacle that never loaded at all! It was a ghost I had to feel my way around to get through the level.

    Also the enemies remain Psychic! They track you through walls and lead every shot perfectly when you’re behind cover. Pop up your head for 1/2 a second, and they will nail you right between the eyes without a moment to react. You have to hope you can guess their reloading timing. Add a couple of guys, each with their own random reload timing, and you have no prayer.

    They also mentioned new levels… I didn’t see any. Actually the levels seem to be more generic then ever. I think they removed some of the random elements, and actually managed to make the levels even more bland in the process. There’s just more clutter, which as I mentioned above, doesn’t like to load on the Quest until you’re nearly smacking your face into it.

    I REALLY REALLY want to love this game. It has some good combat… when it works… but so much of it’s broken and they aren’t doing anything to address the issues. I think they’ve actually made quite a few of them worse. I’ve begged them to consider fixing these things on their Steam page, but clearly, nobody is listening.