SCP SECRET LABORATORY First Impression: Great Game, If You Can Get It Working

It was at the beginning of this year that I found a multiplayer title for one of the biggest cult classic games, SCP: Containment Breach. The multiplayer is titled "SCP: Secret Laboratory" and the game launched on steam in Beta form. With a few hours of gameplay put into the game, I have to say that it is a lot of fun IF you can get it to work.

By that I mean that it is hard to get into a server. Making one requires contacting the developer, which I have done over a week ago and have yet to get a response. The "Find Match" tool is there and can work sometimes, but most of the time it won't get you into a game thanks to it being full or just timing out. You will have to use "Direct Connect" majority of the time and this can only be done by knowing the IP address to the server. I was lucky enough to find someone that had a list they could provide me, but I can't imagine how hard it was to get that together. If you are interested in trying the game, I put the IP address list in my original coverage of the game.

Gameplay

In SCP: Secret Laboratory you can play as one of the multiple roles known to be in SCP: Containment Breach. Unlike the original single player game, you will have the ability to play as a Nine-Tailed Fox, Chaos Insurgency, Scientist, D-Personnel, or one of four different SCP's.

The basic rules are as followed:

• Nine-Tailed Fox are to eliminate any SCP's and Chaos Insurgency members they come across. Their goal is to save the Scientists from the facility and can save cooperating D-Personnel or just eliminate them as well.
• Chaos Insurgency are to eliminate any SCP's, Scientists and Nine-Tailed Fox members they come across. Their goal is to save the D-Personnel and destroy the facility with the Alpha Warhead.
• Scientists and D-Personnel players are simply trying to escape the facility and can team up with the proper militia players.
• SCP players have the simple task of kill everyone they can.

If you start out as either of the militia groups, Nine-Tailed Fox or Chaos Insurgency, you will start out with a key card that gives a variety of access that depends on your rank on the team.  You will also be given a weapon and have the possibility of receiving a grenade, health kit, and some other helpful items. From start you surge into the building from one of the two elevator entrances and find your way deep into the facility in order to complete your objective.

The accuracy on the weapons is pretty bad and forces you to realign your sight on your target, which can be rather frustrating when facing an SCP, but isn't a big deal when challenging opposing militia or civilian players. The grenade is the best weapon in the game because of how much damage it does when it explodes, but landing that hit directly on an SCP will take some practice.

If you start as a Scientist you will have a key card, but that is it. D-Personnel players start with nothing and will have to find their own key card. There are plenty all over the facility, so this isn't a problem. From here you want to find SCP-914, the strange machine, so that you could try and get your key card upgrade to have enough access to leave the facility. It is possible to escape without the help of your partnered militia team.

SCP's have kind of a different control set. SCP-173 is incredibly fast, but as in the main game he can only move when nobody is looking at him. A blinking mechanism is activated in the game for all players when SCP-173 is nearby. He has a huge amount of health, but if you don't play this one right then you could easily get killed as quick as you would imagine it takes to sneak up on somebody and break their necks.

SCP-049, the plague doctor, is my favorite thanks to his ability to kill players the moment he touches them (as it is described on his description sheet). He is also able to resurrect fallen players to become SCP-049-1 type characters. His health is also rather large, but his movement is much more free to how the user wishes to play.

SCP-079, the computer, lets you have the ability to move about the facility by jumping into different cameras in the facility. You have the ability to close, open, and lock doors. This is handy if you work with your fellow SCP players and try and trap or lure players into places for the other SCP's to kill them.

SCP-106, the corroded man, allows you to walk through walls, floors, and ceilings. You are able to grab people and send them to The Pocket Dimension. That is your only attack, but if you are unaware then The Pocket Dimension is a room with eight exits that are all similar to each other. Only one path way leads to the game while all others lead to death.

Graphics and Sounds

The game looks just like the most recent version of SCP: Containment Reach and even has the sound effects that match the game very well. There isn't any music, just ambiance of the different noises in the facility. From the small sound of stone being dragged when SCP-173 is moving around to the intercom announcing the arrival of Nine-Tailed Fox members are found in the game.

The guns have a rather weird sound effect in my opinion, but does the job for what they are trying to get across. The worst sound in the game is that they let players use the intercom system, given they have the key card with access to the room, and people often use it to force everybody in the game to listen to them babble or be obnoxious. That is just a trolling issue though.

Final Verdict

I am looking forward to this game becoming a complete game with little to no issues. It is definitely on the right track and is going to be even more fun once the balancing of teams is fixed and the way to join a game is perfected. There are already quite a few people that play the game regularly, so we will need a lot more servers to become available sooner rather than later, but it is great that the game can be fun with as few as six people yet maxes at twenty per server. Keep it up because this is easily going to be my favorite multiplayer once it is finished!