LIBERATED
Get ready for a graphic and novel adventure
“EACH COMIC-BOOK PANEL IS A SHORT CUTSCENE OR ACTION SEGMENT.”
Ever looked at a page of action in a comic book and thought “I’d love to get involved in that?” That’s Liberated’s whole premise. Its story is presented as issues of a comic, each panel a short cutscene or gameplay segment. Jumping between character perspectives, you’re thrust into playable slices of the story as you follow the dystopian narrative.
It’s a tale of cyberpunk authoritarianism: the government has instant access to everyone’s data through extensive surveillance. Liberated is a faceless revolutionary group which opposes the government, its members sporting plain white masks reminiscent of Anonymous and, of course, V For Vendetta.
The art style is black-and-white, but the story explores grey areas. Sure, the government’s oppressive, but you also see Liberated being brutally murderous. When we go hands-on with the game, the two ‘issues’ we play show very different points of view – in one, we’re a new Liberated recruit trying to get off the grid, in the other a police detective participating in a guns-hot raid on a Liberated base.
OFF THE PAGE
The action takes place in a 2D plane, with occasional sections where you hide in the background for cover or press yourself against a wall to dodge spinning fans. There’s plenty of shooting too, but it’s kept simple in the twin-stick fashion. Lining up headshots enables you to take enemies out quickly. In the second issue we play, the base is defended by revolutionaries with assault rifles, so our detective has to sneak around and take them out from behind.
The game’s not just about blasting, though. You also have puzzles to solve, from comic-style pop-outs when trying to crack a password, to simply figuring out where to push a box so you can jump up and reach a switch to open a gate. Another part of our second mission has us remote-controlling drones through a dark room in order to blow up several Liberated members simultaneously. Which is… pretty gruesome. After all, the fight for freedom was never going to be a clean one.
Swapping from using a pistol to drones that are hunting for us in one mission to being the person controlling drones in the next is an interesting perspective shift. The action’s quite simple, but the short segments punctuated by other comic panels you watch keeps things varied and flowing. We’re keen to read on.