LawBreakers
A gravity defying arena shooter for the ages.
LawBreakers has people talking about three things in the lead up to its release: that it’s a modern take on the reflex-oriented arena shooter (good), that it’s an
Overwatch clone (bad) and that it’s made by Gearsof
War creator Cliffy B (good or bad, depending who you ask). Only two of those are true: yes, this is a firstperson shooter with “heroes” or, for the newcomer, distinct playable characters with their own roles and abilities. It’s no
Overwatch clone, and to a certain type of player
LawBreakers will wipe the floor with Blizzard’s sensation.
It’s a multiplayer-only shooter with a steep learning curve, and you’ll have to get to grips with its breakneck pace and the initially fiddly specialties each playable character brings to the table. You’ve got your machine gun-wielding heavies, your shotgun wielding tanks, your dual pistol toting midrangers. All have special high speed or vertical movement abilities, and all lose their gravitational pull to the ground in certain areas of the game’s handful of maps. It’s an objective based shooter, so don’t expect to log in and shoot at things unthinkingly: a certain amount of team awareness is required.
All the usual pointless modern adornments are here: there are lootboxes featuring special character and weapon skins, and prettier ways to decorate your player avatar. But aside from this (and the variety in characters), the game feels like ye olde Quake or Unreal but faster and more intense. Health is picked up rather than regenerated, and even the lighter characters have a reasonably high time-to-kill. But it’s the sheer joy of moving around that
LawBreakers nails: the verticality, the airborne combat, the floaty low gravity freedom.
Right now, LawBreakers doesn’t have a huge playerbase, neither on PC or PS4. On the latter, which we reviewed, it wasn’t hard to get a game, though we’d often have to wait around five minutes. That’s a shame, but doesn’t means you should rule LawBreakers out.
Shaun Prescott