Lawbreakers is the brain child of the great Cliff Bleszinski, aka Cliffy B as we like to call him. This game is highly anticipated not only for myself but also for most of the gaming community. Since this is Cliffy B’s creation and being the creator of the Gears of War franchise, Lawbreakers has set the bar high as to what we should expect this game to be. After playing countless hours in the Alpha I’m going to go over the good the bad and what could make the game better by the time it’s Gold ready. Lets dive in shall we.
Lawbreakers is what I would like to call a hybrid of Unreal Tournament and Overwatch. You have 5 characters to choose from with different abilities. In the Alpha you have 4 classes to choose from and what appears to be an additional class that has yet to be unlocked. The 4 classes available are the Enforcer, Vanguard, Assassin, and Titan.
The Assassin is equipped with a sword, a 4-round shot-gun, and a hook shot. The Assassin is the most mobile of the group. Speed is this characters forté and can be in the mix and out of the rumble in a flash if need be with the dash ability. The hook shot can also be used to interact with the environment to swing and gain momentum as well as the ability to hook enemies and cause devastating damage with the shot-gun at short-range. You also have a rage or frenzy ability where you can do massive damage with your swords and well steal HP from the character you are doing damage to.
The Titan is equipped with a rocket launcher with a 4-round clip, a chain gun and lightning gun, a neutron mine that does massive damage, a leap smash and a berserk ability. This character is basically a tank class. They are meant to absorb a ton of damage as well as give it back. The rocket launcher has the ability to detonate rockets at any time with the right-click. This is a nice feature since if you shoot too far to the left or right you can still detonate the rocket and deal damage. The lightning gun also deals massive damage. The neutron mine can be used in different ways, either as a mine or a gravity bomb if you are in the zero G area. The bomb is basically a black hole that sucks you in and keeps the enemy from moving. The leap ability is just that, a leap smash. The Berserk ability is a form where you cause damage and can shoot lighting out of your hands like the Emperor from Star Wars. It’s really the best way to describe it.
The Vanguard is equipped with a heavy chain gun, a pulsar blast (or a fancy push back move), an afterburner which can let you fly for a short time, and meteor shells which is basically a cluster grenade. You also have a star fall ability where you basically do a dive smash on an enemy and when the move is completed you create a small pocket of zero G that effects all enemy and team mates within the blast radius. The Vanguard would be a light tank. Medium manoeuvrability and medium-to-high damage. The chain gun does decent damage but the accuracy builds up the more it’s shot. So even at close range it can be very inaccurate until you spool up the weapon. Meteor shells do a lot of damage when blasts are timed in close quarters. In open areas they do damage but from what I experienced, it can also push away enemies that you are trying to kill, so this is best used in CQC.
The Enforcer is equipped with an assault rifle, the badger which is almost like a taser, it can do damage at close range. This may be the most overpowered gun in the game since it can take down enemies in 2 or 3 shots. Distortion is basically a sprint. This ability makes you move super fast. You can combine it in Zero-G with your other abilities, it’s also the best way to evade in Zero-G as well as on the main map. You also have an electro-mag grenade. It knocks out enemy abilities in the blast radius. This is huge against tanks, mini tanks or basically anyone that’s trying to use a special or an ALT.
The maps will remind you of old school arena shooters. It’s very Unreal Tournament inspired. This keep the skirmishes rather confined in some areas. In the middle of every map as well as some of the outer-rim portions, there is a Zero-G area. You are literally floating around in space which brings a different element of play in the game. Your momentum is everything in this area because if you go too slow you are like a duck in a shooting gallery. The maps seem just right in size. COD fans will be at home the way the map layouts are and if you are an arena shooter fan, then this map configuration is right up your alley.
During the Alpha so far, there have been two game types. We have “Turf War” and “Overcharge”. Turf War is Lawbreakers variation of domination, there are 3 points in a map to capture. But unlike domination, once a flag is captured it cannot be taken over. Once the flag is captured you get a point and it’s on to the next area. After all three flags are captured the timer runs down and the points open up again for recapture. During the countdown the round isn’t over so you are still open to get shot or killed but once a team has 13 points they win. The second game type is Overcharge. Overcharge is Lawbreakers variation of capture the flag. There is a battery in the middle of the map that you have to fight over. Once your team possesses the battery you have to take it to your base and charge it. Once you get the battery to 100% you get a point and the first team to 2 points wins. But beware, you can charge your battery to 99% and if its stolen that battery doesn’t lose charge. The enemy team can just take the battery go to their base get that one remaining percent and win the round.
To say that Lawbreakers is a twitch shooter is an understatement. The game is one of the fastest shooters I’ve played in a long time. It seems to play faster than Unreal or even Quake for that matter. Sometimes the speed is so fast it’s hard to keep up with what’s happening on the screen at any given time. Also, with the ability to blind fire while on the run brings yet another element for the game. Other than the normal issues that an Alpha would have, it seems that Cliffy B and his camp have a very unique game here. It can be a hit or miss depending on what your expectations are for a game of this genre.
So now on to what we players want out of the game.
We would like to see better dedicated servers at launch. It didn’t seem like we were stress testing servers it seemed more like an ad-hoc experience. For those that don’t know what ad-hoc is, it’s like a local area network (LAN) that is built spontaneously as devices connect. Instead of relying on a base station to coordinate the flow of messages to each node in the network (dedicated server), the individual network nodes forward packets to and from each other. In laymans terms, a player is a host. We also would like to see more character choices. Having a starting roster of only 4, possibly 5, characters to choose from at launch is a very small roster. We would want more characters to choose from as well as a better variety of abilities and weapons. New weapons, not weapons that were re-skinned from another game.
The players would also like to see better game types. The game types that Lawbreakers has are OK, but they need to be tweaked. For example, in turf war as I mentioned earlier, you can only capture one flag one time. The issue with this is that the A and C flags are literally just outside your spawn. So when the round starts those points get taken so fast that it doesn’t give the other team a chance to make it to the far side of the map. Also one team could jump to huge lead like 6 points to 2, because once they spawn they could capture a flag while their other team mates camp the B flag waiting for it to spawn. It’s very unbalanced. I noticed during the Alpha that there were tons of people rage quitting because of this. This should be tweaked to a more traditional domination game type. Or even have the capture points open differently like the B flag opens first then the outer two flags. This would cause teams to scramble for the center flag then split up to get the others.
Overcharge is also very unbalanced. As I mentioned before you could go through the entire match with the battery and have it charged up to 99%, only to have the battery stolen from you and the other team take it to their spawn get the extra 1%, hold it for 20 seconds and win the round. This also caused a massive amount of folks to rage quit. This could be changed so that the battery loses charge when it’s stolen from an enemy team. This would force the team to at least hold it for a certain amount of time before getting the point. As well as make the game a bit more balanced.
Lastly, we would like to see this game as free-to-play. I know this was the original decision, but then they made it pay-to-play. But honestly after putting in hours and hours of game play the free to play format seems like the right fit. I can’t see this being a $60 purchase and the gaming community being OK with that. Maybe if the game at launch was $30 or less I could see this being accepted by the gaming community but not $60. The game doesn’t seem like it will have an overabundance of content when it launches to justify the $60 price tag.
Have you played the Lawbreakers Alpha? Do you agree or disagree with any of this? Let us know in the comments below or in the RGM Forums.
