LawBreakers, originally called Blue Streak, was a free to play game or that’s what the theory was. However, that has all changed. It comes in two flavours available on the PlayStation Store, the Standard version at £24.99 or the Deluxe version with some extra skins at £29.99.
The back story to the game wasn’t explained very well whilst in-game. This left me having to search online to find out the story behind LawBreakers. This wasn’t hard but a minor inconvenience all the same.
LawBreakers is set in an alternate future after an event called “the shattering”. This wasn’t really made clear but at my personal guess it was some sort of act of mother nature, possibly? This event has caused problems with the laws of gravity.
Anyway there are two factions in the game “The Law” the law enforcement and “The Breakers” the criminal element. They are fighting each other wearing high tech devices which cause superhuman strength and giving them the ability to jump high or far.
Gameplay
The most important part of any game. Now on the surface I think most people will compare this to Overwatch.
All I can say is please don’t.
Death From Above
Yes LawBreakers is a team based First Person Shooter, and no they haven’t tried to make it look realistic. But the gameplay is where this game actually shines and reminds me of a golden age of arena shooters. This game took me back in time to great games of the past, like Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena. This has a very old-school feel to it when you play and I loved this side of the game. Just like in days of old, I’m getting fragged left right and centre, but the strange thing with this game is…….. it doesn’t make me feel like raging. Nobody likes dying in games, I get that, but the awesome thing with this game is I’ve yet to encounter any camping. The maps haven’t been designed like that, everything is fast paced and clear, so good job to the team that created this game.
There are nine classes in this game. You have the assassin, the medic, the enforcer, the gunslinger, the harrier, the juggernaut, the titan, the vanguard and the wraith. Now some of these classes to most are quite obvious in their role and the weapons you would expect them to carry but let’s dive a little deeper.
Firstly the Assassin, he is a fast moving class with a pair of knives as a primary weapon, with a shotgun as the secondary weapon.
Next is the Medic, he carries a grenade launcher as a primary weapon and a pistol as a secondary weapon.
The Enforcer is an all round character with an assault rifle as a primary weapon and a pistol for a secondary weapon that fires small bursts of electricity.
The Gunslinger as you would expect carries two pistols with him, while the right pistol is a regular three round burst, the left pistol is slightly different. This monster is a cannon which can be charged for an even more powerful shot.
The Harrier has a laser beam rifle that gives a constant stream when you hold down the fire button, and like the gunslinger there is no secondary weapon so this character has an alternative fire mode which can tag enemies for all to see. While the enemy is tagged everyone on your team including yourself can cause extra damage to the unlucky enemies.
The Juggernaut is a slower moving heavy character who can take more damage and has higher health. His primary weapon is a good old fashioned pump action shotgun with a twist, it has a huge blade attached to the bottom. So you can cause some extra damage up-close.
Abilities on Show
Probably my least favourite character on offer is the Titan.This character carries a rocket launcher as a primary weapon which can cause a lot of damage to whatever it hits, and as you would expect it causes splash damage to anyone unlucky enough to be nearby the explosion. The Titan does however have a handy secondary weapon in the form of a lightning gun which will spread its carnage to not only your target but to all his mates stood nearby.
The Vanguard is my personal favourite character at the moment, this character has a Gatling gun as a primary weapon and unlike most FPS games this gun gets more accurate the longer you keep that trigger held down.
Finally is the Wraith which I think will be a lot of players’ character choice. Wraith runs around with a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other which is a bit of old school Call Of Duty in the mix. Personally I was never any good with this class type in the days of old and while I was optimistic unfortunately I’m still just as bad at this class. But being a stubborn old fool you might still see me running this class in the hope of some momentary genius and skill.
All characters have an ultimate skill which charges up throughout the game but I won’t go into those to much as it would spoil the surprise for you all. (winky smiley)
There are 4 game modes in the game, Uplink which is a tug of war with the uplink node, take this to your base and guard it till it reaches 100% download to score in this mode.
Blitzball, which feels like capture the flag with a twist, there’s a ball in the middle of the map, collect it and run it through the enemies goal. The twist in this mode is that you have a shot clock and if this runs out the ball returns to the middle.
Turf War is good old fashioned domination, there are three points on the map that you must capture and hold until the time runs out, when the time runs out the points that have been captured get turned into points for your team and the game resets. Rinse and repeat.
The last mode is Overcharge where you both fight over a battery…. yes I said a battery. You grab the battery and run it back to your base and defend it till it fully charges to score a point. Although you have to be careful because if the battery gets stolen by the enemy it doesn’t lose its charge so say for example the enemy steal the battery at 99% that means when they get to their base it only needs to charge 1% for them to get a team point and all your hard work fighting and defending the battery was for nothing.
Secondary Fire
Graphics
The graphics on LawBreakers are pretty solid, they’re not cutting edge and wont strain your PlayStation 4. I mean they aren’t bad by any means, and on the standard PS4 you will find it runs at 1080i at 60fps and the PS4 Pro runs at 4k at 60fps. Now I’ve played this on both machines and in all honesty I couldn’t see a great difference between either versions. So I have to say I can’t personally agree with some of the adverts for the game saying it’s enhanced for the pro, unless you’re going to do a pixel count just to say “see it is different”.
Audio
The audio is crisp and clear although the voice tags for each character got a bit repetitive after a while but were still bearable and weren’t to annoying.
As far as the soundtrack goes, it’s a techno dub step meets the glorious rock guitar. It’s not an unusual meld of music for this style of game. Since everyone has to listen to it. they try to accommodate everyone and it’s a successful mission.
LawBreakers is a fun game and personally I’d recommend giving it a go especially for the price I think the only thing that could hold this game back is the nostalgia for the game. As in, this game is more suited to the people that played Unreal Tournament or Quake Arena. I think new and younger gamers’ won’t appreciate that retro feel as much and will compare it to Over Watch.
LawBreakers receives a Thumb Culture Silver Award with 7 out of 10
This article was written by Roy Stealey, one of our guest contributors.
