LawBreakers hands-on review

If the FPS was a middle aged male, it would currently be cheating on its wife, considering investing in a bright yellow sportscar, and simultaneously experimenting with combinations of boyish perfume and Just For Men.

To say the genre is having a mid-life crisis would be an understatement, and LawBreakers is arriving at a period when ability-based mechanics are being toted as an anti-ageing antidote for one of gaming’s oldest genres.

So, along with the likes of Paragon, Overwatch and Battleborn, LawBreakers adds a dash of MOBA mechanics to its shooty-shooty action. Unlike those other games, though, LawBreakers is being developed by Boss Key, the studio run by the notorious Cliff Bleszinki of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War fame.

So will it stand out in this suddenly overcrowded arena-shooter, umm, arena? I went hands-on to find out.

It’s a class war

Play

LawBreakers is set in a not-so-distant future where a catastrophe referred to as “The Shattering” has devastated the landscape and torn apart gravity itself.

Contrary to the laws of physics this may be, but it provides the game with its principal theme: that which goes up… will probably float there for a few seconds, career downward with a rocket-fuelled jetpack, and then explode.

All the classes of the game utilise some kind of gravity-based attack and the environments feature sections in which the normal laws of motion don’t apply.

During the demo four of these gravity-bending classes were available to play: Titan, Enforcer, Assassin, and Vanguard, each sporting their own set of unique talents.

Justin Mahboubian-Jones Contributor

About

When not earning a living as England's only Jafar look-a-like, Justin spends his time surigcally attached to a gaming PC and keeping you up to date with everything in the land of button bashing. Other specialist interests include mobile computing, VR, biofeedback, wearable tech and the perfect bowl of cereal.