LawBreakers Review: I fought the law and the law won

LawBreakers promised fast-paced, gravity defying combat aimed at hardcore FPS players. And for the most part, that’s exactly what it delivers.

Developer: Boss Key Productions
Publisher: Nexon
Platform: PlayStation 4, PC (Version reviewed)
Release Date: August 8, 2017

Cliffy B’s latest independent venture isn’t for everyone, or at least that’s what their marketing material seems to want you to think. LawBreakers is another FPS attempting to break its way onto the hero shooter scene, but this time marketed towards a more hardcore audience (#skilledAF). And the LawBreakers trailer at E3 2017’s PC Gaming Show made that fact very clear.

At first glance, LawBreakers is easy to shrug off, especially if you don’t consider yourself a competitive FPS player. Its got that classic Cliffy B edgy touch, with a blazingly obnoxious soundtrack and offbeat character designs. I’ll admit, when I first came across the game at PAX East 2016 I wasn’t overly impressed. I wasn’t quite sure what it was missing until Overwatch was released later that year: LawBreakers was lacking in personality.

Its characters are extremely forgettable, and the overall look-and-feel of the game is fairly generic. The game features eighteen playable characters, nine on each faction (the Law and the Breakers). For example, Hellion is a pink ponytailed Assassin for the Law, while Cronos is a hockey-mask wearing Titan maniac for the Breakers faction. With distinct voice lines and facades, the characters have at least some resemblance of a personality. But not distinct enough to really have much of an impact at all. Hell, I had to go back and look at the list of characters in-game to even remember their names. Instead, character identities are tied to their class and abilities.

One might argue in a PvP focused game, this kind of character development isn’t all that necessary. Who cares what their name is, you just want to stomp on the other team, right? I can understand that argument, but where this becomes an issue with LawBreakers is that the character models are entirely too similar. When you’re flying around in zero-g shooting enemies from all directions, it can often be overly difficult to even identify which class your enemy is playing. Outside of a few notable characters, the silhouettes are almost indistinguishable.

LawBreakers is all about movement and character placement, bringing back those twitch reaction times and accurate aiming skills from old arena shooters like Quake. The game features zero gravity zones, allowing you to propel yourself through the air using high skilled movement abilities and propel yourself across the map by blind-firing behind you. This is where LawBreakers ‘ high skill gap really comes into play. Tracking where enemies are on all three axes while enemies can literally teleport around you gets chaotic. Sometimes it’s hard to tell how you even died, and the lack of a kill cam doesn’t help with that either.

What makes this movement mechanic truly shine is that it requires strategic decision making. While blind-firing might help you get from point A to point B faster, it also uses up your ammo. And on top of that, you have to balance your movement abilities cooldown and fuel usage at the same time. Finding this balance is difficult but extremely rewarding: every class has the ability to string together combos to make for some memorable moments. Even when you might not actually be all that good at the game, the mechanics make you feel badass, which is only amplified as you start to get the hang of it all.

In terms of character design, there are nine playable classes ranging from tanky damage soakers to quick melee assassins to moderately light supports. Every class controls relatively similarly despite their different play styles, with two primary attack methods, two special abilities, and one “ultimate” ability on a longer cooldown timer. I found the abilities to be a bit underwhelming, however. LawBreakers seems to have played it safe in this regard, as none of the abilities seem to really iterate much on its predecessors in the genre.

But this also makes each match much more reliant on personal skill as opposed to team composition and coordination. While teamwork is inherently important in each game mode, LawBreakers doesn’t focus on that rock-paper-scissors balance of team composition and matchups like other games in the genre do. Your team will generally do well enough as long as everyone has at least some idea of what the current objective is. LawBreakers is much more focused on your skill as an individual, which makes for a far more enjoyable experience solo queuing.

In terms of game modes, LawBreakers features five different modes involving capture-the-flag and point capture style mechanics. Like most hero shooters, you should definitely take the game mode (and map) into consideration when selecting your character. I would argue that some game modes just gel better than others with the game’s mechanics though. Blitzball’s “capture-the-ball” seemed to be the perfect blend of objective PvP gameplay for LawBreakers. Uplink and Overcharge’s capture modes also were my favorites, though the vast similarities between the two left me wondering why both of them were included instead of just the more refined Uplink mode.

Perhaps the most frustrating in terms of gameplay diversity, though, is the lack of Team Deathmatch. This game is just screaming for some straight up PvP action without forced objectives. The fact that half of my matches always end up in people essentially playing TDM anyway should be a telling fact. The ability to pick-and-choose game modes would also be welcome, instead of the queue just cycling through modes at random.

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Matchmaking has (so far) been quick and relatively balanced, even with an already low game population on Steam. It’s hard to say what LawBreakers’ concurrent user base will look like in a few weeks, despite its deeply enjoyable and fun gameplay. For only $29.99, this is a mechanically sound and graphically beautiful shooter that deserves more attention than it’s currently getting. Not to mention it runs on my upper-mid tier rig at max graphical settings at around 80-100 frames per second.

While Boss Key wants LawBreakers to be this ultra hardcore competitive shooter, the required skill cap is not nearly as high as they initially led on to believe. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely not easy, but it’s still accessible to casual FPS players willing to put in the effort. LawBreakers is a solid middle ground between modern day style shooters like Overwatch and more fast-paced arena shooters like Unreal Tournament, a niche that I find refreshing and exhilarating. While it might not have that eye-catching, special flair like other shooters, LawBreakers blends sound FPS mechanics with unique zero-g gameplay.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.