Livelock is a cross between a dungeon crawling action RPG and a twin-stick shooter featuring a post- apocalyptic story full of robots and
I couldn’t be any more in love with it.
The class-based co-op gameplay is a ton of fun and the presentation is
remarkably polished, too. It stumbles
here and there – mostly because there simply isn’t enough of it for our tastes
– but overall Livelock is pretty darn awesome.
See our full review for details.Game Details
- Publisher: Perfect World Entertainment
- Developer: Tuque Games
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: Action
- Pros: Great co-op; fun gameplay; nice presentation; neat story
- Cons: Performance issues; kinda short; more build variety would be nice
- MSRP: $20
A cataclysmic event that can’t be avoided is going to
destroy all organic life on Earth so mankind devised a way to download human
consciousness into computers so that, when the apocalypse was over however many
hundreds years later, those human minds could then be implanted in new bodies. An A.I. known as Satcom was tasked with
watching over the Earth until the humans could take over again, but the
machines it used to maintain the surface of the planet went out of
control. Obviously, before mankind can
make its big comeback, these bad robots need to be taken care of first.
To do so, three exceptional human minds were implanted into
robots and tasked with clearing the surface.
Similar to The Fall, however, Livelock raises questions about the
ability of an artificial intelligence (Satcom) to defy its programming and
re-interpret how best to accomplish its mission. This gives Livelock a much more fascinating story than just one
about re-taking a post-apocalyptic world, which makes the whole experience much
more engrossing than you’d initially expect.
As mentioned above, the gameplay is sort of a mix of a
dungeon crawler and twin-stick shooter.
You move around with the left stick, aim with the right stick, shoot
with the right trigger, and use the characters’ various abilities with the
other buttons. Each of the three
characters has different specialties – basically support, tank, or long range –
so they play fairly differently from each other. There isn’t any loot, per se, but as you level up each character
they earn new weapons and abilities and you can use the carbon you find in each
level to upgrade the weapons and make them more powerful. You have three weapon slots, and each
character has a couple of different weapons you can choose from for each slot,
but there isn’t a ton of build variety here.
Since you have to level up the weapons, you’ll probably
stick with the first weapon you find for each slot and upgrade it all the way
rather than switching, so there isn’t a ton of build variety here to freshen up
the experience as you play. There isn’t
a new game plus option, but you can re-play missions on higher difficulty
levels with your same character to keep leveling them up and upgrade their
other weapons. While there isn’t a ton
of gameplay build variety, the game does feature fairly decent aesthetic
customization. You can unlock custom
heads and bodies of different colors to customize the look of each character a
bit.
Each level mostly consists of you simply working your way
from point A to point B blasting everything in sight, but there are some hidden
areas off the beaten path if you want to wander a bit to find some extra
carbon. There are also multiple
sections in the game where you have to protect a central point from waves of
enemies, something which I got kind of tired by the end. The game doesn’t have a ton of levels,
though, and we beat all of them in less than 10-minutes each for a total play
time of somewhere between 3-4 hours.
The idea is that you’re supposed to re-play the game multiple times and
with each character, but I’m still hungry for more. More levels. More
weapons. More build variety. I liked the game a lot, but I wish there
were more to it (and the survival mode gets boring pretty quickly …).
Livelock is meant to be played as a three-player co-op game
either online or locally. Online play
has both public games with randoms as well as private games and works
well. The game really shines with a
full team of players, but it is also actually quite fun and playable solo if
you want. I don’t know that I’d recommend
it if you only plan to play solo, but it is an option.
In the end, Livelock is a pretty good experience all
around. It plays great, tells a neat
story, has excellent presentation, and is just a ton of fun to play. As much as I wish there were more levels /
weapons / everything else, for the $20 MSRP it does offer plenty of content for
the price. If you love co-op games and
need a new title to play with your friends, Livelock is highly
recommended. Buy it.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
