When veteran game developers Cliff Bleszinski and Arjan Brussee founded Bosskey Productions in 2014, the duo expressed their desire to cultivate a studio that was “lean, agile and fun” above all else. Three years later, and these very same adjectives could be used as the elevator pitch for Bosskey’s debut title, Lawbreakers, which has finally arrived on PC and PS4.
With class-based shooters now representing the flavour du jour of big budget multiplayer gaming, Lawbreakers has the challenge (or fortuity) of releasing to an audience still riding on the ripples of Overwatch’s phenomenal splash last year. Either way, Bosskey not only knows what it's doing (Bleszinski co-created Gears of War, while Brussee has been credited as “the godfather of Dutch game development”) but, more importantly, it knows how to carve out a distinct identity for Lawbreakers, both in terms of style and substance.
Earth’s moon has exploded and gravity’s run amok, which lays the contextual groundwork for the delicious omni-directional combat of Lawbreakers’ online FPS firefights. Players can glide, swing, jump or hover in any direction, with each map subsequently operating as a 360 degree arena of bullets and blood. Acclimatising to these new rules of engagement can be daunting at first but, once mastered, the feeling of scoring kills and achieving victories without ever touching the ground is euphoric.
The ordered disorder is like nothing else you’ll play this year.
The selection of 18 playable characters, each sorted into one of nine classes, inserts a healthy dollop of personality and diversity into the proceedings too, as every imaginatively designed fighter boasts their own unique means for traversal and combat. It’s chaos, then, but it’s choreographed to precision with tight gunplay and prudent map design, and the ordered disorder is like nothing else you’ll play this year.
Lawbreakers’ pumping pace is maintained effectively by a consistent performance on PC, too. A focus on diminishing lag input and frame-rate irregularities has clearly paid off for Bosskey, as the game plays as smoothly as slicing through warm butter, with its crisp visuals also designed to further aid player precision. Sadly, the PS4 version fares less well, currently plagued by stuttering issues that can hopefully be ironed out soon, as Bosskey has promised.
All of this adds up to a stylistic display of confidence from Lawbreakers, justified in equal parts by its high production value and an intelligent approach to genre experimentation. The more demanding skill barrier will be a source of disaffection for some, but trigger-happy reflex wizards will likely be enraptured for hours by Lawbreakers’ unique blend of sci-fi shootouts.