During E3 2016, I got to visit the Perfect World Entertainment room for a demo of some of their titles. One of them was a multiplayer, top-down shooter called Livelock. I got to experience the game with the NYC Throwdown crew (Tony Polanco and Emilio Lopez) and the early demo looked and played very well.
According to Perfect World Entertainment: “ Players take control of a Capital Intellect, a human consciousness uploaded to large mechanical body. Armed with a unique arsenal of weapons and special abilities, the Capital Intellect must fight the corrupted machine Clusters . . .”
The game is similar to top-down shooters like Dead Nation (without the zombies), where you can go solo or with others, as you fight your way through stages filled with enemy robots until you get to the stage boss character. Each playable Capital Intellect has benefits and drawbacks. One is the tank that can take punishment and also deal it but sacrifices speed. Another has weak weapons but can set traps and order drones to do tasks like repair (heal) co-op players. The third is a sniper-type that engages enemies from long distance.
The playable characters have a good sense of weight to them as your Capital Intellect tears through the ruins of civilization on a war-torn Earth and can shoot out walls and knock over trees and cars with ease. Those little touches always impress me when games allow players to interact with much of the environment.
The gameplay is fast with hordes of enemies (called Clusters) trying to take you out as you blast your way through them. The playable Capital Intellects are well balanced and I think Livelock leans more towards co-op play as each robot complements and balances each other’s weaknesses. The boss battle was still pretty challenging with full 3 player co-op, but making use of each characters buffs and abilities definitely helped. This is the type of shooter where you have to think, use your abilities at the appropriate time, and use teamwork to get through it. It certainly doesn’t feel like a simple “run n’ gun” action game where you can blast your way through.
You can check out the trailer below. Livelock comes out sometime in the second half of 2016 for PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4.
