Tyler got his hands on Lawbreakers back in April, and enjoyed his time with the multiplayer shooter's characters, weapons, and abilities. I got to try it for myself in May and I agree with just about everything he said—it’s fast, fun, furious, and doesn’t take long to get a grip on each character’s talents. After just a few rounds of play, Lawbreakers shot to the top of my most anticipated games of this year.
I also got to try out Turf War, Boss Key’s take on Domination mode, which I played on their new map, Promenade. Like everything else about Lawbreakers, its meant to be fast and frenetic. There are 3 control points on the map, and as soon as one is captured by a team, it locks. Capture a point, and your team's score goes up by one. Once all three points are taken and locked, there's a 30 second intermission.
The intermission round begins immediately without players being sent back to their base. The control points remain locked, and this gives each team time to position themselves for the next capture round, as well as the chance to kill as many members of the other team as possible so they begin the next point-capture round stuck on the respawn screen. The first team with a score of 13, wins.
You can see footage of the Boss Key development team playing a match in the video below.
Most notable in Turf War is just how quickly points can be captured. There isn’t meant to be a long, drawn-out slog for each of control point, but a quick cap of the first two, followed by a frenzied skirmish as everyone left alive swarms to the final one.
With a capture point inside each team's base, it seems like those two points, A and C, would always be easily captured first, and that the final point to be captured would always be the middle point, point B. Often, though, that's not the case. Since play doesn't stop when the points are locked, but instead enters the intermission round, it means the fighting continues. You've got players repositioning and some respawning for thirty seconds until the points unlock again. When the new capture round begins, it's not uncommon to see most of a team already at point B, or even in the enemy's base to cap the point there.
This gives Turf War a ton of fluidity. Instead of each round starting with both teams at their base, they can be spread out all over the map, or some waiting to respawn, meaning teams can't rely on the same opening moves or patterns each round and have to adjust on the fly. When the point in your base unlocks, you may find the entire enemy team already standing on it. You never really know which point will wind up being the most contested.
I think Boss Key's take on Domination is a great one, fun and fluid, and doesn't let teams latch onto a couple of strategies or routes and run them the same way every time. Some rounds end without much conflict, others can be hotly contested with massive skirmishes over a single point. Each match I played felt a bit different, which meant each round felt exciting. I'm already looking forward to the alpha.
