I’ve always been a fan of twin stick shooters and so when I was presented the opportunity to try out Livelock a brand new co-op twin stick shooter from Arc Games, I jumped on it. The demo I played was hands on, in a team of three made up of myself and two of the games developers.
Livelock has you become one of three different mechs, an assault class tasked with details out damage, a tank class that uses strong melee attacks and can take a pounding, and a support class that buffed and healed everyone involved. Personally, I went for the mech with gauntlets, because I love the idea of running around as a big robot punching things.
The mission I played took me through the grounds and insides of an abandoned facility as we made our way towards some tech that we were looking for. Environments are built to make you feel big and powerful, as walls break when you walk through them and doors get knocked off their hinges without slowing you down at all.
Controls handle exactly as you would expect, with one stick controlling where your character moves and the other controlling where you aim on the screen. The big difference is how quickly your special abilities regenerate. The developers said that they wanted to make you feel powerful by allowing you to constantly unleash a barrage of special attacks and they certainly succeeded. Nothing quite compares to charging into a group of enemies in your massive mech and unleashing a string a special attacks after punching a few enemies in the face.
As we progressed further into the level, leaving carnage and destruction in our wake, we gradually came across enemies that were more plentiful and stronger than before. Luckily, to balance this out and keep the feeling of power going, we came across some power ups as well. In Livelock there are a variety of power ups that you can find in levels that will give you temporary boosts. These can range from increasing your speed, increasing your damage and even decreasing the the cooldown of your special abilities. If you didn’t feel power enough before, being able to lay the smackdown from your ultimate attack every 6 seconds will definitely correct that.
Overall, Livelock is an interesting twin stick shooter with a focus on making you feel powerful and playing with your friends. It release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on August 2nd.
