PAX West Spotlight: Liberated
Some games are about exciting moment-to-moment gampelay while others are about intensely written narratives. But some of my favorite games to see are the ones about aesthetic choices. Liberated was an great game to see because it provided an awesome aesthetic choice - a fully playable comic book.
Liberated follows the classic story of authoritarian government gone wrong (you rarely see games about authoritarian government gone right). You play as one of the Liberated, a group of resistance fighters, or terrorists depending on perspective, who are trying to take down the system. During the game, the player switches between different characters, providing a moral gray zone for the activities of the government officials and resistance fighters.
In addition to the moral gray zone of the narrative, Liberated provides a visual gray zone. The only color I saw in the demo was the blood on the pages as you take damage. That said, the looks of the game was more striking than dull. The white text pops out on the screen and the environments all felt like that were hand crafted as part of a greater comic book.
The one place where Liberated fell a little flat for me was in the gameplay. The narrative parts were fine, and the comic book panel switching was a cool touch. But the gunplay felt very loose, often causing you to miss your first shot and subsequently die to an armed guard. Most times, holding a gun made Liberated less fun to play and I often wished I could skip the gunfights and go back to watching the miniature comic book movies of each panel.
Check out the trailer below:
