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Liberated is a brand new action-adventure game by developer Atomic Wolf and publisher Walkabout Games. Liberated is built on the Playable Graphic Novel framework by L.inc which is a special tool that allows developers to create games that have gameplay and narrative blended into the pages of a comic book. This is a very unique idea and blend and this is also one of the most prominent features of Liberated. This is our review of the Nintendo Switch release of Liberated in which we sneak around and try to free a noir, cyberpunk world from an oppressive government.
The story of Liberated is a classic tale of a government’s oppression and a revolution rising from within its roots. The government keeps a strict eye on each and every citizen and dictates what needs to be done by them. Their every action is monitored by them with continuous surveillance and if anything goes out of their way, strict action is taken against them by the government which leads to capture and imprisonment. You join a resistance group, as a young and immature hacker Barry Edwards, who call themselves the Liberated and are working in the shadows and want to take down the oppressors and bring freedom to the people so that they can live their lives how they want to instead of living under a constant threat of government’s strict rules and regulations.
Liberated is set in a noir cyberpunk world of dread and darkness where freedom is not an option. Every citizen is under the constant watch of the government. The game features one of the most amazing visual art styles that I’ve ever seen in a video game. The game is essentially played inside a comic book. Different scenes depict different scenes from the game and you play inside these fully-animated pages of the comic book. The visuals are all hand-drawn and are based around the theme of Noir and Cyberpunk which together extremely well to depict a world that is depressed and under-oppression. Both the cutscenes and gameplay are integrated into the comic-book pages’ style art-style which offers totally unique but immersive gameplay.
Complementing the amazing art and visual style is the solid audio design of Liberated. Every thud, thunder, and gunshot sound is on-point and while there is not chat during cutscenes, the brilliant animations and audio sounds depicting the environment around you really set up your mood. I can easily say if you are looking for a game that features a brilliant noir, cyberpunk world, Liberated could easily top the chart with its brilliant design. There are also minimum load screens in the game. To be more specific, there are no loading screens while you are playing the game. However, they are replaced with awkward pauses after cutscenes which makes you feel like the game has frozen.
Quite sometimes when this happened, I began to press different keys in order to see whether the game has frozen or not but the short delay is actually a loading screen and is just waiting to show you the next screen. I would have preferred a small loading icon at least which could just notify of a background loading but it might be just me. Some of you might not even notice this pause after cutscenes. It is not something that would really break the game but it did make me press the Home button a few times to check whether the game is still loading or the game has frozen on me. Apart from this little gimmick, I have no other complaints from Liberated.
The gameplay of Liberated is really polished as well. Normally, you are moving left or right while trying to sneak your way past guards or simply blasting your way through them. As much as I initially through that Liberated would really incline towards stealthy gameplay, I was pretty much wrong. I completed most of the missions without going into the cover even once. I kept blasting enemies with my pistol and nothing really bothered me. Enemies who hear gunshots do hide behind cover but you can easily kill them as they do not stay for long in cover. However, this does not mean that there is not enough stealth in the game, if you prefer a subtler approach, you can use different covers to hide behind them and wait to ambush your enemies or simply use the silent kill to eliminate them instantly. You can also crouch and more around to attract less attention to yourself.
The gameplay mechanics are really simple and only the aiming will take a little bit of practice since you press R2 and then use the right stick to aim. This is not something that is new to Liberated and if you’ve played some classic 2D shooters, you will easily get used to this mechanic. Liberated is not exactly a 2D title but it switches between 2.5D settings as well where you are crossing between different things or traversing certain environments. You cannot control the camera yourself so if something is hindering your view, you have no option but to move left or right to get a better camera view. It is not something that would break your game and I hardly noticed anything blocking my view critically that would cause problems for me.
Depending on how much you want to torture yourself, there are two different playthrough styles of Liberated. If you want to simply experience the game for its story, you can play the game in the Reader Difficulty however if you are looking for a real challenge, you can up the ante a little and play the game on the Player difficulty which is also the difficulty which the developers recommend to try it out. Player gives you additional challenge and higher skill level is required to play in this mode. However, the story remains the same in both modes so you can easily pick whatever difficulty suits your gameplay style. The main story also gives you different choices to choose from as well.
For example, you can decide to be rude or humble with your teammates. You might need to choose whether you want to run away from the police or surrender to them. The levels are pretty much linear so no matter what path you take, you will eventually arrive at the same locations so the decision making is simply limited to chat and smaller actions that do not have massive differences from the other one. Apart from these various small decisions, you play a linear story which is pretty much the same with minor changes in sections depending on your choices in them.
In certain sequences of the game, there is too much text in the chat boxes which makes them a little bit annoying. If you do not like to read much, reading all of these chat boxes will certainly make you dizzy. Most of the chat is small and to the point however in certain cases, when there are a little bit context and lore involved, these become a little long and the cutscene might start to look a little boring. For me, I did get bored in a few instances where I just wanted to skip the cutscenes entirely but the lore and narrative are often linked to these chat boxes so if you want to experience the complete story, you do not have the luxury to skip any sort of dialogue.
Final Verdict:
Liberated is a game that is best to be experienced rather than watched online or read about it. It features a brilliant art style and the delivery of narrative and how the gameplay and cutscenes are merged together in the form of a comic book is just brilliant. You get to experience a brilliant world coupled with solid audio design and gameplay mechanics in a package that is extremely well executed. There is enough action in the game that will keep you glued to the game for a decent number of hours. I will highly recommend that you experience this amazing narrative-driven action-adventure game if you own a Nintendo Switch.
Final Score: 9/10