On the exterior, Laser League look like a generic indie attempt at a competitive multiplayer title. But underneath the static camera, monotonous techno music, and simplistic mechanics is really a game having a lot of hidden depth and addictively fun gameplay.
The concept behind Laser League is really simple that you'll grasp it within moments. Each match consists of two teams made up of between two to four players each. In order to win a round, you must eliminate all of your opponents by either pushing or tricking them into entering one of your team's colored laser barriers, which you activate when walking over empty nodes that float round the arena. The flipside to this is the fact that, obviously, you'll also be eliminated when walking into theirs. However, players can revived downed teammates, so every member of one team should be knocked out prior to the round can end. Matches would be best out of three sets, and sets are best from five rounds.
Honestly, in writing it out, I feel like I've made the concept sound more complicated of computer actually is. For action, Laser League is really intuitive that anyone can listen to it. Likely to arena. It's filled with empty nodes. Should you board an empty node, a wall of light the same color as the team will come out of it. You are able to walk-through your personal light wall, but when you touch the opposing team's light wall, you die. It's as simple as that. The provided tutorials are helpful in explaining the core rules and mechanics, but after completing it, I almost felt silly for feeling the need to do so.
Laser League's surface simplicity gains some added complexity from the different character classes available. You will find three offensive class types and three defensive class types, each with their own unique abilities. The offensive courses are Blade, Snipe, and Smash, as the defensive courses are Thief, Ghost, and Shock, and all six can choose between one of two modifiers (or three on PC, with more being put into console versions a few weeks after launch).
Blade and Snipe can both instantly kill enemies using their abilities, while Smash can push enemies into barriers or at best knock them down temporarily, making all three offensive characters dangers on the pitch, whilst forcing these to play more aggressively. Around the defensive side, Thief can switch an opponent barrier to their own team's color, Ghost can temporarily gain invincibility and traverse enemy barriers, and Shock can gain an electrified forcefield for a brief period of time that will stun enemy players who touch it. Along with all that, modifiers generally either extend the duration of what you can do, recharge your ability faster, or add a specific buff to your ability.
Each one of these classes has its strengths and it is drawbacks. Ghost is great for saving downed teammates who are separated by an opponent barrier, however it completely lacks any type of offensive capabilities. Thief is ideal for opening new pathways and potentially tricking enemies into entering deadly traps, but it's completely vulnerable against offensive classes. Likewise, Blade and Sniper players can eliminate the opposition using their offensive abilities, but have no defensive capabilities, not to mention that the aggression needed to play those classes effectively could be manipulated by defensive players to create traps.
The six classes add a great deal of depth to Laser League matches, and mixing-and-matching for your team composition can result in interesting strategies. Stacking your team with offensive characters can lead to brute force gameplay, but employing that strategy against an imaginative defensive team could get you in danger. On the other hand, having zero offensive capabilities would mean that you're counting on your attacker to make a mistake in order to win the round, which might not happen (even though it will probably).
The classes are all unique and fairly well-balanced, even though there are certainly some standouts. Blade is regarded as the powerful class in the game, as it's really simple to kill opponents with its charge and slash ability. Likewise, Shock's stun ability is outclassed through the Bash class, which pushes and stuns enemies for an a lot longer period of time.
What makes these classes balanced, however, is the apparent differences in skill essential to effectively use them. Snipe, which could also outright eliminate enemies, gives players a significantly wider selection of attack but is much harder to make use of. The aforementioned Shock class might not be as effective as Bash, but its ability is far simpler to employ. By reserving more powerful abilities to more skillful classes, Laser League makes sure that there is a class for everyone whilst balancing out classes that have somewhat similar goals and effects.
Online, players employ these classes in two different multiplayer modes: 2v2 and 3v3 (with 4v4 restricted to local multiplayer). The 2v2 mode provides more chance of simple strategies, but the danger is that if you're combined with a bad teammate, you've a smaller amount room for personal error. It's enjoyable, but ultimately Laser League seems like it was designed for 3v3.
Depending in your teammates, 3v3 can be a chaotic mess of ever-changing colors of lights and seemingly random deaths, or it can cause epic, drawn out battles where the tide of the round can shift at any time. The larger team sizes permit a little more room for error and much more unique possibilities for class combinations, while also making the task of eliminating the 3 players around the enemy side a lot more of a challenge. Thankfully, no matter how many players take presctiption the field, online multiplayer felt pretty much stable. I rarely experienced any lag or network errors once servers went live, which is especially important in a game that needs precision and quick reflexes.
Laser League's widely different class abilities and game modes definitely assistance to add a little bit of variety to matches, as do the arenas where matches take place. While every arena utilizes the same size of space, their differing patterns of moving laser barriers imply that you'll rarely play two consecutive matches that feel exactly the same. Overall, the game's 4 arenas pack within 19 different laser patterns, and memorizing these patterns proves to be an incredibly useful and necessary skill. Obtaining the jump on nodes and activating barriers before the enemy can react will give you a strategic edge on the competition.
The arenas also pack in multiple power-ups per match. Some of these power-ups modify the players themselves-for example, activating the “charge” power-up will instantly refill your team's ability meters, while activating the “drain” power-up will clear your enemy's ability meters-while others modify the arenas. The “switch” power-up may be the most nefarious, as it swaps the colors of active barriers into the spotlight, meaning you will soon shift the balance of a match when the other team's barriers outnumber yours. “Power,” meanwhile, instantly activates all empty nodes in your favor, while “clear” wipes all the barriers from the map and enables you to start fresh. These power-ups won't necessarily allow you to overcome a well-balanced team that's employing solid strategies, however it definitely lends to more strategy and variety within the gameplay and gives each match a more unique, party-game twist that you often don't get in competitive multiplayer.
Speaking of, competitive multiplayer games seem to live and die by their progression systems, and Laser League offers sufficient at the moment to help keep players invested without adding too many superfluous items to unlock. As you play online, you earn XP and gain levels your bank account. Hitting different XP marks will unlock items like new uniforms for the character, new patterns for laser barriers that you activate, new emotes, and new avatars. The good thing is you don't even have to fully gain levels to unlock these items, because the game generously gifts you new items fairly often. It will give completionists enough to complete, and so far doesn't seem tied to any loot box or microtransaction systems.
Laser League's visual design, like the remaining game, is simple but elegant. The neon colors from the dark background make it obvious where you're safe and just what to not touch. It's not hard to track even as different colored laser barriers pass through one another. (Apparently, some color-blind players have experienced issues, but the developer has promised an area inside a couple of weeks.) There is lots happening at a point, and despite all the colors flying everywhere, tracking your personal character amid five others is very rarely an issue- though, admittedly, there have been several times after i lost tabs on where my character was and ended up walking face-first into an enemy laser wall.
I greatly enjoyed time experimenting with Laser League's various classes and understanding the maps. These components work nicely together for action, and resulted in intense battles of wit and reactions. However, despite just how much fun I had with the game while I was playing it, I'm still not convinced about its staying power-due mostly towards the simplicity of their mechanics in the long-term. Essentially, all you're doing is travelling and activating nodes, and that i can't observe that kind of gameplay competing in my time with multiplayer experiences where you can achieve this a lot more. So, I worry about how much time I'll actually wind up spending with Laser League now that I've finished reviewing it.
Still, no matter how long I play it, Laser League is really a unique, engaging experience. To its testament, it's the kind of multiplayer game that works as well for parties as it does for serious, competitive play. Its class abilities and ever-changing arenas is going to be enough for a specific type of gamer that prefers multiplayer experiences where strategy and quick decision-making are more important than mechanical gifted-ness. It's literally unlike anything That i have ever played before, but nonetheless somehow seems to be instantly recognizable.
