Liberated

Review

The date is March 12^th 2024 in this near future cyberpunk dystopia where all aspects of always-online social media is controlled by the government in the name of safety. Technology rules the roost in this world: social media, facial recognition, fake news, citizen credit systems. Everything is available to the government, who uses these measures to control the population. While most people submit their lives every day for scrutiny, there are some who fight the system - an insurgent group known as Liberated.

Starting a new game, you will have the choice of two game modes: Player and Reader. Player mode will give you more of a challenge along with the story, while Reader will focus more on the story, where challenges will be easier, aim assist is turned on and you’ll do more and take less damage. After deciding which mode to play the game will start, displaying the cover of Liberated Issue 01.

Issue 01 will then open and the story will start taking place in each of the comic-style windows. Cameras using facial recognition scan the people waiting for the next train to pull into the station. One of these persons is expressing his French at realising that he’d better get his botty moving otherwise he’s going to miss the train. From here you will start to take control of the character and you will be instructed on which keys do what, depending on whether you’re using keyboard and mouse or gamepad.

You make your way onto the train where you get scanned; Barry Edwards, Age 25, Male, Heterosexual, Bank Balance and No Activities on Social Media. After scanning a few others, you leave the train with the objective of exiting the Metro station. A message comes over the tannoy system about the St. Martha’s School Tragedy anniversary this Saturday. Those in attendance will receive complimentary citizen credits. It’s then that your phone receives an alert message; your citizen credit system account has been flagged for Social Non-Compliance. You have failed to attend your Scheduled Citizenship Training and now there’s a warranty out for you and you must return back to your place and wait for the authorities.

You must now make your way home before the coppers get there, so that you can scrub your computer's hard drive. As you make your way hope you’ll have to hide from enemies; places to hide are indicated by a “Y” (gamepad) or “Q” (Keyboard). Don’t let the enemies see you go into hiding as they will come to you and start attacking you. However, if you hide and they walk past you, then you can come up behind and choke them. Later you will have a gun (Pistol, Uzi and Shotgun) to help you get by enemies.

Sneaking rather than running will make less noise when you’re moving about so you may be able to sneak up on your enemy. Once you have a gun you can go for headshots, one shot on most enemies will drop them quicker than a lady of the night’s knickers at happy hour. As you make your way through the game you will come across puzzles that you must complete so that you can proceed.  The types of puzzles you’ll find are Cracking Codes, Fixing Circuits or Supplying Power to receivers. You will play as various characters throughout the game; this will give you the point of view for each character in the story.

The options in Settings consist of Brightness, Sound, Music and Dialogue Sliders, Resolution, Bubble Size, Language (English, Spanish, Polish, Russian, French, German, Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese) and Game Mode (Player and Reader).

I have enjoyed playing Liberated; I think the living graphics looks fantastic, the story is good and the game isn’t hard to play. There is some language which some might offend some folks but the “French” isn’t too bad, really. The game isn’t as long as I’d hoped for; four to five hours it took me, taking my time playing the four comic issues of the game. There are a couple Downloadable Content which are free on Steam. I hope that some more content comes out at a later time.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!