PlayStation Plus games have been a real hit or miss with me personally. Some nights I’ll jump on the store to browse the new wares to find something unique or interesting. Most of the time I forget about the many games that are free to me. I always know what they’re at the beginning of the month, but after a few days, it becomes lost on me. This time around, I find myself just taken back by one of this month’s games, Laser League.
Created by Roll7, Laser League looks a lot like a Tron game if you take away the cycles and add several different classes with different roles and abilities. The objective in Laser League is simple: kill the other team. Easy right? Well, the whole gimmick is that your team and the opposing team are fighting for laser walls the entire match. If you touch an enemies laser wall, you’re dead. The whole match you are running around claiming laser walls, dodging enemy abilities and waiting for the right time to attack. It is bananas intense.
The classes really differ in regards to team composition. You can play as the Smash class, where all you do is push people around. Even going so far as pushing them right into laser walls to erase them. Also of note is that each class comes with one ability and a few modifiers. So for example, if you choose the Blade class, you can cut enemies with a farther reach or have the ability to charge your ability quicker to use it more often. My initial impression is that the variety in classes adds a nice touch to the game. For a PS Plus game to be this good it has to be a hit.
And this is where it gets weird.
Laser League is posting up eights and nines across the various outlets. The game has definitely gotten the praise. So why, when I tried to find an online match during the evening, was I waiting an excess of twenty minutes, to no avail? Apparently, the game has not garnered a sizable audience yet. After scouring the internet (and let’s be honest Reddit) I found that a lot of people are having the same issue. But others are finding matches no problem. Well to test this theory, I tried to find a match in the middle of the day, and wouldn’t you know it? I was matched right away. The online matches were frickin’ insane and both times the deciding match came down to the final game.
So it appears people are playing the game, but why did I have to wait twenty plus minutes one day then the next get matched immediately? Some players are suggesting that the game’s servers are having issues. But from what I’ve seen, the problem is leaning towards there not being enough players online. Which brings me to my final point.
Try this game. Go download it (it’s like 2GB) and give it a whirl. Some of you may not like it and that’s fine. Some of you will love it and I think it deserves more players. The game is fantastic. The overall aesthetic of the game is brilliant and the gameplay is solid. There’s also a ton of things to unlock to customize your characters. For a PS Plus game, this is a steal.
UPDATE: I tried playing on Europe servers and find matches very quickly this way.
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