Live or Die Review

"Monster Apocalypse"

Multiplayer

March 7, 2022 at 7:17pm
By Jason Stettner

Every once and awhile you come across a game that truly changes your perspective on gaming. This was one of those for me, a true gem of the battle royale genre Live or Die is determined to provide something incredibly unique within the space while doing an absolutely horrible job in the process. This is on my list for one of the worst experiences in a video game that I’ve ever had.

It literally makes little to no sense from a gameplay perspective or even really how you get into matches. In the main menu it shows a variety of areas to visit, but almost all of them are coming soon so you really have to wonder what they’re even mentioned there. The UI is an absolute nightmare to move through and I could never find a match with more than five people in it, keeping in mind matches are capped to twenty players.

You’re not sure what’s going on and if you check out the store page there’s this long scrolling list about random stuff of natural selection and human population or something as a plot. Anyways, there are a few ways to play. One where you try to fight others, key word being try. Another that’s cooperative and one where you use just blades. It’s all nonsense as it uses the same grim, bleak and awfully designed play space.

You essentially are just dropped into a random spot and need to fight others or monsters or something. While more of a gameplay mention it’s basically impossible to actually hit an enemy and they seem to have unlimited amounts of health. There are piles of various monsters going about doing whatever, they seem more interested in hitting each other. It’s just completely random incoherent nonsense.

Gameplay

This is where the fun begins, it seems as though it’s a third person shooter with some bladed weapons. You’re kind of just swinging with the blade and you can hack someone dozens of times to what seems like no effect. Guns are just randomly placed, those don’t seem to do any damage and they’re super hard to shoot. You’re shown enemy names above heads, then when close that vanishes. Doesn’t matter as any combat is uber awkward and just dysfunctional.

There are times where my character just slid across the floor or my weapons weren’t functioning properly. I mean, the performance or well frame rate on the PS5 seemed fine but it’s just so incredibly bland and terrible to play. Maybe a shame as a monster battle royale sounds cool but all the systems here are just terrible. It takes awhile to load, the UI is just terrible and the regular movement is a drag. It feels like one of those games that’s compiled of pre-made assets and it’s just rather puzzling.

It comes across as being something from a bygone era with low visual quality and such randomness that I don’t get the point of it. Being free to play there are microtransactions present which while are light seem almost pointless. It’s like currency for characters, but you just click random character to play and get a random character regardless. When you spawn in it seems completely random for placement, and the map flow doesn’t exactly encourage players interacting and that makes complete sense as the interactions are probably the worst part of the experience.

That’s however a bit of an issue if your game is a battle royale. I don’t even want to get started on the control system, it’s just horribly awkward. So this is basically the style of a mobile game from the early days of the battle royale genre thrown onto a console in the most lazy of fashions and it’s just such a perplexing effort as I don’t understand it’s value while ultimate questioning how it cleared certification.

The Conclusion

Live or Die is one of the worst games I’ve ever played, it’s not really even much of an experience as you randomly slash at the limited folks you end up facing. I would maybe applaud the effort by the developers, but it doesn’t seem like there was much of one put in here. I guess the multiplayer at least somewhat functions and at times you can shoot the guns.

So there’s that going for it, good luck ever hitting a target though. The visuals are drab, awful and multiple generations behind in quality. It feels terrible to control, with random monsters and other players that were clearly as lost as I was. I don’t see the value in this, despite being free to play.

The concept is perhaps something neat, throwing monsters into a battle royale but this is not the way to deliver. Being multiplayer focused I can’t imagine this game will exist too long so it’ll probably just fade away rather quickly. This is probably the worst game I’ve ever played, or it’s right there alongside The Culling 2, that’s for sure. It’s complete drivel. Avoid.

Read our The Culling 2 Review
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Live or Die Review on Playstation 5

Rating Overall: 0