A silly name, wildly colorful graphics, and zany gameplay mechanics may pique your curiosity for LIADS, but its smart and addictive co-op play is likely to snare you in for its duration. Assuming you have a second Xbox One controller — as it turns out no one on our staff did until I bought another — and someone locally who is interested in playing, this can be a good co-op experience. It requires a lot of communication and well, cooperation, so it’s important to play with someone that is good at both. Whether due to this requirement or perhaps a lack of time or budget on the part of the developer Asteroid Base, no online functionality is included, so take note.
So some of the pillars of good co-op design include accessibility, pick-up-and-play design, and a challenging, yet not overly difficult experience. LIADS meets these requirements nicely, and its premise is simple and forgettable enough that it’s really just a vehicle towards getting players into the game and through the twenty-stage campaign (complete with four boss fights at the end of each chapter, or level). Players take control of two characters who are piloting a circular spaceship in a 2D world. Evil-doers are doing their thing, but this duo manages to escape into this spaceship and they’re essentially the last hope for reversing the imbalance of love across the universe. It’s up to you to rescue various animals (five per stage) and destroy the anti-love enemies, who take a variety of creative shapes and use a plethora of unique weapons.
The spaceship that the players control has multiple stations, but, there are only two of you to manage all of the different stations. Complete with ladders that go between floors, players have to coordinate who’s going to manage which station and when. A navigator is needed to steer around obstacles, someone needs to man the shields, the super weapon, and the various turrets. You can readily see that, in the heat of battle when things are frantic, communication between the two players is necessary to make the most efficient use of your movements and position. Different enemies require different tactics, this is especially true with the boss fights, and without a concerted effort from both parties, failure is inevitable. Oh and don’t think that you can just memorize the pattern of each stage, while you can to a point, they are actually procedurally generated, which is great for mixing up the variety. All that said, you can expect some great co-op memories and a lot of laughs.
Speaking of variety, the upgrades and gems that you find can modify your ship and create new types of shields and weapons. These unlockables and upgrades help extend the life of the game beyond its five to six hour campaign. Indeed, you can play in single player as well, but, it’s no surprise that this a far cry from the fun you can expect when playing with co-op. In the single player mode, which I didn’t spend a great deal of time in, you command the AI to run about various command posts, except for navigating. Ship navigation is entirely up to you, so your AI will have to handle a lot of the shooting. To that end they do pretty well, but eh, save your time with LIADS for when you can play with a friend — you’re bound to have a good time.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
