Amazon’s Breakaway is like Football with Superheroes

This week at PAX we got to head over to Amazon Game Studios to check out Breakaway. The game is set up as an action combat MOBA with some great added features into the mix. You are not just on the board to kill your enemies, there are multiple win styles. We had the chance to run through a demo and get hands on with Breakaway. Here is what we found.

The game demo played out with an arena style map. There were three victory conditions to follow. The first was to get the artifact into the portal. The second was to kill the entire opposing team at the same time. You are on respawn timers when you die. The third was to have the most team members alive at the end of the match.

I played Merrick who is a giant tank character capable of throwing down spiked traps. I don’t normally tank in arena games, but for the demo, it was fun to try. The match started with a really fast play style that gave us all kinds of advantages. Grabbing the artifact first and being able to pass it in the game made for a BloodBowl style idea. I ran up and was able to catch the artifact, but being a slow tank, without healing and support I quickly fell before I got to the portal.

The other characters on the map definitely need to stay focused and work together around the tank. There are also dedicated support and damage classes. The healer was fantastic on our team and chose to play Alona who is the only true healer in the game. After a midfield battle for the artifact, the other team got lucky on a side play up the flank to get the artifact into the portal. We were too focused on kills and not watching some of the faster DPS characters who moved quickly. Round two saw a victory come our way as we now got the hang of the game and moving the artifact well. I was able to throw down a trap and grab the artifact, then play it back to the middle of the map. Once organized we made a push up the side and were able to score.

Breakaway - Merrick

The third round of the demo ended up in a huge fight all through the middle of the map. Kills went back and forth as the artifact was the clear target in the game. The other team was able to get our healer first and then quickly eliminated our ranks as we waited for her to respawn. It was too long and the game ended.

The three matches were very fast paced. Much faster than other games of this type. Having multiple victory conditions helps to plan strategies that are not just kill or be killed. The map had several levels of game play coming out from the center so it brought a lot of jumping and tiered passing for the teams. The artifact had a range and the passing options were easy to figure out so no one struggled there.

Overall, Breakaway is a solid action arena game. Adding in the conditions and portals makes it fun to try out. The heroes had plenty of character to them and honestly, some of the DPS and Assassin characters looked very cool, I just got stuck with the tank. The success of this game will be how many maps and game modes they can produce. At its core the game is strong, it will be how they build the meta over time which will set it apart in a crowded competitive genre.

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