This game was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch and was provided by Cosmoscope GmbH
I have been moving further and further away from casual gaming. Not my style of play, but the style of games that I’ve been playing. If I am going to play a game, I’m going to play it with a larger end goal in mind and deeper purpose, not just to kill some time or just have fun. However, Morphies Law: Remorphed has a wonderful blend of various hardcore with causal gameplay and is stealing my time away from my other games.
Story
A bunch of beautifully weirdly morphing robots are fighting so their giant avatar can kill the enemy avatar. There is literally no other story that can be found...but this is a big part of the game, it knows what it is, an action shooter with lots of ridiculousness, no need for rhyme or reason.
Gameplay
Morphies Law is primarily a 4v4 arena shooter with one major twist, as you shoot an enemy, you get bigger and they get smaller. However, Morphies Law is more specific than that. When you shoot an opponent's arm, you arm get bigger and their arm gets smaller. They could even be shooting your head at the same time and your head gets smaller as their head gets bigger. This means it is consistently hilarious because all the characters are horribly misshapen more and more as the match continues.
The different sizes actually affect gameplay a lot. If you have larger legs, you can jump much higher, if your whole body is smaller, then you can use special tunnel to jump from place to place in the map. The size of characters also directly affect hit boxes, meaning that the game automatically balances itself to make matches automatically slightly more fair.
These 4v4 matches happen in four different game modes. For practical understanding, I’ll quickly go through each match type:
Morph Match: This is just death match. Whoever gets more kills and does more damage will directly grow their avatar, and whichever team has the bigger avatar at the end will win.
Head Hunter: Your avatar has lost its giant head, both team then fight to capture the head in the middle, place it in a cannon and then protect their cannon as it charges to shoot the head onto their respective avatar. The game ends when one avatar gets the new head.
Mass Heist: Many alters are placed around the map and people must go to specific alters to attack the avatar directly, stealing the mass and giving it to their own avatar.
The Masster: Whichever player on either team has the most mass becomes the Masster. Whichever team has the Masster will slowly fill up the avatar’s mass until it is big enough to smash the opponent avatar, ending the match.
The variants of gameplay mixed with you character constantly changing size and shape really add a lot of flavor and fresh gameplay. Along with these variations, there are a handful of primary weapons with a secondary add-on. The weapons are fairly standard: machine gun, revolver, shotgun and more. The add-ons include umbrellas to shield characters, grenade vollies, and even paint on the floor that can speed up and heal allies while damaging enemies and more. Combining these guns is a huge deal and can be overlooked if not careful.
This totally allows a player to choose their loadout and style of play. Loadouts can also be switched to other previously made loadouts in the middle of a match to adjust strategies or accommodate for match type or enemy play style. In addition to these loadouts, there are special abilities and various perks that can be put on your character to further adjust how a player wants to play. All of these additional perks, weapons and mods are unlocked over time as a player levels up their profile by playing better and more often.
Offering perks and weapons as a person plays more is a nice and smooth transition for players to try out new guns and get used to each different mod or weapon. However, this also means that the first few hours can be brutal online and slightly unfair because other players may have combinations or weapons that are totally unavailable to you. The game isn’t broken, but it just means that players are a bit disadvantaged in the first few hours of play time.
Visuals
Being reviewed on the Switch, the game looks fine, but not great. The frame rate is always great, but the movements are choppy and textures are a lower quality than the Steam version, and even somewhat low in general for Switch standards. It isn’t distracting, but when first playing, it is surprising how much the game looks like it could be from the Wii, PS3 or Xbox 360 era.
That being said, the actual style and visual design is wonderful. The bright colors and customizable characters flaunt a lot of style and personality in every frame. The levels range from desert towns to bustling cities at night. Not only is the style great, but the animations and movements are silly and fun through and through. It isn’t a huge HD masterpiece, but the care and love for life injected design is easily seen.
Audio
All the sound effects are fairly standard, maybe a little below average. The music on the other hand is pretty good and brings more life to the game. The guns in particular sound very low quality and simple. The mods and sounds of the characters moving and morphing are all passable, but more care is seen in the gameplay and visuals for sure, which is fine for a smaller game.
Replayability
At first, I found this game to have little to enjoy past the tech-demo feel of a shooter game that auto-balances by changing character’s sizes. However with four game modes, offline bots, customization of characters, weapon and mod combination, the extra abilities and quick matches make this game a lot more appealing overtime and fun. This won’t be a game that streamers will be logging in days of playtime or a game that will have global tournaments, but it has enough to offer to play a couple of rounds on a regular basis.
What It Could Have Done Better
The only major issue that could be addressed is the weapon and mod system being gated so much by play time. I understand forcing players to focus more on how Morphies Law works at first instead of bombarding them with a whole slew of options. But, instead of having to long in 10-15 hours to unlock all the things that actually affect gameplay, it would be nice if most weapons could be unlocked within the first few hours and then mods or abilities be unlocked later.
Verdict
If looked at the right way, this game is very good. This also means it isn’t for everyone. I am sure that just about everyone would get a kick out of the game, but it definitely fits those who are more for the fun experience of a game, not the gradual climb into the heights of competitive play or those searching for those amazing, rare cosmetic items. As I first mentioned, Morphies Law knows exactly what it is, an arcade shooter and it does it right and does it well.
