LUFFY-KUN
Adam-Sama
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First brute Force review.
First Brute Force Review
Source: GDXbox
Squad based third person shooter. Halo-style control scheme. Four distinct characters with their own strengths and weaknesses. The stuff of Xbox legend, or very soon to be known as such. Digital Anvil unleashes what is sure to be the biggest hit of the year so far for your Xbox.
As of this writing we are playing only one game around the Gamers Depot offices: Brute Force. A third-person shooter of the first order, this one sports both a robust single player mission experience, and the multiplayer chops to keep us discovering the nuances of the game for a long time. You assume the role of one of four squad members all of whom haven’t had the best of lives; they died nasty deaths and are now cloned and pissed off. We’ll get into them a bit more later, but lets shed a little light on how you’ll play this one first.
The single player missions or campaign as it’s referred to in BF will drive the rest of your experience as you must unlock items for the multiplayer modes by completing missions in the main version of the game. Not only does it serve as the ultimate motivation to push through the campaign mode, it will directly affect the quality of your multiplayer games and the characters you can play with. Here’s the setup: you begin play as Tex the first of the ConFed clones you’ll control. Clones are passed on with their memory chips and cost you the player 3000 dollars each. You earn money for waxing enemies and completing objectives and it’s totaled up as you play the game; earn more money and compile a better ranking at games end, so the beauty is in the way you must learn to use them together to keep each other alive. Tex sets off to rescue Brutus as a first order of business and once you complete that Hawk and Flint will join as the story winds you into the plot and reveals bits and pieces as you play along. After you gain control of them all, the game begins in earnest. You could just play run and gun, but you won’t get far doing that; each character has very distinct strengths they bring to the table, but also very distinct weaknesses as well. Tex is the strongest and can take the most damage, and his special ability is the Berserker; he can pull two guns at once and deal out the harm on an epic scale, but he is the slowest and makes the most noise as he moves – not the best in a close battle or when stealth is needed. Brutus has the strength of Tex, but is better rounded as a whole. He can use the big guns, but he is faster and his special attack is Spirit of Vengar; so he can see any enemies with his enhanced vision and replenish his health at the same time. Hawk is the stealth warrior of the squad and she moves silently and dispatches baddies unseen with her Stealth mode. She has a Powerblade which kills with one slash so while she’s weak in a head-on fight, she shines where quiet discretion is the order of the day. Last but not least is Flint; part human and part cyborg (with a great backside to look at thrown in the mix), she can snipe enemies from great distances. She sports Ready Aim as her special ability and she’ll be the first to get off a shot and she auto targets them as she goes making her deadly in a pinch from high places.
The point to all this detail is that you’ll be playing a very balanced shooter and won’t be able to win with just one tactic. Move Flint to high ground, take Hawk in under stealth to scout the area, and use Tex and Brutus to support them with the firepower and hand out the beatings like a well oiled machine. You do it with a simple series of commands that are effective and elegant at the same time. By pressing and holding the D-Pad to take control of the other members, you are prompted with four control buttons to instruct the team: Move To, Stand Ground, Defensive, or Fire at Will options. Each will make sure you can complete each mission in the manner best suited for the situation, and the level design supports this very well thank you. Some areas in each of the games worlds (six in all), are wide open and infested with loads of enemies; others are very tight with only a few strategically placed ready to snipe you and cut you to pieces quickly if you charge in without caution. In what will not be the only reference of its kind in this review, the multiplayer levels will soon be referred to by name much like the vaunted Halo…there we’ve said it…Halo. Many wanted so much to see that game this year, but it won’t go without notice that the ending credits included many prominent names form the team at Bungie. They were along to advise Digital Anvil and help tune the controls and the multiplayer aspects of the gameplay. To that point, the controller is mapped almost identically to those from Halo, making this a very comfortable transition for players of the Bungie uber hit (notice we didn’t mention its name again?) This thing is well done from top to bottom.
Multiplayer is an area of Brute Force which will be explored for the next year or more. We’ll be learning from all of you the little secrets you’ve uncovered as you play through it. Co-op is supported as you play through your single player missions. If your friend wanders into your gaming space as you are involved in battle they can grab a controller, hit start and be playing along in seconds! The screen will split and you’re rocking the bad guys together; if that same friend needs to leave, you can continue on in your quest for domination on your own seamlessly. Co-op has been done before, but this is a sweet implementation to be sure.
Deathmatch is as every other version of this mode has been; you against a few of your buddies on teams or mano a mano in a match to the death. In syslink play up to 8 players can team up or choose to go solo with No Allegiance as their choice. Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green teams can be formed and the match can be scaled as to the number of kills required to win (5-50), or you can just use a timed match (5-60 min) to determine the winner. 4 Xboxes, and you’ve got a major LAN party going on. Squad Deathmatch will pit you against another squad of players, but each player will control their own team of four and to score points, you must eliminate all the members of the opposing teams. Up to four players can play on one Xbox and you can have as few as a single player on an Xbox playing on the full screen. Tasks in the matches will vary from battles on an open field to taking and holding an outpost against the competition. Throughout the game, the DNA you recover from enemies will unlock the different races who oppose you; Halo had only a few enemies, but Brute Force has 12 very different variations each with different looks and abilities Feral Hunters (Brutus’ kin), to Seers (With the ability to warp from place to place) with mean a new level of balance and strategy is needed to win. Space and time won’t allow a full description, given the number of options you can choose in these two multiplayer modes, but we have found them compelling and fun at the same time. This one will truly be judged on a level with Halo when looking at replay value and quality in joining with friends in the experience.
In the interest of fairness we can’t simply gush throughout our review and not point out a few things we found in our time with BF. This one plays from the third-person perspective and to our PC brethren here at Gamers Depot, that constitutes a major crime. Not so with us console lovers, but the game takes a touch of a hit when four players occupy the same screen. Mainly subtle drops in the sound effects and the occasional hiccup in the frame rate – minor in the big picture. Also we came across a few clipping issues in some of the tight spaces we wandered into and some textures aren’t very pretty, but nothing in the order of Halo’s graphical foibles – which goes to show how far the bar has been raised in the two years since that one came out. It should be noted that none of these things gave us much pause – we were too busy enjoying everything else about BF to be bothered. But we remain critics and to that end we must report all that we find. In the sound department you'll probably enjoy the little quips the squad members utter as they dispatch enemies, and you'll love the weapons effects as well - all hell is breaking loose and it sounds like it in lovely 5.1 Dolby sound.
From its elegant multiplayer modes, to the fun of the single player experience Brute Force has classic written all over its cover. Microsoft needed a compelling game to unseat Halo as its flagship franchise and it may well have one here. In any case, this one will give you itchy shooters something to crow about until the next Halo arrives…next year. So why should you buy this one? Grab a friend, a copy of the game, and play it for about an hour and let us know what you think; we’ve got a number of people who’ll be more than happy to take one off your hands! Our drool award seals this one for you…
Pluses
+ Finally a multiplayer that rivals Halo
+ Control mapped perfectly to Xbox controller
+ Story supports and moves player along
+ Weapons selection is huge!
Minuses
- No Live application
- Some minor clipping issues
- Then there's...hell we're reaching...we love it!
Final Score 5/6
First Brute Force Review
Source: GDXbox
Squad based third person shooter. Halo-style control scheme. Four distinct characters with their own strengths and weaknesses. The stuff of Xbox legend, or very soon to be known as such. Digital Anvil unleashes what is sure to be the biggest hit of the year so far for your Xbox.
As of this writing we are playing only one game around the Gamers Depot offices: Brute Force. A third-person shooter of the first order, this one sports both a robust single player mission experience, and the multiplayer chops to keep us discovering the nuances of the game for a long time. You assume the role of one of four squad members all of whom haven’t had the best of lives; they died nasty deaths and are now cloned and pissed off. We’ll get into them a bit more later, but lets shed a little light on how you’ll play this one first.
The single player missions or campaign as it’s referred to in BF will drive the rest of your experience as you must unlock items for the multiplayer modes by completing missions in the main version of the game. Not only does it serve as the ultimate motivation to push through the campaign mode, it will directly affect the quality of your multiplayer games and the characters you can play with. Here’s the setup: you begin play as Tex the first of the ConFed clones you’ll control. Clones are passed on with their memory chips and cost you the player 3000 dollars each. You earn money for waxing enemies and completing objectives and it’s totaled up as you play the game; earn more money and compile a better ranking at games end, so the beauty is in the way you must learn to use them together to keep each other alive. Tex sets off to rescue Brutus as a first order of business and once you complete that Hawk and Flint will join as the story winds you into the plot and reveals bits and pieces as you play along. After you gain control of them all, the game begins in earnest. You could just play run and gun, but you won’t get far doing that; each character has very distinct strengths they bring to the table, but also very distinct weaknesses as well. Tex is the strongest and can take the most damage, and his special ability is the Berserker; he can pull two guns at once and deal out the harm on an epic scale, but he is the slowest and makes the most noise as he moves – not the best in a close battle or when stealth is needed. Brutus has the strength of Tex, but is better rounded as a whole. He can use the big guns, but he is faster and his special attack is Spirit of Vengar; so he can see any enemies with his enhanced vision and replenish his health at the same time. Hawk is the stealth warrior of the squad and she moves silently and dispatches baddies unseen with her Stealth mode. She has a Powerblade which kills with one slash so while she’s weak in a head-on fight, she shines where quiet discretion is the order of the day. Last but not least is Flint; part human and part cyborg (with a great backside to look at thrown in the mix), she can snipe enemies from great distances. She sports Ready Aim as her special ability and she’ll be the first to get off a shot and she auto targets them as she goes making her deadly in a pinch from high places.
The point to all this detail is that you’ll be playing a very balanced shooter and won’t be able to win with just one tactic. Move Flint to high ground, take Hawk in under stealth to scout the area, and use Tex and Brutus to support them with the firepower and hand out the beatings like a well oiled machine. You do it with a simple series of commands that are effective and elegant at the same time. By pressing and holding the D-Pad to take control of the other members, you are prompted with four control buttons to instruct the team: Move To, Stand Ground, Defensive, or Fire at Will options. Each will make sure you can complete each mission in the manner best suited for the situation, and the level design supports this very well thank you. Some areas in each of the games worlds (six in all), are wide open and infested with loads of enemies; others are very tight with only a few strategically placed ready to snipe you and cut you to pieces quickly if you charge in without caution. In what will not be the only reference of its kind in this review, the multiplayer levels will soon be referred to by name much like the vaunted Halo…there we’ve said it…Halo. Many wanted so much to see that game this year, but it won’t go without notice that the ending credits included many prominent names form the team at Bungie. They were along to advise Digital Anvil and help tune the controls and the multiplayer aspects of the gameplay. To that point, the controller is mapped almost identically to those from Halo, making this a very comfortable transition for players of the Bungie uber hit (notice we didn’t mention its name again?) This thing is well done from top to bottom.
Multiplayer is an area of Brute Force which will be explored for the next year or more. We’ll be learning from all of you the little secrets you’ve uncovered as you play through it. Co-op is supported as you play through your single player missions. If your friend wanders into your gaming space as you are involved in battle they can grab a controller, hit start and be playing along in seconds! The screen will split and you’re rocking the bad guys together; if that same friend needs to leave, you can continue on in your quest for domination on your own seamlessly. Co-op has been done before, but this is a sweet implementation to be sure.
Deathmatch is as every other version of this mode has been; you against a few of your buddies on teams or mano a mano in a match to the death. In syslink play up to 8 players can team up or choose to go solo with No Allegiance as their choice. Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green teams can be formed and the match can be scaled as to the number of kills required to win (5-50), or you can just use a timed match (5-60 min) to determine the winner. 4 Xboxes, and you’ve got a major LAN party going on. Squad Deathmatch will pit you against another squad of players, but each player will control their own team of four and to score points, you must eliminate all the members of the opposing teams. Up to four players can play on one Xbox and you can have as few as a single player on an Xbox playing on the full screen. Tasks in the matches will vary from battles on an open field to taking and holding an outpost against the competition. Throughout the game, the DNA you recover from enemies will unlock the different races who oppose you; Halo had only a few enemies, but Brute Force has 12 very different variations each with different looks and abilities Feral Hunters (Brutus’ kin), to Seers (With the ability to warp from place to place) with mean a new level of balance and strategy is needed to win. Space and time won’t allow a full description, given the number of options you can choose in these two multiplayer modes, but we have found them compelling and fun at the same time. This one will truly be judged on a level with Halo when looking at replay value and quality in joining with friends in the experience.
In the interest of fairness we can’t simply gush throughout our review and not point out a few things we found in our time with BF. This one plays from the third-person perspective and to our PC brethren here at Gamers Depot, that constitutes a major crime. Not so with us console lovers, but the game takes a touch of a hit when four players occupy the same screen. Mainly subtle drops in the sound effects and the occasional hiccup in the frame rate – minor in the big picture. Also we came across a few clipping issues in some of the tight spaces we wandered into and some textures aren’t very pretty, but nothing in the order of Halo’s graphical foibles – which goes to show how far the bar has been raised in the two years since that one came out. It should be noted that none of these things gave us much pause – we were too busy enjoying everything else about BF to be bothered. But we remain critics and to that end we must report all that we find. In the sound department you'll probably enjoy the little quips the squad members utter as they dispatch enemies, and you'll love the weapons effects as well - all hell is breaking loose and it sounds like it in lovely 5.1 Dolby sound.
From its elegant multiplayer modes, to the fun of the single player experience Brute Force has classic written all over its cover. Microsoft needed a compelling game to unseat Halo as its flagship franchise and it may well have one here. In any case, this one will give you itchy shooters something to crow about until the next Halo arrives…next year. So why should you buy this one? Grab a friend, a copy of the game, and play it for about an hour and let us know what you think; we’ve got a number of people who’ll be more than happy to take one off your hands! Our drool award seals this one for you…
Pluses
+ Finally a multiplayer that rivals Halo
+ Control mapped perfectly to Xbox controller
+ Story supports and moves player along
+ Weapons selection is huge!
Minuses
- No Live application
- Some minor clipping issues
- Then there's...hell we're reaching...we love it!
Final Score 5/6
