Silicon Fusion >> Reviews >> Brute Force

	All Platforms
	Xbox
	GameCube
	PlayStation 2
	PC
	Game Boy Advance

Site Sections:

	Updates
	News
	Games
	Publishers
	Developers
	Reviews
	Previews
	Release Dates
	Editorials
	Glossary
	Contact Us

Review:

20th July 2003:
Brute Force
Microsoft Game Studios brings us another action-shooter, but is it a good enough stop-gap between Halo and Halo 2?
Posted by Marc Hull - Xbox - UK and Europe

Although it may sound like a budget film or a TV action series, from the moment you turn on your Xbox (or possibly even before it, if you've seen some of the game's advertising campaign) you'll realise that a fair amount of money has been thrown at this title, and in many ways it has worked, producing a technically sound shoot 'em up. However, a few hours of gameplay later and the outlook is a little gloomier - despite looking and sounding great, this title seems to lack a core idea; the spark of innovation that spurs the development team to create it and that defines the divide between average and great games.

When you launch your new 'campaign' you'll be greeted by a nice little FMV sequence introducing the game's main character, Tex. Like most of the playable characters in the game, Tex has died in combat before, and is brought back to life for this mission by using his DNA data. Once he's been rebuilt, he's given a quick briefing by his commander and then sent straight into action for a one-man 'training' mission.

Brute Force is played mainly from a third-person perspective which shows off the environments and characters well, but really drags down the gameplay at times. Although you control the character with the left analogue stick and the camera with the right, which should provide you with full control, this method of movement is often quite disorientating and seemingly more difficult to aim with. Fortunately, some of the weapons have a zoom function which switches the game to a first-person view mode when activated, but you have to wonder why the developers didn't give you the option to play the entire game in this view mode - to prevent comparisons with Halo perhaps?

Anyway, once you get accustomed to the view and control method, the similarities with Halo can't go unnoticed. Your character can only use one weapon at a time, but can carry a secondary one with him, and grenades can also be thrown by using one of the trigger buttons. Shoot an enemy and they'll probably drop their weapon, allowing you to walk over and swap it with one of yours by a simple tap of the X button. You can also jump, reload, crouch and activate your weapon's scope (if applicable) all in ways eerily similar to those of Bungie's masterpiece.

The only real innovation that Brute Force adds to Halo's mix is the squad play, where you can issue orders to the three other members of your team, and it's up to you to select various 'formations' when entering different situations to affect how well your group fares. Unfortunately, in practise you have less control over your team-mates than you might think, with them often running off, getting shot at, then using up your med-kits without you realising. Frustration can quickly set in, especially since some areas are so packed with enemies that you need your team to help you out, or have to use a particular character's abilities only to find that they got killed in the last fire-fight.

Unfortunately, while squad play may be Brute Force's addition to the genre, there's plenty that it's neglected to include. Vehicles have been included in almost every action game since Goldeneye on the N64 purely because they're fun, break up some otherwise monotonous gameplay and allow you to move about large playfields at speed, and yet they're suspiciously missing from this game! Instead you have to pad about everywhere on foot, using pretty similar 'run and gun' tactics to take on almost every situation. It's not as if the missions bring any variety to the proceedings either; although your objectives change, you still have to perform the same 'killing wave after wave of enemies' task to complete them.

Artificial intelligence has made leaps and bounds in the past decade with the likes of Goldeneye, Half-Life and Halo providing some particularly formidable foes to deal with, yet this is another area in which Brute Force falls behind the competition. Sometimes your opponents will take cover behind rocks, but usually they will keep advancing towards you, firing and making sporadic direction changes to avoid your shots. At least in other games the enemies have a will to live, but here they don't seem too worried about sacrificing their life as long as they take a few notches off your health bar in the process. This makes the game very difficult in places, and often the line between winning and losing is decided more by luck than through skill. Things go from bad to worse, though, when you realise how the changes to the enemies from level-to-level are almost purely cosmetic. Sure, they may be carrying different weapons, but they still seem to have the same suicidal tendencies and sporadic paths that your previous nemeses did.

Graphically, the game pushes all the right buttons. The environments are large and highly detailed, with great effects such as individual blades of grass that stick out of the ground, insects flying about the place and some particularly nice bump-mapping. The game's characters are also immaculate, with enough polygons to make them look as good as CGI figures, and some excellent shadow casting being the icing on the cake. The game's cut-scenes are unfortunately pre-rendered, but at least the video is of high quality, reasonably well voice-acted and contains accurate lip-syncing. My only real complaint from a graphical standpoint is that the levels contain very few landmarks that stand out. Unlike Halo where I can remember the structure of most of the levels thanks to carefully placed beaches, waterfalls, military bunkers�etc, I forgot the structure of Brute Force's levels almost as soon as I'd completed them.

Overall, I'm probably being a bit harsh on the game having been spoiled by a string of excellent action games in the past few years, but with Halo setting the standard on the Xbox there's little escaping the fact that this compares unfavourably in almost every area. It almost feels as if Microsoft knocked on the door of the developers one day and said "We need an action game to fill the gap between Halo and Halo 2 - create it", and that's exactly what they've got, just that without the initial creative spark that spurred them to think "This is a great idea, let's build a game around it" this ends up borrowing too much from existing games and not excelling at anything.

Marc Hull

Latest Images:

Review Scores:

Graphics:
Sound:
Gameplay:
Length:
Overall:
Click here for our Review Score Guidelines .

Review Summary:

Although not a bad game, Brute Force is simply an average shooter which suffers from repetitiveness and not having a first-person view mode. It has great graphics, but only manages to produce an average gameplay experience.

Related Games:

Brute Force
for Xbox

Screenshots

Review

Click here for
All Game Information .

Go Back To Main Page

Go To Top Of Page