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Brute
Force
Squad-based shooters are the sort of game that looks good on paper, but
have yet to actually play out well. The sad thing is that it is often
through no fault of the game whatsoever, but through most of the players
not playing as a squad. The second a mission starts everyone runs off
doing their own thing, get wasted and it's game over. The folks over at
Digital Anvil must be crossing their fingers real tight that human
nature has taken an abrupt turn for the better, as now they have an
entry of their own into the arena of the third person squad-based
shooter with Brute Force on the XBox.
The squad in the game is made up of four people as players romp about
the desert planet of Caspian, the volcanic moon of Shadoon, the Feral
Homeworld of Ferix, and shadow outposts of the Shrikes, to do who knows
what as the plot, as much of a stretch as it often is to use the word
"plot" in a shooter, has yet to be revealed. These four
characters in the squad are made up of Flint the cyborg sniper, Tex
whose the heavy assault guy, Hawk and his stealthy, sneaky ways, and
lastly Brutus,
the behemoth of an alien who, as his name suggest, uses incredible
strength to get things done. Just looking at those names one gets the
feeling that there are a lot
G.I.Joe fans on the development team. Once you've gotten the "Yo
Joe!" out of your system, you'll notice that the characters get
stronger as the game progresses,
somewhat like an RPG, and the further you get in the game the more each
of them will specialize.
But
what's a shooter without the guns? Brute Force has firearms a plenty for
players to choose from including miniguns, flamethrowers, psionic
blasts, and sonic cannons. Once your weapons are all locked and loaded
it's time to get to all of the tactical combat that comes part-in-parcel
with a squad based game. Apparently the process of assigning tasks to
the members of the squad will be kept simple so not to bog down players
with complicated micromanagement, though you have to wonder just how
complicated things can get, you are only dealing with a control pad
here, not a keyboard. Regardless, it's nice to see that Digital Anvil is
making efforts to ensure that Brute Force will play as smoothly as
possible.
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Now this is all well and good, but the one thing that can and will make
or break this sort of game is the level design. How will the corridors
be setup, where will the
enemies roam and re-spawn, will they re-spawn, these are all things of
the utmost importance and will go a long way to determining whether or
not the game proves
to be fun. Sadly, it's one more piece of the puzzle that we don't have
yet regarding the game, but while we have no idea where the guard
towers, the secret passage ways, or the little green throw rug that
doesn't really go with anything will end up, we do know that whatever
the case they're going to look damn good. This doesn't really come as a
surprise what with the oomph that the XBox packs in the graphics
department, but even still, you can really tell this is a second
generation + game here. The graphics are just that much of a level above
what is currently being done on the console.
You won't have to enjoy the impressive graphics all by your lonesome
either, as the game will support up to four players simultaneously, so
might as well take advantage of the four controller ports on the XBox
and the fact that there are four characters in the squad so that you and
your friends can play as a team. At least since they'll all be sitting
by you in the living room, not playing over the internet, so if one of
your friends decides to go off on their own instead of staying with the
squad you can smack 'em up side the head or something. Whatever the
case, the wait doesn't appear to be too long for Brute Force to hit the
streets, as it's still set for a Spring 2002 release.
