Gaming Target - Xbox: Brute Force

Written by Gavin Wright on March 31, 2003

First Impressions: Is Brute Force really Сthe next Halo', or just another first-party flop? The Сbrutal' truth is revealed.

Over the past few months, many of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox releases have met with highly-publicized delays. High-profile games like Knights of the Old Republic, Midtown Madness 3, and most recently Halo 2, have all been Сawarded' extra development time in order to ensure that they make an even bigger splash when they do finally arrive. As is the case with Brute Force, who's 6-month delay seems to have made all the difference. The additional time has been put towards balancing the gameplay and perfecting the controls, as well as adding new features such as downloadable content and comprehensive system link play. Now, perhaps more than ever before, Brute Force is beginning to emerge as a serious contender in what is already the Xbox's most heavily-saturated market.

For those of you that aren't already familiar with the basics of the game, allow me to catch everyone up to speed. Brute Force is what's known as a squad-oriented tactical shooter. The player controls an elite assault team consisting of four commandos, each with their own set of unique strengths and abilities that must be taken into account. A simple interface allows you to issue orders to your teammates and coordinate battle plans in real time. Instead of heading in Rambo-style and shooting everything that moves, you'll find that success comes more easily through careful planning and strategic positioning. Brute Force can best be described as a cross between Halo and Ghost Recon, as it incorporates notable elements of both games without traveling too far down either of the two extremes.

The game is set about 300 years in the future, at a point where various species from different planets have formed an alliance known as the Homogeny. Like the United Nations, the Homogeny is tasked with keeping peace throughout the universe and ensuring prosperity for its allies. As this elite team of super-soldiers, the so-called Brute Force, you are the confederation's most advanced anti-resistance force. So when the confederation hears word of a revolutionary movement taking place in a nearby star system, they dispatch the Brute Force to see that they are taken out. At some point, we're assured, the plot spirals off into something much deeper, and you can bet that by the end of the game you'll have spared the world from certain disaster on more than one occasion.

Throughout most of the game, you'll be able to switch between all four members of your party at will. Tex is the most powerful member of the team, but his preference for heavy weaponry also makes him the slowest in the group. Flint is the team's sniper. She prefers to stay far away from the action, instead utilizing her expert aim to pick off targets from afar. Then there's Hawk, a stealthy female character with the ability to go invisible for short periods of time and perform silent kills by creeping up behind unsuspecting enemies. Lastly there's Brutus, a lizard-like warrior that's both fast and strong, and also possesses heightened senses of smell and sound. The strengths and weaknesses of each team member must always be taken into account, as you don't want your sniper leading an attack into an area crawling with enemies, and you certainly don't want Tex engaging a group of sharpshooters from two hundred yards out.

The somewhat eerie part about this crew is that many of them are actually clones, having died and been brought back several times throughout their many years of service. So when a teammate dies in battle, they'll be as good as new by the time you get back to base, assuming you've plunked down the necessary funds for the costly cloning procedure. However, if each member of the team does what they're supposed to do, hopefully that won't happen very often.

Anyone that played Halo before will immediately recognize some similarities between the two games. First off, you'll notice that the Brute Force control scheme is practically identical to that of Halo's. This was a deliberate call on behalf of the developers, since they don't want players being forced to learn a new set of controls when they're already so familiar with another. The two-weapon limit, as well as the general pacing and feel of the game, also seem to bear deliberate resemblances to Bungie's sci-fi blockbuster.

But unlike Halo, which combined both first and third-person perspectives in order to accommodate the inclusion of vehicles, Brute Force is played entirely in third-person. The game utilizes an over-the-shoulder camera view that is normally situated directly behind the character in use. The developer, Digital Anvil, is reportedly toying around with the notion of hinging the camera so that it can sway to one side or the other, adding a cinematic touch to particular stretches of the game. But this, along with so many other things, is still up in the air at this point.

The Story mode is expected to be at least 30 hours in length. It all takes place within a single star system consisting of six different planets, ranging from the forested landscape of Brutus's home planet Ferix to the watery world of Estuary. And if you have friends sitting around that want to play too, simply plug them in a controller and the screen will split itself to accommodate the new player/s. This can all be done mid-mission without any fuss whatsoever, and players can leave the game just as easily as they came in.

As mentioned earlier, BF supports system link play for up to four Xboxes in a network. Up to four people can play through the Story mode in system link, which, by the way, functions exactly as it would in split-screen. So if everyone has their own Xbox and a copy of the game, all four players would have screens to themselves. If you'd rather fight your friends than play alongside them, Brute Force has got you covered with basic multiplayer modes like Deathmatch and CTF (among several other still-unannounced gametypes) and support for up to sixteen players spread over four Xboxes. There's even a mode that pits you and your squad of AI-controlled soldiers against a friend and his identical team of commandos. And yet, in spite of all this, there's no Xbox Live play to speak of.

Orders are issued to your teammates using a quick and simple interface. Each character is designated a different direction on the D-pad, so selecting a recipient is as easy as tapping either up, down, left, or right. Doing so brings up a command menu consisting of four orders Ц Move To, Stand Ground, Cover Me, and Fire at Will, conveniently mapped to the four face buttons on the controller. If, for instance, you want to request backup from the rest of the team while you move in, you'd select both Cover Me and Fire at Will. Their main focus in creating the system is to keep things as simple as possible for the player, and by the looks of it they seem to have done a great job in this respect.