Breach Review

27 Jan 2011 at 16:18:15 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

There is little more satisfying in a game than blowing the everliving shit out of something inanimate. Oh, sure, there's the joy of lining up a perfect headshot, or surviving a massive wave of enemies, or blah blah blah, but face it: blasting inanimate structures into their component atoms through the use of something flashy and explosive stimulates some unmapped pleasure centre of a gamer's brain.

And Atomic Games knows this, clearly, which is why Breach is touted as a multiplayer-only shooter that lets you blow up everything. People hiding in a building? Forget storming in the front door! Make your own door around the back with demolition charges, or blast the floor out from under them, or just blow the whole damn thing up with a concerted bazooka strike. And hey, why snipe from an obvious window when you can simply shoot out a single brick in a wall and fire through that hole instead? These are the principles that Breach works off. Unfortunately, as Red Faction discovered 10 years ago, saying something “works” off these principles tends to be a bit of an oxymoron.

When it works, Breach's destructive potential is – as you'd hope – game-changing. Buildings can be destroyed outright, or collapsed on foes. Cover can be atomised. Bridges can be destroyed, forcing players to take alternate (and often longer) routes - although they can always blast holes with demolition charges to create their own shortcuts.

When it doesn't work, Breach is a fairly standard class-based shooter that's surprisingly lacking in polish, and its biggest problem is that it doesn't capitalise on the destructive elements that make it special. It's not surprising – again, Red Faction learned the hard way that you need a limit on destruction, or everything will be destroyed within the first thirty seconds of a match. As such, some bridges are weirdly impenetrable; huge tunnel systems are indestructible save for bits of walls that are clearly marked out; and the most destructive element of all – the bazooka – isn't given to any class by default, instead being spread around the map in limited ammo dumps for anyone to grab. On some maps it works beautifully, with routes being quickly made impassable with destruction, sniper nests being set up in unorthodox places, and plenty of buildings to blow up. On others, most of the destructible elements are tucked away to the sides, away from the action, and it makes hardly any difference at all.

When it comes to that lack of polish, some of it is forgiveable and some isn't. Animations and movement can be a little weird and there are minor things, like characters not blinking, which only makes a difference if you're sat in cover (which shifts the camera to a third-person view) for an extended period of time. Other bits and pieces – a lack of music and limited ambient sound – detract from the atmosphere of the game. And some things, like there being no way to check your ping or the speed of your connection to a server in the server browser, are completely unforgivable for a twitch-oriented game that relies on players to host games.

Those aside (and this is, lest we forget, an Xbox LIVE Arcade title from an indie studio; it's foolish to expect top-notch production values) Breach is a competent class-based shooter. You've got five classes, differentiated by their weapons and health: a bog-standard soldier with an assault rifle, a tougher type with a heavy machine gun, a close-range assault class with an incredibly meaty and hugely satisfying shotgun, a sniper for boring people, and an unlockable fifth hybrid class that floats somewhere between the sniper and the soldier. You've got a variety of game modes: a rather dull team deathmatch, a Battlefield-style war over control points, a capture-the-flag variant with only one flag, a rather nifty mode in which one team must escort an APC across the map while the other team attempts to keep it away from various checkpoints until time runs out, and a Last Man Standing mode that plays out rather like Counter-Strike without objectives. There are also Hardcore variants of each, with far less in the way of HUD and far more in the way of damage.

All ...

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