To try to differentiate one character from the other Digital Anvil gave them unique abilities that are supposed to make each one non-expendable. To be honest the only abilities that I ever found to be useful were Tex’s multi-gun ability and Flint’s auto-targeting ability. Brutus’ feral rage, which allows him to see enemies clearer, doesn’t really do much for me while Hawk’s cloaking ability runs out far too quickly to be effective. In order to keep things fair usage of these abilities is limited via a bar that depletes when the ability is activated. When the ability isn’t in use the bar gradually refills. It’s mostly for naught though. Even when I was controlling the players manually I found myself forgetting that the abilities existed and instead opted to neglect them more often then not.
In theory each character serves a different purpose but in practice they’re all basically the same. In my head I had visions of sending in Hawk for a few stealth kills and then setting up Flint on the high ground for some aerial support before sending in the big guns. It’s a shame that the game never does quite pan out like this as most of the combat is relegated to the head-on mano-a-mano sort. Not much is made about teamwork or tactics and most of the time the game is just about rushing headlong into combat and vaporizing everything that moves. In the end everyone just basically rushes into the fracas and expels their weapons until all of the red dots are off of the radar.
When playing single-player you’re given limited control over your AI squad mates. Orders are rather basic and are pretty much limited to follow me, hold, move here and fire at will. The AI isn’t exactly brilliant either and has the tendency to make the worst possible decisions whenever possible. Most times AI squad mates will get stuck on objects or wander around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. It’s well understood that the game is action-oriented but it’s just begging for an overhead tactical map for giving out orders.
Dammit Tex! For the last time, can you please look at the camera?The game really gets interesting when another controller is plugged into the console. Your friends can jump in and assume control of any of the squad mates at anytime, regardless of your progress. So if you’re in the middle of combating one of the game’s many bosses and your buddy Jimmy comes by, all he has to do is press start on another controller and he’s right in the action. The game supports up to four players on one console although I wouldn’t recommend it as the third person perspective makes it almost impossible to see the action in the tiny screens.
Perhaps the most obvious difference resides in the varying vantage points;
HALO is played from a traditional first-person perspective while
Brute Force is played from a significantly more agitating 3rd-person perspective. Not only does this make precision aiming a tedious task, it also makes single-console multiplayer a bitch due to the reduced viewing areas. I wouldn’t say that the multiplayer campaign is as engaging as
HALO's, mainly because it’s not as addictive and as engrossing. I never felt like there was a grand scheme or a purpose to what I was doing.
More problems arise in the level design. It appears that the majority of them were designed with choke points and designated “kill zones” in mind. As you progress through the game you’ll come to associate various areas of the game’s world with action areas and others with safety zones. Chances are if you see a smattering of cover and a long corridor in front of you a huge firefight awaits you.
To make matters worse the environments are boring and uninspired. Most of them look very similar to each other. Basically you’ll do combat in the swamp, a desert-like region, in a volcanic region and in Digital Anvil’s poor recreation of an Ewok village. Little is made to ensure that levels look different and varied from each other. Most of the them also feature very little variety in their design and are pretty bland on the whole.
Action is very disjointed and hectic due to third person perspective. I'm not sure who at Digital Anvil decided that this was a good vantage point for the game, especially seeing as how
BF is just a first person shooter masquerading as a third person shooter. Most of the time you won't be able to tell what's going on because it's too difficult to keep track of things from this viewpoint. It’s far too easy to lose track of your opponents, sometimes they’ll hide in the foliage where you’ll run right past them because your field of view couldn’t track them. It’s also a bit choppy as well, to the point where auto-aim is needed to correct any grievous errors you may make while aiming. The game is also insanely difficult but not as a result of brilliance on the part of the AI but because the game is rather ambush happy. Most of the action revolves around you wandering into a clearing only to be surrounded by a cavalcade of enemies. Destroy said enemies, lather, rinse and repeat.
The weapons won’t be taking home any awards either. Nearly 3/4ths of them are underwhelming, both in terms of visuals and in terms of impact. It takes far too many shots to kill enemies, especially when you’re wielding an energy weapon of any sort. Even the rocket launcher in the game is weak. At times it takes three, four or even five direct hits to take out a normal foe. It doesn’t help that the majority of the weapons are laser of energy-powered either. When will designers learn that today’s gamer loves life-like violence? It’s the same reason you preferred to use the standard machine-gun over the energy weapons in
HALO and it’s the same reason that the combat in
BF is so boring and repetitive.
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