Reviewed: July 1, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Microsoft Games

Developer
Digital Anvil

Released: May 27, 2003
Genre: Action
Players: 4 / 8
ESRB: Mature

10
9
9
10
9.4

Supported Features:

Brute Force comes from the geniuses at Digital Anvil, the company founded by Wing Commander creator, Chris Roberts who split from Origin back in the 90’s. Their first project was Starlancer, admittedly a Wing Commander clone sans FMV, but a great shooter nonetheless. This was followed by the Freelancer, admittedly a Privateer clone delayed for several years only to arrive on the PC this March. Do you see a pattern here?

Just when you thought Digital Anvil doesn’t have an original idea in the proverbial “hopper” they spring Brute Force upon us. Actually, “spring” probably isn’t the best word since this title was announced back in 2001 just after the Xbox hit stores. I barely remember this announcement and I must give credit to Microsoft for keeping the lid on this title until it released. Rather than being inundated by continuous media hype and promises, I am genuinely surprised and very pleased with a game that came with no preconceived baggage.

Anyone who has seen or played Brute Force is likely to make comparisons to the legendary HALO, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I enjoyed Brute Force much more than HALO. Now before you fill my inbox and forums with hate mail please note that I said I “enjoyed” Brute Force more than HALO. I’m not making any assumptions about which is the better game. Truth be told, you can’t really compare a frantic first-person shooter to a third-person squad-based strategy action shooter. Well, you could, but you would be doing a disservice to both titles, and honestly, who here with an Xbox doesn’t already own HALO.

In the world of Brute Force, cloning is a standard technique for keeping the best of the best warriors in action. Tex is already on his tenth clone when this game begins and as new playable characters are introduced it is usually with a CG movie of their latest demise. This futuristic premise of immortality reduces death to a mere cash expense throughout the game.

You are introduced to the game and its near-flawless interface during the first mission, which is basically a tutorial disguised as a mission. You are instructed on the various commands as you defeat several terrorists, search their buildings, and even learn the command interface with the help of a pair of storm troopers that “beam in” to join you mid-mission.

Controlling the characters in Brute Force is flawless. You move with the left stick and control the camera with the right. Many weapons have scope views that can be accessed with a click of the right stick and crouching is done by clicking the left stick. The white button toggles each character’s special ability and the black button gives you instant access to Medkits – a great feature for healing in the heat of battle. The face buttons handle things like jumping, action, reloading, and weapon cycling while the right trigger fires the chosen weapon and the left trigger throws grenades or uses whatever item is highlighted in the inventory box such as Hawk’s power blade.

Weapons are very cool and range from rechargeable energy weapons to assault rifles, chain guns, sniper rifles, rocket and missile launchers, and a variety of Frag and EMP grenades. Each character can carry two weapons but only Tex can wield two at once in his berserker mode. Of course this also negates his ability to throw grenades.

Brute Force borrows ideas from great squad games of the past like Space Hulk and the more recently released Conflict: Desert Storm, putting you in either direct control over one of several squad members or at least giving you the ability to control their AI with rudimentary commands. It’s nothing as complex as the command system in Unreal Tournament or Vietcong, but is more than functional and perfectly suited to a console game.

As you progress through the story you will recruit new team members, each with their own skills and specialties. Here is a breakdown of your supporting team:

• Brutus: This is your first recruit, a large lizard warrior that resembles the Gorn from that original Star Trek episode, only a lot cooler. His special abilities allow him to regen health, perform a devastating charge attack, and view the world through thermal vision very similar to the orange feral effect found in X2: Wolverine’s Revenge.
• Hawk: She is your basic reconnaissance type complete with invisibility shield and a deadly power blade she can use for stealth kills. Using any other weapons such as her nifty sniper rifle will disable her cloak. She has the shortest health bar of all the characters so stealth is paramount to her survival.
• Flint: Despite Hawk’s sniper rifle Flint is the true sniper of the bunch with an auto-targeting skill that makes aiming nearly effortless and one-hit kills the norm.

Available commands include Fire At Will, which puts your team in aggressive mode, Cover Me, which assembles any straggling team members and has them follow you, Stand Ground, which puts them in a stationary defensive posture, and Move To, that brings up a pointer and lets you position your team exactly where you want them.

All of these tactics have their place within the game. On one mission I placed my teammates around a teleport portal and then went through the portal baiting the enemies on the other side. I ran back through the portal with the enemies in hot pursuit and my entire team easily killed them as they warped in behind me.

While the squad AI is above average there are times you will need to use the command functions to compensate for some deficiencies. Characters under AI control will never use their special abilities on their own, but you can force them via the command menu. All characters share from a unified pool of health packs and they are pretty good about healing themselves as needed, but by design they will always save the final health pack for whichever character you are in control of – even if you don’t need it. This means that characters may needlessly sacrifice themselves even when you have plenty of health. Again, you can force them to heal with the command menu but in the heat of battle it’s hard to monitor everyone’s status and you can often come out of battle with a dead character if you aren’t careful.

If a character does die you simply need to retrieve their green memory cube and they can be cloned for the next mission – of course you’ll need to spend some of your reward money to do so. The game also checkpoints frequently so if you fail a primary objective, lose your entire team, or are just doing poorly you can easily restart from the last checkpoint or from the beginning of the mission using the Start menu.

The missions range from simple and straightforward to multi-objective missions that include recon, escort, recovery, and search and destroy. Missions include primary and secondary objectives. Primaries are required to complete the level while secondary objectives will give you bonus reward money. For instance, the tutorial mission requires you to purge the mission area of all terrorists while the optional secondary objective asks you to search all terrorists’ structures. There are also hidden DNA strands on each level. Finding these opens up additional character classes for the multiplayer game.

The gameplay ranges from fast and frantic to slow and stealthy depending on your own personal style and the character you opt to control. This is perhaps one of Brute Force’s most compelling features in that you can play and replay this game and it never unfolds the same way twice. You may opt to have the party stand their ground while Hawk recons the area ahead under cloak, or you may send Tex in with both guns blazing. The possibilities grow with your team and are only limited by your imagination.

Enemy AI isn’t the best I’ve ever seen, relying more on sheer numbers rather than tactics. It still offers a good challenge and lets you explore many possible tactics with each character individually or as a team. When in doubt, you will probably lock your weaker teammates (read females) in a safe location and fight the majority of the larger battles with Tex and Brutus. There is no substitute for personal control and even Hawk and Flint become much more formidable when you assume control. The AI seems to have an easier time fighting with Tex and Brutus.

Brute Force becomes even more fun when you team-up with human players. Once you remove the less-than-perfect AI from the equation you can start to explore some in-depth tactics and develop sophisticated battle plans. When positioning your sniper on a high ledge or reconnoitering an unexplored area no longer requires a trip to the command interface the game become much more fluid and lifelike.

With all the delays in this title I was hoping for Xbox Live support when it finally released. While it does feature downloadable content there is no support for actually playing the game online. Of course, if you have a system link cable and friends willing to relocate their TV and Xbox you can link several systems together for up to eight total players.

Multiplayer modes include a brilliant co-op mode for the main campaign as well as several traditional deathmatch and squad deathmatch modes. It’s all great stuff and totally addicting. Even if you don’t link multiple systems you can still enjoy four-player gaming on a single system if you don’t mind playing in a window with significantly reduced graphics and some framerate issues that crop up even in two player games.

Once you actually start the game you will be blown away by the visuals. The terrain is constructed with rolling hills, high cliffs, rocky ledges, then populated with tall grass, trees, bushes, and rocks. There are excellent day and night effects including one creepy level that has you exploring a valley shrouded in mist. Walking through a grassy area will kick up pollen that floats around like pixies and the volcanic levels have glowing embers and ash floating around adding tremendous atmosphere and showing off the powerful particle effects of the Xbox.

The characters look fantastic, both in design and textures. The all move with lifelike perfection whether they are crouching, running, or cautiously advancing forward. Even subtle animations like Tex switching weapons with his auto-cycling holster mounted on his back is clever and fun.

Likewise, the enemy models are varied and also clever in design. You have your lurching Mutants, evil floating Seers, brainwashed Ferals, Shirkes, and many other creatures you will encounter during the campaign.

I so wanted to give this game a perfect score for graphics and if you never plan on playing it outside of the single player experience go ahead and bump that score to ten, but as soon as you start that first two-player game you will see a dramatic decrease in the overall visuals and the framerate takes a significant hit. Surprisingly, it doesn’t get much worse as more players are added.

A good example is on level two when you are rescuing Brutus from his Ewok-inspired village in the treetops. In single player mode you have incredible texture detail and a range of vision that lets you see the canopy above with sunlight streaming through. In split-screen mode everything is shrouded in a gray fog and the textures are scaled down to keep things running at an acceptable rate.

The sound effects are excellent and feature a variety of unique and convincing weapon effects and thunderous explosions. There are some nice environmental ambient effects like bubbling lava as you navigate a twisty path through a lava bed or the crash of waves when you start one mission on the beach.

The voice acting is topnotch both in content and delivery. Tex is the stereotypical surly Marine whose ego resides in his budging biceps while Brutus has a deep sinister voice that reminded me of Lt. Worf’s (“today is a good day to die”) attitude. He’s all about honor and tradition and it comes through perfectly in his character. Hawk and Flint are the tough-as-nails females that try to sound tougher than they probably are to earn the respect of the dubious Tex who would rather not work with women.

The supporting cast including your commander who conducts all the briefings and radio updates as well as any of the various monsters you encounter are all voiced with excellent quality. Some of the Mutants shouted some lines that had me laughing aloud and even the geeky scientist I rescued on level 5 was convincing.

If you’re like me and hate splitting your screen into windows then the system link support will most definitely appeal to you and any of your friends willing to bring your collective hardware together in one location. With up to eight players the fun you can have with Brute Force is nearly endless and will keep you busy until HALO 2 arrives in 2004.

While the attempt is successful on many levels the tactical elements fall a bit short of their potential due to some quirky squad AI that will have you babysitting your team throughout the game. Once you learn to compensate for the deficiencies of your team, either through micromanagement or assuming direct control you will find a very fun and challenging adventure ahead.

Brute Force offers an intuitive interface perfectly suited to the fast pacing of this game. The unique abilities of the primary characters compliment each other creating a perfect ensemble and opening up the game to multiple possibilities limited only by your tactical imagination. I can’t recommend this game enough. Whether you are simply looking for the next great action title or wanting to take a break from HALO, Brute Force should be a part of every action gamers’ Xbox Library.