Billed as the next best thing since Halo; we take an updated look at the impressive squad-based shooter...

TVG recently received an updated build of the impressive tactical squad based shooter, Brute Force. Currently in development at Digital Anvil, Microsoft have placed strong support and backing behind the title, which has resulted in many claming this to be the next best thing since Halo.<br><br>Originally Microsoft intended to release the title late last year, however a couple of delays have allowed the developers to apply a substantial layer of ‘polish’ since we last saw the title at last year’s E3 along with implementing a multiplayer mode. Unfortunately there is no plan to include Xbox Live! support, an opportunity we feel that has been painfully missed after enjoying the co-op mode for so long.<br><br>Brute Force takes place in the year 2340; the human race has spread throughout the galaxy and settled on a collection of star systems, collectively named as the “Known Worlds.” The ConFed Republic governs the major colonies and several alien races on the Known Worlds; patrolling borders, protecting the people of the republic and keeping an eye out for alien races that have less then friendly intentions.<br><br>Taking control of a group of four highly trained field operatives working for the ConFed, it’s up to you to ensure the safety of the republic by destroying, eliminating and annihilating its enemies with extreme prejudice.<br><br>In a neat twist of the Sci-Fi story, the characters that you control are actually clones of the original operatives; so no matter how many times you die you’ll always be able to jump straight back into the action, although this naturally comes at a price.<br><br>Within no time at all you can tell where the Halo comparisons have come from; I don’t think it will be an insult to Digital Anvil to say that the visual look comes close to the splendour of Bungie’s landmark title, whilst touches such as only being able to wield two weapons and having grenades mapped to the shoulder button definitely smacks of the critically acclaimed fps.<br><br>Despite the comparisons, Brute Force is fundamentally a totally different game to Halo; viewed in a third-person perspective, players control a group of four characters that each offers a wide range of different skills. In the build that we’ve been playing, you’ll start off with Tex – the self proclaimed leader and heavy weapon specialist – and must find the other members of the team during the opening few chapters. The other characters that make up the team include; Flint the Cyborg, whose skill as a sniper is unmatched, Hawk, a young woman with a speciality in reconnaissance and stealth, and finally Brutus, who combines strength, speed and agility into a deadly package.<br><br>Each of the squad members has access to a special ability, which can really swing the events of a battle; unfortunately this decreases over prolonged use and recharge when you’re not using them, so you’ll have to ensure a tactical eye is kept on the use of these. Tex’ allows him to wield both weapons at once for some severe killing action; Flint’s increases her targeting reticule and makes long-range sniping as easy as hitting fish in a barrel; Hawk’s allows her to turn invisible, ideal for reconnaissance and surprising the enemy; whilst Brutus changes the whole screen to allow him to easily identify characters by their body heat and charge at them at high speeds.<br><br>Arguably the greatest satisfaction comes from the sheer diversity of skills on offer, setting up the scope for depth way beyond what we expect from this genre. Each character is mapped to a direction on the D-Pad, by pressing one of these you can easily swap control to them, whilst holding it down allows you to assign actions such as hold, follow, move or attack by simply pressing the corresponding face buttons. Thankfully the implementation has been kept as blissfully simple as possible to ensure it doesn’t get in the way of the extreme action happening on-screen, whilst the AI of your team-mates is startling intelligent to ensure you don’t have to worry about them at all times. One thing that we would have liked to see is the ability to issue orders to the rest of the group, as it can be time consuming and frustrating to issue each order individually; but hey it’s only a small complaint.<br><br>The high levels of intelligence or combat know-how has also been lavished upon the enemy characters, who will attack with surprise and catch you down the flanks or from the rear, retreat and regroup for another attack and duck, roll and evade your shots by any means possible.<br><br>Because of the simple implementation of team orders and high level of intelligence, Brute Force doesn’t have to worry about putting you straight into the action and boy does it! Levels are brimmed to exploding with unfriendly aliens and mutants to kill, whilst the amount of explosions and gunfire quite frankly exceeds everything we’ve come to expect. A large amount of the objects and buildings within each level can be destroyed, whilst you can always guarantee on a barrel of toxic waste or explosives being there to help you out of a tight spot.<br><br>Controlling the characters initially feels a little awkward because of the responsiveness of the analogue sticks, however you’ll soon become accustomed to this and thank god that they are. At present players can make their characters walk slowly and crouch under cover by pressing in the right analogue stick; because of the sheer amount of action such as grenades exploding, we would have loved to see a dive button replacing the virtually ‘unused’ and stiff looking jump button.<br><br>The visual side to Brute Force is a slightly mixed bag; there’s no denying that it’s a gorgeous looking game to witness and that textures are crisp, full of detail and diverse, however they do lack the subtitles of Halo such as per-pixel shading and bump mapping. Virtually all of the lights within the game are dynamic, which creates a nice sensation of realism to the proceedings and features some very nice self-shadowing on the character models, each of which are nicely created with lavish detail and stunning animation. But unfortunately we’ve noticed a few ugly points that we hope will be sorted before the games release; the water effect in particular looks extremely pathetic in comparison to the effects we’ve seen in recent Xbox titles, whilst playing the game in 2P split-screen reveals a worrying amount of fogging and clipping at a very noticeable distance.<br><br>Realising that it would be a crime to ship without any multiplayer features (let alone Xbox Live! support), Brute Force comes equipped with a range of deathmatch, squad deathmatch and co-op modes, which really add to the title as it works just as well in multiplayer. We were a little worried by how quickly we managed to go through the games single player mode, however we’re hoping that more levels will feature on the final version along with the promise of downloadable content and the ability to upgrade your characters in an RPG fashion will make some difference.