We check out Digital Anvil' squad-based shooter, billed as the next best thing since Halo...

Built up to be the next best thing for Xbox owners since Halo, you can certainly see how the influence of Bungie’s mighty FPS has affected the development of Brute Force in the numerous times that we’ve seen it.<br><br>Fundamentally, Brute Force is an entirely different game to Halo with players taking control of a group of four elite yet typically stereotypical soldiers, fighting through a weak generic Sci-Fi storyline that fails to grasp the player’s attention – unless of course you’re a big Trekkie or something along those lines.<br><br>Whilst the game attempts to merge the arcade action of a title such as Halo with the strategic depth of a squad-based shooter, the ultimate result unfortunately falls just short of the mark.<br><br>The squad that players take control of consists of Tex – the leader of the group and a self-proclaimed ‘one-man wrecking crew’, Flint – a cyborg whose sniper skills are unmatched, Hawk – a young woman with a speciality in reconnaissance and stealth, Brutus – the alien of the group whose combination of agility and power make him a deadly package.<br><br>You’ll notice the Halo comparisons when you first pick up the pad; Brute Force uses the typical dual analogue sticks to control movement and the camera, the shoulder buttons are used to fire your weapon and throw grenades, the face buttons allow you to switch between the guns, jump, switch items and reload, whilst the white and black buttons allow you to access your special ability and use a medi-kit respectively.<br><br>However being a squad-based shooter the D-Pad is used to take control and give basic orders to your other members of the squad. Each character is assigned a direction on the D-Pad, tapping the direction results in the player switching control to that character, whilst holding the direction brings up a menu to give you the ability to issue a command to the corresponding character. The commands are basic fare in comparison to the likes of Raven Shield or Ghost Recon for example, however Brute Force was always intended to be an action shooter first and foremost; the commands are mapped to a face button, and include ‘Move To’, ‘Stand Ground’, ‘Fire At Will’, and finally ‘Cover Me’.<br><br>One of the many Halo comparisons comes from the fact that each character can only hold two weapons at once, as in the pinnacle FPS you are free to pick up weapons from fallen foes however not every character can wield every weapon. <br><br>Each of the characters have a special ability that decreases with use and regenerates over time; Tex’ allows him to wield both weapons at once for a powerful bout of force, Flint’ allows her to automatically target enemies with an enhanced scope, Hawk’ makes her complete invisible, whilst Brutus’ looks upon the Gods of Vengar to grant him the ability to see the enemy with a handy ‘heat sensor’ effect and to charge the opponents down with a burst of speed and aggression.<br><br>Digital Anvil have done a good job of creating four characters that each offer a wide range of distinctive skills and attributes, this leads to the employment of tactics as you discover the various ways of playing; for example, Hawk with her strong reconnaissance skills is ideal for checking out advanced locations, before Tex and Brutus can wade in with guns blaring. <br><br>Unfortunately the characters are extremely one-dimensional and so heavily based on clichés that you never bond entirely with them; a stronger storyline and characters would certainly have improved the single player mode, as it stands the game feels like a low-budget space action flick akin to ‘BattleStar Galatica’.<br><br>The overall experience is further dealt a crushing blow by the fact that the missions just aren’t that much fun to play through and feel severely outdated. Most of the missions simply start you off at Point A and require you to kill the entire enemy and reach Point B; in this day and age this type of linearity isn’t favoured too fondly in this genre. Certain missions attempt to try and spice things up with different objectives, such as collecting a particular item or rescuing a hostage, but regrettably they’re too simple and don’t add any excitement to the mission structures.<br><br>The main issue is that the emphasis on action means that the tactical side often falls by the wayside; ultimately you’ll find yourself sticking to a power character such as Tex or Brutus and just wade in guns blaring to destroy everything.<br><br>On the positive side the AI system does a good job of controlling the other teammates and they certainly behave according to their abilities and skills, with Hawk and Flint often hanging in the background whilst Tex and Brutus lead the attack; however there’s just very little aside from the squad aspect that we haven’t seen before.<br><br>Thankfully the actual combat aspect is fairly enjoyable; movement is swift and the enemy AI displays a good knowledge of combat, jumping for cover and aggressively hunting you down. One aspect that we were left gagging for was a dive button instead of the useless and pathetic looking jump action, being able to jump from the myriad of explosions would have certainly been beneficial and looked pretty cool too. The game is let down by a lack of enemy opponents along with a severe lack of varying locations, it’s unfortunate because the game soon begins to wear a little thin and feels extremely repetitive.<br><br>Visually the number of delays has affected the overall visual look of the game, whilst Brute Force looked impressive last year its inadequacies have simply caught up with the game and result in an extremely mixed bag. Certainly the dynamically lit universe results in some luscious lighting effects and impressive self-shadowing on characters, whilst the character models themselves and the environments are well created and feature some good texture work that display a lot of detail. Aside from the impressive rag-doll animations that greet every death with a welcoming touch of variation, the animation on a whole looks slightly wooden.<br><br>Brute Force saving grace comes from the multi-player mode, however it’s also the source of much surprise because the game doesn’t support Xbox Live! Having suffered a couple of delays, we would have thought Microsoft and Digital Anvil would have delayed the game once again to implement the perfectly suited online play mode; however this is not the case and instead Brute Force offers a variety of splitscreen and system-link modes along with a ‘download content’ feature.<br><br>The multiplayer modes allow you to take on the campaign in multiplayer co-op, whilst offering a relatively weak selection of deathmatch and team deathmatch modes. Playing the co-op mode simply allows anyone to join in the game whenever they want, all you have to do is hit start on the pad, choose a character and the screen will split and the action continues – it’s so surprising that nobody has done this before.<br><br>Being a third-person title the splitscreen severely restricts your vision, whilst the game is prone to bouts of slowdown when two or more players are playing. Whilst the co-op mode is enjoyable, you’ll probably only find the assorted deathmatch options fun to begin with and tire quite quickly.<br>