|
Breed Preview
Posted:
3/9/03 by The Shaker
| Comments
(11)
 Breed (Brat Designs/CDV)
A shooty game from the publishers that gave us Combat Mission (the beauties)
Breed is a futuristic FPS type thing, where the aim of the game (mainly) is to shoot the hell out of evil rampaging alien invaders, the BREED. Why? Well the nasties lured away the terran fleet, and then invaded poor old Earth (Boo Hiss). You return home as the commander of Earths one remaining battleship with only one intention, to unite any survivors, wipe out the alien invaders, and then off to the capital for tea and scones (Huzzah).
Being a FPS is a hard life for a game. To get ahead in life it has to be original, innovative or just plain fun, and compete against an already packed market, and all this using the basic premise of pointing a gun at things and pulling the trigger. Not easy. So how have the guys at brat designs attempted to immerse you in gameplay utopia?
Well BREED is a squad based game. You can control a squad of marines, a group of tanks, a flight of fighters or at times a mixture, though a four-man squad seems to be the main dish. A preset list of commands can be issued to the other members of your team. If you want to do something more complicated, then sod giving the orders, you can switch between the team members at will. This can prove great fun and give great flexibility in the way you approach you missions, giving you the ability to cover your own, run off as a single scout, or just charge round in a large group firing wildly (this usually results in your own death pretty quickly). If the character you are controlling dies, you get switched to another member of the team until there is noone left.
Imagine a sci-fi Operation Flashpoint with the realism removed and a simpler command menu. Couple that with a bit of the film Aliens and smidgeon of Starship troopers and you have your baby.
The troops available seem familiar enough, grunt, sniper, heavy gunner, each carrying up to two weapons each, with weapons like the shotgun, assault rifle, minigun and so on. There are also a number of vehicles introduced, fighters, dropships, tanks, jeep type things, and where more than one position is available you can again switch between these. One of my favourite parts is manning the ubergun on the side of a dropship and tearing the earth below apart with my fire. Added to this you can also take control of the Breeds own heavy weapons if you kill their gunner.
Controls are pretty easy to handle, no matter what vehicle you choose to utilise. Forward / Back / Left / Right and the mouse are about all you need to start off with. This doesn’t stop me from repeatedly crashing my fighter head first into the ground, something that may be rectified by the promised ability to go from surface, to space battles in one fluid transition.
Single player takes all these component parts and utilises them in varying forms for mission after mission as you secure your beachhead, capture key points, defend your mothership from attack and shoot aliens in the head.
The multiplayer looks like it will be a battlefield 1942/tribes2 type of baby, with a number of multiplayer missions available. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and other scenarios with enormous spaceships are all promised. Now I don’t know about you but that last one sounds tasty to me.
The graphics look good, the characters move pretty smoothly and the landscapes are lovely (well for a desert so far though missions are spread across seven continents).
|
)
)
)
)
)
)