Breakdown - Review

Added March 28th, 2004 by Ice

Introduction:

When I first heard about this game, I didn’t think much of it. I figured it would be just another attempt at a new type of genre, and one that would fail miserably. As time went on, I watched some movies of it, and read more about it. The interest level escalated. I made my mind up that I would give it a try, and figured out my first thoughts of this game were totally off.

Gameplay:

Breakdown is a first person action game. This is pulled off quite nicely at times, but other times it can get kind of confusing. First person means that when you get punched, your heads snaps back and you view the ceiling, or go sprawling backwards with a well-placed kick to the chest. When you do back flips, it really looks like you are doing them. You see his hands on the floor, and the camera bounces around as you regain sight dead ahead of you.

You assume role of Derrick Cole, an expert at hand-to-hand combat and small arms. His goal is to reveal a nasty mystery, while taking down large amounts of enemies. When you start the game, you wake up in a lab room, with no memory of what is going on, or what happened in the past. You have no idea who you are, or what you are doing there. Some doctors are there with you, and help you get to your feet and get you out to training. Here, you are presented with the basic controls of the game, and must jump, climb, shoot, and punch your way through the course. Derrick finds out soon that he houses special powers, and will need them to take out some kind of super warriors, called the T’lan. It picks up a little towards the end of this part, but I won’t spoil for you what goes on next.

The game starts out a bit slow, and forces you to run from any enemy at the beginning because Derrick is still weak and can’t fight. You have to run, hide, and escape the enemies at all costs. This is where it gets kind of confusing, having to worry about the bad guys on your tail, as well as looking for an exit or hiding place. Some of the controls are hard to use under pressure, but you can make do. Don’t judge it from its first hour or so, because the second half of the game is where it gets good.

After you actually gain some strength and power, you can begin to fight the T’lan and other soldiers. This is where the auto aim function comes into work, which can get hairy pretty often. You can set it to auto aim as soon as an assailant appears, you enable it to you have to push a button to lock on. I find that locking on manually is easier, but either way it can get tricky when there is more than one enemy. You kind of have to face in their general direction, hit the button, and then attack them. After you knock them down, if the others aren’t kicking you from behind, you have to turn around again, hit the button, and attack the remaining ones. You can switch lock on with the A button, and cancel them totally with the B button. Continuing on even further, you will see yourself start getting new button commands for combos, as well as new powers like fireballs, shields to block bullets, and a nifty little shockwave to send bad guys sprawling.

As you fight the T’lan, eventually you will need some more health and T’langen. Once you lose enough life, the screen pulses red and the controller vibrates, getting your attention that you need health now. T’langen allows you to do some of the special moves you learn throughout the game, and each cuts away at the T’langen bar. To replenish these, you usually find some rations or soda. Rations usually lie around on the floor, or on the dead bodies of solders and warriors (which you can pilfer), and soda is usually in vending machines, where you have an unlimited supply of coins to feed the machine. In return, out pops a soda, and you pick it up, pop the tab, and chug away. At first, picking things up is kind of fun, but later on as you become more time pressed, it becomes a little tedious. You have to pick it up, and look at every single item before you can actually use it. This is quite time consuming, and there are some parts that you sit there just mashing the button to try to hurry up and pick the item up. There are other ways of recovering as well. When you kill enemies, some may leave behind an energy source, where the red ones give you health, and the blue ones give you T’langen. The bigger the source, the more you benefit from it.

The weapons in the game are pretty limited, but they do the job. Some of them include a pistol, and sub machine gun, grenades, and a rocket launcher. Most of the time you will be fighting hand to hand, as the T’lan warriors are immune to bullets. The regular soldiers aren’t however, so you can fire at will against them.

The AI in the game is pretty basic. Enemies come at you head on, and usually wait for you to get within range to even do that. Still, when there is more than one of them, and you are alone, they can get quite intimidating. The accomplices that assist you from time to time also can get stuck in places, and get in your way and refuse to move. It isn’t too annoying though.

Some really cool moments lie ahead of you in this game, and even some interactive ones where you can pick from a list of answers or questions when people talk to you. It gives you feeling of choice, like you can alter what goes on in front of your eyes. As you get your new moves, and new combos, it gets a little more fun to fight. It’s fun charging up a fireball and chucking it at an enemy, or using the shockwave to throw them back.

Graphics:

The graphics are a mixed bag in this one. At time, you really notice to well done character models, and some nice textures, but other times you notice the simplicity of the level designs and looks. There is also quite a large amount of aliasing on everything. The enemies are a bit repetitive, so they use the same models. The animations however are very well done, and believable. The punches, kicks, jumps, and rolls look very good, especially from the first person view. There isn’t too much variation in the color or anything, so it looks like the same hall you were just in. However, the effects on Derrick’s special moves are very intriguing and pleasing to the eyes.

Overall, the graphics are quite nice at times, but other times they are drab and boring. I would say above average overall.

Audio:

Speech was great in this game; they really did the voice-overs well. During those intense moments, a faster paced music cues, letting you know what’s going on. When there is no action, it’s a slower paced tune, keeping you sane. The rest of the sound, which includes the grunts and groans, punches and kicks, and special moves are done decently enough, but I wouldn’t say breath taking. Soda cans hitting the ground sound like just that, ripped the paper from a ration sounds like ripping paper, guns of course sound like guns, and the other sounds are all adequate.

Controls:

This is where it can get a bit tricky. I found myself getting quite mad at time trying to do things under pressure. During this one instance, I had to run from two T’lan warriors, into an elevator, and jump up to and out of the hatch. I was under pressure not to get hit, and every time I would jump, he wouldn’t grab onto the ledge to pull himself up, so I found myself restarting quite a bit.

The controls are as follows:

Left Thumbstick – Select options, move, click to guard
Right Thumbstick – Look, click to crouch
B Button – Cancel
Right Trigger – Right attack, shoot guns
Left Trigger – Left Attack, reload
A Button – Confirm, auto target, move auto target
Start – Pause
X Button – Access items (Pick them up)
White Button – Throw Grenade
D-Pad – Select options, switch weapons
Y Button – Engage and switch weapons

Replay:

I see myself replaying this game at least one more time, just because it’s so damn cool. The fights are fun, the story is great, and it just draws you in. Other than that, there are no real unlockables, other than some new galleries and music. I wouldn’t see myself playing this too often down the line, but it would be fun to play just to remember what the game was about, and experience the fighting once again.

Summary:

All in all, this is a very good game that I would recommend to anyone who wants a good action title. At first the story seems simple, save the world by uncovering a mystery, but after you engross yourself, which is easy to do, you soon realize it’s much more refined than that. The game is fun and entertaining, which is what the developers aim to give the gamers. I would say they did a pretty damn good job of that here.