Brute Force anyone getting it?

[Paul]

It comes out in a month, for the USA anyway.

It's a team shooter, where team play is a crucial role on how you win. There are 4 characters which you can switch between, each having different abilities.

Tex: Which is the heavy gunner.

Flint: Which is a cyborg.

Brutus: Basicly he is a huge lizzard.

Hawk: She is a sniper.

Here are some screenshots, as you can see this game REALLY pushes the Xbox hardware. Nice use of high res textures and bump mapping.

 

[Ozymandis]

I'm getting it. I wonder- does it have Live support, or at least system link support?

Oh, and:

1. The art style is terrible.
2. It seems inconsistent. The first screenshots looked awesome, then I downloaded some around Christmas (along with a video) and it wasn't impressive. I wonder how it really looks?

 

[Grall]

No wonder the screenies look good, they're smoothed to hell and back. Not a jaggie to be seen even on the alpha textures for fark's sakes.

And how the hell can anyone hold two guns of that size in either hand like they were pistols? That's just stupid.

*G*

 

[marconelly!]

I'm getting it. I wonder- does it have Live support, or at least system link support?

I know for sure there is no online support and 99% sure there is no sys link support either. It can be played with four players on the same console via split screen, though.

The game's graphics have been reworked I don't know how many times. First they presented some cool looking renders, then the graphics appeared scaled back quite a bit and framerate seemed really crappy. Now, the latest report is that bungie helped to make the game look great again, and iron out framerate and aiming issues (IGN says aiming is now exactly like in Halo)

 

[Paul]

Im an IGN insider, and in the huge 6 page preview they got on it. They say it's the best graphics on Xbox so far, out of games that are out anyway. Or rather will be..

 

[zurich]

Honestly doesn't look much better than Halo, and the art direction is atrocious.

Really doesn't look that interesting to me...

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Looks awesome. It has 4-way syslink co-op and 16-player deathmatch.

 

[Kolgar]

I've been keeping my eye on this one. I'm cautiously optimistic.

One guy I know played it at some Xbox event Microsoft hosted last year, and he came away underwhelmed. But then they delayed the game and hopefully it's improved in the meantime.

I'm always in the market for a good shooter. Fingers crossed.

Kolgar

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Got a dvd this week in the mail with a trailor of it, I agree with Ozy that the art design is terrible(well, the only design that bothers me is Brutus, just looks kinda cheesey). the trailor really makes the game look like it isnt very fun, seemed too mixed up, but that could just be thier way of presenting it, have to wait for reviews.. its not smart to definately plan on buying a new game without waiting for some word first.

 

[Vince]

Yeah, this game looks great.

 

[Jabjabs]

I've been cautiously waiting for the last year, could be good.

As for that adverage gameplay last year, IGN agreed with that but after getting their hands on the new built they have tweaked the system and work fine now.

 

[jvd]

I've seen the trailer and it looks good. I dunno if i will buy it though. I don't know how well the controlls will work.

 

[tuna]

And how the hell can anyone hold two guns of that size in either hand like they were pistols? That's just stupid.

*G*

Most games are.

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

OML, I don't think I've seen worse art direction. If only more developers understand art AND graphics.

 

[ChryZ]

The camera work of those screenshots is strange, they are lookin' more like replay screens .... are there any ingame-screens yet?

 

[ZoP]

...

Any kind of "emergent" gameplay in this ?

 

[chaphack]

Any kind of "emergent" gameplay in this ?

A non IGN take on BF.

I think the shared inventory system is a pretty overlooked feature. If it wasn't mentioned, it's because most people would usually forget to.

I didn't check if inventories were shared in multiplayer (it'd be pretty annoying if it was), but it's pretty essential in single-player. You have to switch around between characters pretty frequently, and the black button is hot-keyed to using a medkit. In the really huge firefights, it's pretty essential to click on them quickly (or you can just hold down on the D-pad to issue a special order for them to either toggle their special ability or use a medkit with white and black buttons respectively). Which reminds me - the left trigger isn't strictly for grenades. You use the B button to cycle through your items (frag grenades, energy grenades, gas grenades, mines, medkits etc), and use them with the L trigger.

The shared inventory system just makes things easier - less things to memorise, and it lets you concentrate on blasting things up rather than worry about who's got what.

A couple of other things I remembered through my snooze...
- every character has a set of Schwarzeneggar-style one-liners every time they score a kill. The American beefcake always says things like "How does death feel?", while the lizard guy makes funny Klingon remarks like "I have taken life" and "I have released your soul".

The lizard guy isn't as lame as most of you would think. I agree that he LOOKS lame, but I've ended up using him the most due to
(a) his versatility with weapons
(b) his Predator vision is ESSENTIAL for spotting enemies before entering an open area (then you send in the invisible red-head to scope out the place and take out the harder enemies, and then set your sniper up on a hill).
(c) during Predator-mode, he heals and takes less damage
(d) his funny one-liners. Or at least it's funny watching other characters take the piss out of him.

- In this one instance, I stayed back as the sniper on a hill and let the other three pour through a door that was the one choke point in the area, and ordered them all to fire at will. It looked pretty cool - they'd duck, dodge, weave, find cover when they're running low on health; they'll tell you if they're drawing fire... oh, one of the things that shocked me from the get-go about the enemy (much like Halo, actually) is that they'll THROW GRENADES AT YOU from the start. So while I thought "cool. First level, let's just run in and blow shit up", I ended up running for dear life screaming "GRENADE!@!! WTF IS UP WITH THAT???!". Which was cool, I suppose At any rate, watching the AI players at work looked fantastic.

- On the flip-side, having all of them "cover" you only seems to work in open spaces. I'm sure they'll work this one out by the time it's released, but when you, say, run into small maze-like areas like an enemy base or tower, your AI helpers end up getting stuck a lot. Or they'll accidentally fall into a pool of lava (then again, it's happened to me countless times when I lost track of where I was strafing). I've only found my team members to be truly effective when I order them to "stand ground here" or "fire at will".

Can't remember who asked about the Live options, but there are quite a lot of multiplayer options that I plan on testing on Monday. There's Team Deathmatch and a whole bunch of really cool-sounding names (which I unfortunately didn't commit to memory)...

 

[chaphack]

Okay. Am sitting in office with about three hours' worth of new details.

First. Xbox Live. Can't remember what the question was, but there's no Live play. Boo hoo. There's only downloadable content.

Second. Multiplayer modes. There's Campaign (1-4 players splitscreen co-op), Deathmatch (4p on one Xbox or 8p via system link) and SquadDM (2p on one Xbox or 4p on two Xboxes via system link) - which is basically where each singular player controls their own squad of people. Which is really, really cool.

Made it to the ninth mission - MAN this game kicks ass. By that stage I've got all four characters running a wedge formation down a swamp, switching back and forth between Brutus and Flint on a look-out while I let Tex loose on point. We were bloody unstoppable.... that is until there were a few scripted events where enemies would burst out of walls or out of the bushes or what have you, then all hell would break loose as we sprayed each other with friendly fire. And then they started hitting me with rocket launchers - the flame effects were excellent. Anyway. Tactically I think I've got the hang of this game now.

Three difficulty settings - Standard, Hard and Brutal. Played it on Brutal - they just end up hitting you a lot harder and you die faster and you've got to play more tactically.

As far as I've been able to play, money is just to clone new soldiers. There's a bit of bonus item-collection, too... a bit annoying if you ask me. So far I've only found a bunch of DNA samples... I suspect this is to unlock extra characters to use in multiplayer..... otherwise, I'm still waiting for a game that takes up the PA joke and asks me to collect Bafmodads

So far the levels haven't been that long. Long-ish, but nowhere near as long as Halo's. Dunno... haven't really been keeping track, but I'd say around, oh, maybe 10-15 minutes a level. They're normally split down the middle into two chapters.

 

[chaphack]

The delays is paying off?
Sounds like another nice title with fun gameplay on XB to keep tabs on.

 

[maskrider]

But the character design and artwork made me put off any further consideration of the game. In another word, I think the characters are ugly.