Breed

"Breed - Its not a Halo clone so quit whining."

I've been hearing a lot of people talking about Breed being nothing but a cheap Halo clone lately, and to be quite honest its getting rather annoying - following the same logic, that would make Halo an Unreal clone. So give it up. BREED isn't a masterpiece like Half-Life was back in the day, but it IS a great game. I was worried at first that I might have wasted my money, as my friends all warned me against picking it up. But I was pleasantly surprised at what I found.

DESIGN - 8/10

The map design is great - it has a not-quite-realistic-yet-tolerable quality to it. Your adventures take you everywhere - from caves and grassy..places.. to, yes, SPACE! I love that aspect - you can fly your ships up and out of the atmosphere and have crazy dogfights in space. Sweet. :)

GRAPHICS - 8/10

Normally I would give it a 10, but after seeing Painkiller and Far Cry lately I'd have to say the graphics are a bit dated looking. They ARE however quite nice. The water effects are nothing special really, but they look a lot nicer than Half-Life's did.

SOUND - 8/10

Eh. Good sound. I can't much comment on the sound, it didn't really do anything for me. People and aliens make sounds, and your guns make sounds... Its just like every game.

GAMEPLAY - 9/10

Fun. :) Squad-stuff like Brute Force mixed with hordes of ticked off aliens in a FPS perspective. The story is decent, and at times I felt like I had a personal grudge against the aliens. I don't get that often in video games anymore, there's a lot of generic stuff out there aimed at the morons among us who prefer the pretty graphics over fun factor. Easy controls, but sometimes I felt like there were too many buttons to press. :/

The learning curve isn't that steep, and the two training missions (very metal gear-esqe VR sims) at the start should get you where you need to be.

If you are a fan of FPS games, squad-based games, adventure games, or action games of any kind, I highly recommend this one to you folks. Sadly enough, it seems that this game is going to be one of the most underrated out there. But as someone who has been playing FPS games since..uh...Ken's Labyrinth came out.. Yikes... Oh yeah anyway, I've been playing these games for a long time, and I find this one quite fun. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for something to do in their spare time. It won't disappoint you unless you're a die-hard delusional Halo fan, in which case, God save your soul.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/22/04