"Wow, a game that didn’t live up to the hype! Can you believe it?"

It's probably not a good thing when the developers and publishers blame each other for creating an awful game, but this is exactly what happened with Breed. Once dubbed a Halo-killer, the first person shooter was marred with various problems that the developers (Brat Designs) claimed the publishers (CDV) added at the last minute. The publishers admitted to tampering with the game, but they said they improved the game from a nearly unplayable state. No matter who's to blame, this is far from the Halo-killer it was originally envisioned to be.

Since the game inexplicably takes a few minutes to start up, I began to flip through the manual and became rather impressed. There's some tactical squad-based combat, multiple vehicles to pilot around in enormous levels, and what appears to be an epic storyline. With all of these features Breed could be a great experience. Sadly, the execution on nearly all of these is inconsistent to say the very least.

600 years in the future, Earth has been conquered after all of its forces were across the galaxy defending their colonies. The alien forces known as the Breed are behind the invasion, and while they may have mastered interstellar, they have difficulties not running into walls. Since the A.I. of the Breed invaders are so stupid, a ragtag battleship full of genetically altered soldiers is all Earth needs to be liberated.

Most of the levels have you switching from a squad of four different soldiers on the fly, and this is where the game is the least enjoyable. There are some simple commands to use, but for the most part it's pointless. Your squadmates are more of a burden than help. They like to get in the way of your fire, and they absolutely love wasting all of their ammo so when you switch to them they become useless. Speaking of useless, in most of the levels all you need is a sniper. The rest of your squadmates can be left behind as you take out all of the enemy towers and turrets and essentially make the level a walk in the park.

Things improve considerably on the levels where you don't have to babysit a group of special individuals, but Breed even then remains far from being “good” or even “adequate.” You're essentially facing the same two kinds of infantry, and they make your squadmates look like geniuses in comparison. These lame baddies just swarm you in large numbers or stand there as you snipe them from a distance. This all gets boring far before the 18 missions are finished.

All the portions where you're on foot fails, but the many vehicles improves things (sometimes).There are a couple parts of the game where there is some honest-to-god excitement to be had. You drive a massive tank armed with an arsenal of weapons, not to mention two A.I. controlled machine guns. Plowing through the opposition and mowing down dozens of aliens at a time is a delight, but these sections are rare and as soon as they're over the rest of the game plays out as dismally as it was on the previous level.

As fun as controlling the tank is, the rest of the vehicles are far less spectacular. There's some aerial dogfighting, but the controls are rather loose and no matter how you set the sensitivity it just doesn't feel right. It's an excellent idea to try to add a whole new angle to the gameplay, but it just doesn't work out as it should. Another vehicle is the dune buggy, which fares a bit better. It zips around very quickly and the controls are sensitive (as they should be) but some obnoxious glitches make the vehicle worthless. There were around a dozen Breed all coming at me, so I hopped in my dune buggy and ran all of them over. To my horror, nothing happened when I rode directly into them.

But that's just one of the minor glitches as Breed is swarming with them. There are crashes galore, which are an exceptional pain the ass since the game takes so long to start up. One time one of my squadmates fell into an invisible hole and slowly died. Stuff like this happens all the time, even when the game is patched.

Despite the many problems present in singleplayer mode, Breed could be redeemed with some decent multiplayer action. Of course, the multiplayer action I received was far from decent. Only the most basic of modes is available (deathmatch, team deathmatch) and I could only find one other person playing the game. I pitied this poor fellow when I finally left the game. What a lonely life he must live.

One of the things the developers accused the publishers of was releasing an old version of the game that had very, very bland textures. There's no way to tell if this accusation is entirely true, though the textures are indeed very, very bland. The levels themselves are enormous, but nothing really stands out since it all looks the same. The box advertises “realistically destructible” environments, but this is a farce. Sure, towers and tree can be blown up, but good luck destroying a box or a computer terminal. Apparently those are indestructible.

Another thing that even the publishers admitted to changing was the voice acting. Apparently in the original version there was too much swearing, so that had to go. While there's no way to compare it to the original voice acting, the new voiceovers are undoubtedly awful. One character says the word “ass” at least nearly every time he speaks. This is supposed to make him edgy, but not too edgy, because real swear words are evil. Whenever someone you're controlling is shot they let out some of the most awkward (and loudest) grunts and groans I've ever heard. It's scary to hear it when you're not expecting it, but usually it's just laughable. The music is hit-and-miss with out of place techno tunes that loop poorly and some riveting, delightfully overblown orchestral pieces that seem inspired by Starship Troopers score.

The saddest part about Breed is not that it's a horrible game; it's that deep inside there's a good game. All of the ideas were right, but the execution failed on nearly all aspects. After all, ideas themselves don't make an enjoyable game. Who knows if the “original” version even exists? Even with all of the promised differences, Breed would still not be worth your time, money, and hard drive space.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/05