advertisement

BREED IS ANOTHER ENTRY in the recently evolved tactical squad-combat FPS genre - this time with a flashy sci-fi ambience. Combined with both space and air combat this looks like becoming one of the more interesting upcoming FPS titles. Originally scheduled for a Nov 2003 release Breed has been delayed until Feb of 2004 mainly due to incompatability issues with older hardware. The good news to come from this will be two more demos released around the new year: one offering a sample of the multiplayer side of things and another showing an improved look at the SP gameplay.

The slightly Halo-esque backplot is set in 2602 with an Earthling colony in the Besalius binary system encountering an aggressive mechanoid alien race they nickname 'the Breed'. After fighting at Besalius, the battle cruiser USC Darwin returns to Earth, only to find the Breed has trashed mankind's homeworld in their absence - the resulting combat, taking place over 18 huge missions for the player, will be one of survival for the winner and annihilation for the losing species.

The first point of note is the transistion from orbital space to atmosphere/ground combat. This is smooth and seemless - no sudden switch of location - you do literally fly and fight the craft down through the atmosphere to the surface to begin the ground assaults/defences. On missions, the player must load the dropship with the necessary weapons, vehicles and GRUNTs (Genetically Revived Universal Tactical Sentient - expendible gentically engineered squaddies) required for the mission, giving a neat little strategic element to the game: pick the wrong stuff (e.g., tank) and you might get stuck in the terrain (e.g., swamp).

Once deployed, you can control any unit: tank, fighter, GRUNT, etc. within the theatre of operations. There's a large selection of weapons and gear to choose from, ranging from the traditional small arms such as assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and plasma slingers, to large vehicles: tanks, APCs, jeeps, fighters, scoutships and the dropship itself.

The multiplayer side contains the usual gameplay elements, hopefully enhanced by the inclusion of the nifty vehicles. Deathmatch, TeamDM, Assault, King of the Hill, Territorial Control and Co-op are all here, and have up to 32 players per server.

Brat Software has used its in-house engine, called Mercury, to run the game. There doesn't appear to be too much wrong with it: it renders spectacularly huge viewable distances of truly gigantic, destructible locations: the vegetation on the demo's desert island location goes boom with a satisying spray of floral carnage for example, as does some of the bunker-like architecture. You might be forgiven for thinking it's a purely outdoor engine - given how the buildings in the demo do have a simplistic, modular look - much in the same way as other games with similarly huge playable environments (Operation Flashpoint, Project IGI, Outcast). But other screenshots of Breed do appear to promise more detailed interior environments to fight your way through.

Moving over the landscapes brings something new as you have to really push the keys to slog your way up the slopes -- they can change your direction of movement with their slope/angle if you don't. There's also a realtime day/night cycle and weather effects which can change things.

Squad control verges on the simplistic compared to games like Operation Flashpoint, bearing instead a closer resemblence to the recent Combat Desert Storm II game: you can't emplace individuals and still give orders to the rest - movement/fire orders are issued as a group. How this will translate to mass armoured Blitzkriegs is anyone's guess...

Demo notes:

• There's a fully operational USC tank at the top of the highest plateau which can make your GRUNTs' lives a lot easier.
• Highly recommend you keep hold of the rocket launcher for yourself, as much as possible, as the friendly AI just can't be trusted with it, especially in the close-range firefights...
• There's even some horrendously bad enemy AI on the part of the Breed robots - they literally do just hurl themselves down the hillsides at your team of USC GRUNTs if they detect your presence. Not the brightest.
• The other really bad point that will stick out for the experienced gamer is the way the huge viewable distance doesn't mean you can see the blastable nasties all the way from across the map: the game only places them for you to shoot when you get within a certain radius. They had to save on memory somewhere...

Minimum specs

Win 98/ME/2000/XP
600 MHz CPU
128 Megabytes of RAM
3D accelerated 32 MB video card or equivalent with HW-T&L and 24-bit z-buffer
1 GB free hard disk space
8X Speed CD-ROM/DVD-ROM
100% Direct Sound compatible Sound Card

Recommended specs

1500 MHz CPU
256 Megabytes of RAM
3D accelerated 64 MB video card or equivalent with HW-T&L and 24-bit z-buffer
1.5 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games
40X Speed CD-ROM/DVD-ROM

Show me the screenshots!