who keeps bringing you back to life is
warned of potential genetic instability
due to the sheer number of deaths,
nothing really comes of it. You die,
you come back, and get straight into
battling aliens.
The squad’s diversity is predictable,
but sufficiently varied and with a well-
travelled four-party balance of skills.
Tex is your stereotypical grunt, who
sounds a lot like Duke Nukem and has
all the cheesy lines. Flint is all sass
and a crack shot from a distance with
a super-effective sniper rifle. Brutus,
the token non-Earthling on the team,
is a growly Killer Croc-style lizard guy
with a strong sense of loyalty to ‘the
pack’. Hawk is the stealth operative,
more assassin than space marine,
whose ability to activate invisibility
cloaking means she can sneak up
on enemies and get stabby with a
laser knife.
Controls are mapped to be familiar
to Halo fans, with grenades on the
left trigger and aim/zoom handled by
depressing the right stick. The Xbox
controller’s white and black buttons
are respectively used to unleash a
character’s special ability and quickly
use a health kit. Tex’s special power is
to go ‘berserk’, wielding two weapons
at once. Hawk has her invisibility, Flint
is able to auto-target enemies, and
Brutus can activate a thermal vision
mode to find hiding foes. That last
ability proves particularly useful when
the planet’s surface is shrouded in fog
- one of the game’s best touches is
dynamic weather unique to the planet
locations, which can hinder your
mission in different ways.
CHEAP THRILLS
EARTH DEFENCE
FORCE 2017
Cheesy and low-budget,
but it still manages to be
fun as you blast hordes of
aliens over and over again.FROM BEYOND
METAL WOLF CHAOS
FromSoftware’s 2004
Xbox exclusive strapped
the US President into a
mech – what more could
you want?Third-person science
fiction shooters have
come a long way over the
decades... here are some
we’ve enjoyed playing on
Xbox consoles.SHOOT
FOR THE
STARS
COGS IN THE WORKS
GEARS OF WAR
The last word on third-
person sci-fi shooters,
introducing a cover
mechanic to the visceral
alien blasting fun.Downed enemies drop ammo and
health kits, and these can also be
found in caves and bases, ‘looter-
shooter’ style, and you can pick up
and use dropped enemy weapons, too.
As for the squad shooter mechanic,
you can switch between any of the
squad at any time on the D-pad, and
issue commands to your team: hold
position, move to where you direct
them, fire at will or provide covering
fire for your active character. In
practice, this is tricky to make work.
Often your squad will drop back, or
run on, despite your orders, and most
often it’s easier just to run through alevel and let them do their own thing.
Friendly fire is very definitely on,
however, and we’ve lost track of the
number of times we accidentally fired
on and killed a squad member during a
frantic firefight.Brute farce
The different characters with their
unique traits and abilities undoubtedly
give the game its character, but the
game’s critics did have a point. For
all Brute Force promised in terms of
tactical gameplay, the run-and-gun
nature of the game means you don’t
have much time to plan your assaults.
You really never know what’s around
the corner until you’ve bluffed your
way into a large group of enemies,
by which time you’re probably all
dead. Uniquely, the ability to clone
an entirely new squad means never
having to replay the same battles from
a checkpoint with everything reset,
should the whole team die. You simply
start over with the same number of
enemies left as when you died, which
makes things actually a little too easy
in some ways.
The AI of your squad members,
when playing solo, is pretty woeful,
too. If you were hoping to pull off some
cool ambushes utilising the squad’s
different skills you’ll frequently be
let down by your team-mates’ sloppy
AI. Swapping to each member of the
squad will put their unique abilities
in your control, but hoping that the
AI will adequately take over on the
other characters is a fool’s errand. For“Linking up four Xboxes, with three mates
filling out your squad, was where the game
was actually pretty amazing”
ABOVE The Brute
Force squad is a
diverse bunch,
each with their
own abilities.extra
102 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE