example, your plan to have Flint pick
off enemies with the sniper rifle from
where you’ve positioned her while you
rush in as Brutus will be quickly foiled,
since left to her own AI devices she is
apparently incapable of actually using
the scope.
This means that what you get is
an odd halfway house. Yes, each
character does have unique abilities,
and being able to swap between
them is great fun, but they in no
way complement each other as
they should do. It is a squad-based
shooter, but not a particularly
strategic one.
Things were different, however,
with System Link. Linking up four
Xboxes, with three mates filling out
your squad, was where the game
was actually pretty amazing, even
outdoing Halo itself as a co-operative
multiplayer experience.
This was in the dark, pre-Xbox Live
days, though, when linking up Xboxes
was, to be honest, a bit of a chore,
requiring a fair bit of pre-planning, an
agreed venue and a good chunk of
time in which to get the most out of
it. You couldn’t just jump on a session
whenever you felt like it, as you can
today, so few people probably ever got
to experience what the game is really
capable of in multiplayer.
There is adequate split-screen
PvP for up to four players, with extra
playable characters collectible (via
memory chips) during the campaign,
which is the standard menu of
deathmatch type modes. It’s decent,
TOP You do have
the ability to
order your squad
about, but the
AI isn’t great.
ABOVE Check out
that strapping
young Xbox
magazine there!but in no way matches contemporaries
Halo or Timesplitters 2.Beaut’ Force
For all that, though, the game still
holds up. However its graphics are
muggy, to say the least, on today’s
TVs. Though progress through the
game is linear (you can’t climb up and
over even the smallest of rocks), and
you are funnelled through a series of
firefights to get to your objectives, the
game’s environments, helped by some
imaginative planet designs with varied
biomes and those interesting weather
effects, keep things interesting.
Enemies, too, are suitably varied, with
bald, dome-headed aliens, glowing
fire hounds, mutants, seers with
mystical powers and space-armoured
Red Hand mercs among the fodder
for your space guns. It’s weird now to
play a third-person shooter that hasno target lock-on, and aim-sensitivity
is not that great, but it’s still hugely
playable once you get back into it.
Back in 2006, though, within three
short years of its release, Brute Force
would feel embarrassingly retro,
with the arrival of the Xbox 360 and
visceral third-person shooter Gears
Of War. Even so, Brute Force retains a
following of loyal fans who go misty-
eyed at the memory of the many hours
spent battling through it, before Xbox
gamers had much else like it to play.
There were rumours of a mooted
Brute Force 2 for Xbox 360, but
criticisms of the first game may have
put paid to that, and Digital Anvil
itself was dissolved in 2006, many of
its staff having been integrated into
Microsoft Game Studios, ending Brute
Force as a franchise before it had
even got going.
And what hope of a remake?
Imagine what Microsoft’s Azure tech
could do with the game these days. A
well-crafted story, which was already
halfway there, together with today’s
graphical and framerate capabilities
would finally realise the full potential
of Brute Force’s co-operative squad-
shooter ambitions.
Sadly, too, with Microsoft having
recently announced the last of
its titles being made backward
compatible on Xbox One, it looks
as though Brute Force will be one
game that remains playable only on
a working original console. Ah well,
thanks for the memories, Flint, Hawk,
Brutus and Tex. QMore Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 103