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I just described Breakpoint as “half-hearted”. In
retrospect, I should have said “half-arsed”. Unless
you join together with fellow online freedom
fighters – forming a PSN squad still comes with
a litany of issues; more on those in a bit – you’re
faced with finishing the entire campaign solo.
Seeing as the number of enemies never changes
whether you’re lone-wolfing it or heading into
the breach as a foursome, dropping your AI
squadmates feels plain lazy.
This is a game defined by unappealing
compromise. Get Jon ‘The Punisher’ Bernthal in,
then waste his acting chops on an appallingly
bland baddie and a tin-eared script. At one
juncture, Breakpoint shamelessly rehashes
Wildlands’ already unfunny “nervous as a virgin
on prom night” line verbatim. Introduce a crafting
system where you’re encouraged to pick up herbs
and metals, then make it worthless because
you rarely run out of health items or ammo.
Create a mountainous landmass, then half-arse a
mountaineering mechanic so unreliable, watching
Nomad trying to scramble up hills channels thespirit of Skyrim’s physics-
defying horse.WORLD WOES
Travelling around Auroa is a
heartbreaking slog. The made-
up archipelago simply doesn’t
have enough roads to make
getting around by car, bike,
or ATV a consistently viable
option. In a sprawling world
choked by near-impassible
forest, where every mission
seems to be exactly 12.2km
away from your current spawn
point, the only way to reliably
make these journeys is via
helicopter. Lose your whirlybird
and a protracted trip scrambling
up sheer cliff faces and getting
lost among a sea of mission
markers awaits. Breakpoint has
one of the most horrendously
clogged maps on PS4.
Missions are unforgivably
drab and relentlessly repetitive.
Almost every single mainline
mission takes a (much less
exciting) cue from Assassin’s
Creed Odyssey; for exampleyou’re told to visit three areas
before gathering info to help
narrow the co-ordinates of
your final destination.
Once you get there and kill
all dudes, it’s simply a matter
of pressing r on everything.
Press r to pick up an intel
file. Press r to interrogate an
enemy commando. Press r
to hack some computerised,
meaningless MacGuffin. You’d
kill to press q to Jason.
Online squad issues also
hurt the co-op focused
Breakpoint. During this review,
I play around 70% of it with a
friend, and during almost every
mission we face problems.
The game has a real struggle
synching your current objective
with those of your allies. In a
sensible matchmaking system,
joining a friend’s game would
automatically drop you into
their current quest. That’s not
the case here.
It’s a faff getting your goals
to match up. Even when you’re
shooting right next to each“YOUR MISSIONS ARE
UNFORGIVABLY DRAB AND
RELENTLESSLY REPETITIVE.”
Right The
game’s photo
mode is good,
though Auroa’s
wildlife is
camera-shy.Left Bernthal
plays the
generic Lt Cole
D Walker.
The Punisher,
he ain’t.While Breakpoint’s fights
can occasionally thrill
your trigger finger, its
missions are incredibly
uninspired and lazy.