david_grove
01-28-2011, 01:46 PM
Let me preface this with the fact that I have been playing Breach since launch as this is a game I've been looking forward to. Keep in mind this is my opinion of the game and that may vary from person to person. Constructive criticism is appreciated.
Specs
EVGA GeForce 580 Super Clocked
4gigs DDR3 1600
AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition
Tritton AX720 Surround Sound Gaming Headset
Zboard Merc Gaming Keyboard with Butterfly configuration
16mb Cable Internet Connection
Other Notes
Removed Mouse Smoothing after 2 hours of play
Set debris and stay time to 0
Graphical Settings are on High at 1680x1050 (Monitor limitations)
With the technical out of the way lets begin!
Story
.... Really? Skip ahead.
Graphics
As a downloadable title its afforded leeway in its graphics department but still looks fairly decent. When the explosions go off a nice blast of smoke lingers and whizzing lines of bullets flying through the air are nice touches, especially when witnessing one fly by your eyes.
On the whole the graphics are nothing special and the setting is a modern military style shooter that does what it sets out to do with its somewhat diverse landscapes.
Sound
Serviceable. The gunshots sound somewhat inappropriate at times though this could potentially be fixed with a patch. There were occasions where it sounded like a sniper rifle shot was fired next to my ear when I was looking straight at a sniper in the distance, and others where my teammates were firing right next to me and it sounded like a cheap typewriter. Its not horrible, but its not great either.
Level Design
In many of the maps it can feel like there's many different paths to reach an objective or just get across so that you can aim down the sights for a headshot on an unsuspecting victim, however those options are quickly diminished. What usually ends up happening on a number of the maps is you start out with around five routes, three of which are quickly taken out to provide a better tactical advantage and prevent getting flanked from behind.
Problem with this is that it forces a bottle neck in most cases which can lead to servers becoming littered with long distance sniper fights in refusal to traverse something that will almost assuredly get you killed before you're able to bring up your nice new assault rifle. Not always the case but there is one map which is especially plagued by this problem.
There are maps that take the opposite angle with destruction and allow you to create paths instead of destroy them, but its only in one particular map that I've seen.
Another issue is the weapon cache placement. At times its placed a little too conveniently close to a bottle neck and can lead to spamming of the rocket launches which can hit you via splash damage all too easily when running down an enclosed corridor.
Controls
Basic, nothing fancy. Selecting firing modes is easy enough by pressing the 1 key by default. One minor gripe personally is the inability to use the escape key to exit sub menus. There have been a few times where mid game I was attempting to make a quick change to control settings and the typical thing in games is to hit the escape key rapidly to get back into the game. But here you have to bring the mouse down to the lower left hand corner to hit "back", wait, "back", wait, then drag your mouse up to which class you want to respawn as since the enter key won't allow you to do it that way either. Again, this is a minor complaint.
Also; TURN OFF MOUSE SMOOTHING! For some reason the developers left no option in-game to turn this off which is really curious, but simple enough to go around. For instructions go here (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1734117).
Gameplay
The beating heart of any game. Does it pulse quickly for this game? The answer is a resounding...! No... The cover mechanics are a welcomed touch to the game especially with blind fire in a modern military shooter. However it feels a bit under developed and much of the time I resorted to simply crouching as a more effective means of staying away from that pesky allergy I have of bullets.
Unfortunately in a generation spoiled with Rainbow Six Vegas 1+2, Gears of War, and other such games, the cover mechanics feel too stiff. At many points during shoot outs I was reminded of a game many probably don't remember called Kill.Switch (http://xbox.ign.com/objects/566/566615.html) (PC, PS2, XBox), perhaps the first to employ blind fire as a means of keeping enemies at bay. Why? Because it felt almost identical. A company attempting a new mechanic that they were unfamiliar with.
The promise of destructible environments also fell flat. In the trailers and discussion for this game they have been quoted as saying you can shoot out individual bricks/stones or pieces of wood. After unleashing two clips into a plank in order to attempt to hit an enemy on the other side (which I thankfully managed to pull off), the environments take too much of a beating to be relied upon.
Melee is simply broken. Attempting to knife someone after our pistols had run out and neither of us wanting to be caught reloading we danced around each other with knives for at least a good minute before he was subsequently gunned down by an ally. Many of the times we seemed to whiff one another despite being nose to nose.
The unlock system is another sticking point unfortunately. It feels like things take too long for the unlocks to come your way and to add further insult to injury when you finally have the money for unlocking something, many of them feel bland and uninteresting, especially in the early goings.
Other Mentionings
EDIT: The paragraph below is no longer valid but I'll keep it to prevent people from saying I was attempting to cover myself. At the time this was posted I was unaware of the dedicated server files that were post on the game's main forum here (http://www.breachgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=318).
Currently no dedicated servers. I sincerely have to ask; what would provoke this development team to not allow PC gamers to create dedicated servers? It would allow persistent servers rather than going into a game hoping that the player responsible feels like playing more than one or two rounds, and it would open the game up to some less laggy games. During my game time I was lucky to find games that were under 100ping.
The Whole
I sincerely doubt this game will stand the test of time unless further support is given to it by the development team. For 15 dollars (USD) however, you can do far worse than this and can be a nice diverse from the fast paced Call of Duty, but closer in environments than Bad Company 2. Just don't expect a prolonged life span.
For now I'll enjoy the game but won't feel brokenhearted when I see empty servers.
Specs
EVGA GeForce 580 Super Clocked
4gigs DDR3 1600
AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition
Tritton AX720 Surround Sound Gaming Headset
Zboard Merc Gaming Keyboard with Butterfly configuration
16mb Cable Internet Connection
Other Notes
Removed Mouse Smoothing after 2 hours of play
Set debris and stay time to 0
Graphical Settings are on High at 1680x1050 (Monitor limitations)
With the technical out of the way lets begin!
Story
.... Really? Skip ahead.
Graphics
As a downloadable title its afforded leeway in its graphics department but still looks fairly decent. When the explosions go off a nice blast of smoke lingers and whizzing lines of bullets flying through the air are nice touches, especially when witnessing one fly by your eyes.
On the whole the graphics are nothing special and the setting is a modern military style shooter that does what it sets out to do with its somewhat diverse landscapes.
Sound
Serviceable. The gunshots sound somewhat inappropriate at times though this could potentially be fixed with a patch. There were occasions where it sounded like a sniper rifle shot was fired next to my ear when I was looking straight at a sniper in the distance, and others where my teammates were firing right next to me and it sounded like a cheap typewriter. Its not horrible, but its not great either.
Level Design
In many of the maps it can feel like there's many different paths to reach an objective or just get across so that you can aim down the sights for a headshot on an unsuspecting victim, however those options are quickly diminished. What usually ends up happening on a number of the maps is you start out with around five routes, three of which are quickly taken out to provide a better tactical advantage and prevent getting flanked from behind.
Problem with this is that it forces a bottle neck in most cases which can lead to servers becoming littered with long distance sniper fights in refusal to traverse something that will almost assuredly get you killed before you're able to bring up your nice new assault rifle. Not always the case but there is one map which is especially plagued by this problem.
There are maps that take the opposite angle with destruction and allow you to create paths instead of destroy them, but its only in one particular map that I've seen.
Another issue is the weapon cache placement. At times its placed a little too conveniently close to a bottle neck and can lead to spamming of the rocket launches which can hit you via splash damage all too easily when running down an enclosed corridor.
Controls
Basic, nothing fancy. Selecting firing modes is easy enough by pressing the 1 key by default. One minor gripe personally is the inability to use the escape key to exit sub menus. There have been a few times where mid game I was attempting to make a quick change to control settings and the typical thing in games is to hit the escape key rapidly to get back into the game. But here you have to bring the mouse down to the lower left hand corner to hit "back", wait, "back", wait, then drag your mouse up to which class you want to respawn as since the enter key won't allow you to do it that way either. Again, this is a minor complaint.
Also; TURN OFF MOUSE SMOOTHING! For some reason the developers left no option in-game to turn this off which is really curious, but simple enough to go around. For instructions go here (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1734117).
Gameplay
The beating heart of any game. Does it pulse quickly for this game? The answer is a resounding...! No... The cover mechanics are a welcomed touch to the game especially with blind fire in a modern military shooter. However it feels a bit under developed and much of the time I resorted to simply crouching as a more effective means of staying away from that pesky allergy I have of bullets.
Unfortunately in a generation spoiled with Rainbow Six Vegas 1+2, Gears of War, and other such games, the cover mechanics feel too stiff. At many points during shoot outs I was reminded of a game many probably don't remember called Kill.Switch (http://xbox.ign.com/objects/566/566615.html) (PC, PS2, XBox), perhaps the first to employ blind fire as a means of keeping enemies at bay. Why? Because it felt almost identical. A company attempting a new mechanic that they were unfamiliar with.
The promise of destructible environments also fell flat. In the trailers and discussion for this game they have been quoted as saying you can shoot out individual bricks/stones or pieces of wood. After unleashing two clips into a plank in order to attempt to hit an enemy on the other side (which I thankfully managed to pull off), the environments take too much of a beating to be relied upon.
Melee is simply broken. Attempting to knife someone after our pistols had run out and neither of us wanting to be caught reloading we danced around each other with knives for at least a good minute before he was subsequently gunned down by an ally. Many of the times we seemed to whiff one another despite being nose to nose.
The unlock system is another sticking point unfortunately. It feels like things take too long for the unlocks to come your way and to add further insult to injury when you finally have the money for unlocking something, many of them feel bland and uninteresting, especially in the early goings.
Other Mentionings
EDIT: The paragraph below is no longer valid but I'll keep it to prevent people from saying I was attempting to cover myself. At the time this was posted I was unaware of the dedicated server files that were post on the game's main forum here (http://www.breachgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=318).
Currently no dedicated servers. I sincerely have to ask; what would provoke this development team to not allow PC gamers to create dedicated servers? It would allow persistent servers rather than going into a game hoping that the player responsible feels like playing more than one or two rounds, and it would open the game up to some less laggy games. During my game time I was lucky to find games that were under 100ping.
The Whole
I sincerely doubt this game will stand the test of time unless further support is given to it by the development team. For 15 dollars (USD) however, you can do far worse than this and can be a nice diverse from the fast paced Call of Duty, but closer in environments than Bad Company 2. Just don't expect a prolonged life span.
For now I'll enjoy the game but won't feel brokenhearted when I see empty servers.