Breach - not quite the game we want...

There’s something delightfully retro about Breach, the new FPS from Atomic Games. There’s a kind of glow of old-schooliness to it; for one thing, Atomic is responsible for some of our favourite games of all time, like the Close Combat strategy series. Then there’s the unashamedly Counter Strike feel to the entire title, right down to an eerily familiar main menu screen.

 

Similarly, it’s got the sheen that only a labour of love can have – but, like many such labours, it’s also a little rough around the edges. As an online only PC/Xbox 360 title, that costs around $20 to purchase, is the roughness okay?

 

Blowthrough

Breach’s premise is familiar to anyone who plays Bad Company 2 – get the drop on the enemy by blowing the crap out of the environment. The big claim that Atomic makes over the competition is about the level of detail in that destruction. Walls can be shot out brick-by-brick to make a loophole, or support beams can be destroyed to collapse an entire structure. Floors and other architectural features can also be shot out, and many of the game’s maps make use of walkways and bridges across long drops – all of which can be taken out with a well-placed rocket.

 

The other side of the destruction pancake is Breach’s thorough weapon and gadget loadout, which can be unlocked and tweaked to please the most dedicated of shooter fans. There are five classes, from Rifleman to Sniper, and including a fifth Scout class that must itself be unlocked by progressing through other classes first.

 

Each weapon has an array of add-ons like scopes and under barrel attachments, and a bevy of gadgets ranging from HE charges to sniper detectors round out the game’s toys.

 

Then there are the maps and missions. The maps are nothing to write home about – snowy mountain bases and terrorist hide-outs abound, all seemingly glued to together from a muddy brown palette – but the missions are a little more interesting. There’s classic stuff, like Infiltration, which tasks you with taking five objectives, but also unique modes like Convoy, which sees one team escorting vehicles through a map, clearing obstructions as they go and manning gun turrets as the other team tries to destroy the vehicles.

 

But all of it hinges on the action itself, and the comprehensiveness of Atomic’s so-called Destruction Toolbox. Does the team pull it off?

 

Almost there...

Probably the biggest problem with Breach is the lack of polish. In its original form the game was, essentially, the controversial and eventually banned title Six Days in Fallujah – Atomic’s effort to recreate the house-to-house fighting between US Marines and militia in Iraq. Some of the mission-types and settings are obvious hold-overs, but ultimately the game now feels more generic than anything else. 

 

The maps are pretty flavourless, to be honest – the game’s Hydrogen engine just isn’t up to showing even the level of detail that Black Ops can manage, let alone match the fidelity of the Frostbite engine. Natural surfaces are blocky and, well, unnatural, while buildings seem little more than a phsyics space waiting to fall over.

 

Character models, on the other hand, are really quite solid – though when you see these detailed figures striding over a blocky landscape the sense that you’re playing an amateur mod rather than a retail game is even stronger. Weapon models, too, are lovingly detailed, and all based on real-world varieties of boomstick. But this is also where the game starts to show a certain class that other, fancier titles lack – once you look down the iron-sights of your M4 and start to make use of the other selling point of the game, active cover, you start to feel the love.

 

It’s a bumpy love; a love that’s going to lead to tears before bedtime and many cranky letters and nights on the lounge, but there’s undeniably something going on between us and Breach. The ballistics modelling is a lot tighter than many other games, and much more grounded in real-world effects. Long range duels are as much about patience and judging the movements of your enemy as they are firepower, especially if you’re playing in Hardcore mode. Combat is at one and the same time very sharp and brutal, but also a lot slower and more strategic. You might be keeping someone pinned down so your friends can outflank his position, or gingerly wondering if the wall you’ve just cut a loop-hole in is going to get blown out any minute – either way, the game certainly engages your tactical senses as well as your twitch reflexes.

 

Convoy mode in particular makes for great matches – you must not only escort and protect the vehicles, but keep them repaired and on track to get through each map, and this requires a delicate balance of offense and defense.

 

However, the game needs work. Sound effects, especially bullet impacts and near misses, are fiendishly repetitive and frankly more annoying than terrifying. At time of press, there are also no dedicated servers up and running – sure, you can easily create your own or rely on others to do the same, but then you’re at the mercy of that session staying active. Too often we found ourselves ejected from a tense firefight because the host has shut down his or her session! Unlock progression is also very slow – even the most basic advances cost 500 XP, and as you only earn five points a kill on average, the game’s deliberate pace is really too deliberate. And the game’s lobby system sucks.

 

But at least it means the game isn’t already being spammed by gren-toting griefers.

We really want Breach to succeed, and keep being supported by Atomic. Sure, it’s only $20 – less on Steam right now – but still, we’ve seen mods that have more solid and reliable content. It’s a good start, but possibly not quite there yet.