When I first saw Breach the first thing I though was that looks awesome. So when I had the chance to review it I was excited. The issue that I ran into was the more I played the more my excitement left and was replaced with disappointment.
You know when you go to the store and buy a box of Fruit Loops and you look behind you and see the big huge bargain bag of off-brand Fruit Loops? Well think of the Call of Duty series as the Fruit Loops and Breach as the big off-brand bag. It’s good, but not as good as what it’s meant to be. It reminds me of the CoD franchise except with clunky controls, bad gun play and some odd server issues. The server issue are the biggest thing since Breach is an online only game. The controls feel sluggish and slow and the general gun play is just really hard to get used to due to the slow movement.
You are thrown into several different types of play. Team death match, Sole survivor, Ascent, and Convoy. All the names are pretty much what you would figure. Ascent is CTF and Convoy is you and your team moving a Convoy to check points. You have character models and load outs. The load outs can be bought with the experience you gain while playing. You have to gain 500 XP to gain your first rank and that is no easy chore. From there you will unlock new perks and gadgets. I myself started out buying a red dot scope for my rifle and that was all I could get.You will have to buy separate appendages and gadgets for each class. You have Rifleman, Gunner, Sniper, Support and Recon. Lot of killing and capturing to do to really get the full effect of what Atomic were going for.
There are all kinds of cool gadgets to get like the Bionic Ear to help you Snipers hear footsteps approaching. Or maybe you want to buy a thicker skull so head shots will be weakened. The strive for realism is there and highlighted buy the destructible environments that are all over the game, but even those are still some what of a let down. Nice idea to be able to blow up a bridge while an opponent sprints across, but the physics and graphics are weak there too.
There are a whole lot of different options that allow for a vast community to play the game is very different ways. That is if the community continues to grow. For a 1200 point game to have issues out of the gate coming out at a time when shooter games are getting ready to explode all over the place, I’m afraid that even the issues that can be fixed by patching may be fixed too late.
The game like any standard Arcade title has 200 GS of achievements to earn and will all be earned after enough play time. Even though I did not find this game that great in comparison to other shooter games, I did however have a decent time play it. I found myself loading it and continuing to play. The game will always have a good replay value as long as support is continued by Atomic. All in all I think it’s over priced for the final package and does not have a good debut with the harsh competition. If you are a FPS fan and want a solid XBLA shooter it will hold that line, but remember to take it for what it is. An Arcade shooter.
