Atomic Games has been in hot water over the past year or so with the development of its Six Days In Fallujah project, which is still in the works despite Konami’s swift abandonment. It’s a shame that game’s getting all the attention, because the company managed to release a pretty decent multiplayer affair for Xbox Live Arcade this week at a bargain price. Breach is the sort of game built for folks seasoned on Call of Duty and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and they should have a ball with it – provided they can find the right reason to abandon their current loves. Breach doesn’t feature any over-the-top storyline with wacky Russians or angry terrorists, it simply pits one team against another in one of five multiplayer game modes – Convoy (where you direct a VIP to a certain point), Retrieval (Capture the Flag-style mode), Infiltration, Team Deathmatch and Last Man Standing, which should be familiar to fans of CounterStrike.
Each one is multiplayer only, as there are no options to play with bots. So don’t bother getting this game unless you know a few friends that have managed to invest in it. Like those other big war games, Breach features a level-up system, along with a variety of classes and weapons to unlock. Recon is our favorite, but you’ll need to play the game for a couple of hours in order to retrieve it – and playing as a Rifleman may drive you crazy due to an annoying glitch or two. Still, once you gain access to the goods through winning matches, the game opens up. Breach doesn’t look amazing by any means, as both Call of Duty and Battlefield’s multiplayer maps wipe the floor with it. For a downloadable game, though, it’s not bad. The game moves at a fluid pace through the game’s four maps (one of which has a day or night setting), and some of the destructible environments are cool – even though it’s questionable how you can trash the walls of a building, but not a ceiling. The animation’s pretty good too, though we could’ve used a better indication of when you take down a target. Is he dead or is he not? Jeez.
The audio’s forgettable for the most part, though. The music just kind of lies there without any real motivation, and the sound effects and voicework are a notch below other games in the genre. Still, considering that Atomic Games doesn’t have a mega-budget like Activision or EA, it’ll suffice. What’s bound to hook you is the gameplay. Like most first-person shooters, Breach handles with utmost precision, and it’s great going into a match with friends and taking them out. It takes a while for some to set up (our last attempt took a good three minutes) but it was worth it as we came so close to being the Last Man Standing. It doesn’t go above and beyond other games, but, on the other hand, it doesn’t suck either. Meh, Breach just sits somewhere in a happy medium. It doesn’t make as much of an impact as Atomic expected, but if you’re stuck on a budget and can’t afford one of the more popular $60 games right now, this is a certainly adequate substitute for $15. Just don’t be surprised if the traffic drops off next week when the new Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike maps hit.
