One day, probably in the not too distant future, VR is going to catch on, properly catch on and slowly become the norm for video games.
‘Brute Force’ was released in a sea of hype to huge initial sales in 2003.
It will take a few things for this to happen. Hardware prices need to come down, obviously, but more importantly software quality needs to improve.
VR is currently a growth market, and more and more games are trying to take their piece of the pie. Yesterday I played ‘PayDay 2 VR’, a free add-on for the main game that was itself free on one of the major platforms not so long ago. It was a bit of a mess; a low effort grab for a slice of the VR pie, but another game ticked off the ‘unplayed’ list nonetheless.
There are very good VR games out there. ‘Half Life Alyx’ may not be the giant leap that many claim (Valve’s control-freak tendencies sadly ruin it’s potential) but it’s a great tech-demo for what can be achieved on the format in terms of presentation and, when games start to emerge with the playability of ‘Superhot VR’ or ‘Robo Recall’ and the polish of ‘Half Life’, VR will finally become the next chapter in the ongoing history of video games.
And make no mistake: Video games need this to happen. The medium has been stagnant for two decades. The last notable step forward was when consoles entered the online space in their sixth generation, and all that has happened since has just been the application of layer upon layer of polish.
When VR finally sticks it’s landing, the knock on effect will be that games from the turn-of-the-century will finally be believably categorised as retro - and first in line for that (dubious) honour will be games like ‘Brute Force’.
At the time it was billed as a 'Halo' killer and previewed for months before its launch in the magazines of the time. Today, you'd now be hard pressed to find someone who can remember it; or anything about it.
It was certainly unknown to me when I picked it up for 50p in a charity shop a couple of years ago, although in retrospect I have seen it appear in Xbox 'Hidden Gem' articles alongside the likes of ‘GunValkyrie’ and ‘Yager’, although I'm not sure it has enough about it to stand in that company.
‘Brute Force’ is a squad shooter that surprisingly, given the platform, has no online features. It’s instead designed for multiple consoles linked in LAN or four player split screen.
As usual I played the single player campaign, but this is apparently no loss as it’s, according to reviews of the time, the game's best mode.
After being treated to a female character’s grunt’s and groans as accompaniment to the game’s opening movie I was surprised to find that you start the game with an era-standard white, male, growly, bigoted, hero named ‘Tex’, and build up the squad to a full compliment of four over the first few levels with the addition of feral ‘Brutus’, sniper ‘Flint’, and girl ‘Hawk’,
For a good few levels the various abilities of each character have little impact. Switching between them with the d-pad serves more as a diversion than a tactical decision.
However, as the difficulty level increases later in the game the different skills (and special abilities that are pretty much super-powers) start to become genuinely useful.
Moreover, better than usual (for it’s age) AI means that sticking to your preferred character and leaving the rest of the squad to get on with things on their own is a viable option for large portions of the game.
Enemy AI is also better than you might expect for a game from 2003. I’ve certainly seen worse in far more modern games, and this is key to the success of the campaign as, despite decent quality voice acting, the story is practically non-existent; failing entirely to stitch together the various levels as a cohesive plot.
Despite being a bit scrappy on the gameplay front, Brute Force features beautifully polished presentation that offers widescreen display, surround sound, and technically high-end graphical touches of the time such as bump mapping high quality textures.
These all help to bring the themes of each level to life. They’re of the standard ‘Forest’, ‘Lava’, ‘Etc’ variety, but, enhanced by the technical proficiency, they’re a lot of fun to play and offer ample opportunity for practical use for the squads abilities.
While far from a thoughtful, slow burning, tactical masterclass, the environments and team mechanics make for an entertaining, if very action-orientated, squad shooter.
The difficulty curve (eventually) forces you to get to grips with the various ways to approach it’s levels and ensures that the all-out-attack method will only get you so far.
While it may appear that the absence of anything earth shatteringly good or game-breakingly bad puts the game in line for forgettable mediocrity, Brute Force is, instead, squarely in line for promotion to the dubious honour of ‘retro classic’ thanks to it’s combination of high production values, pick-up-and-play difficulty, and later-game depth.
Essentially, it’s just a lot of fun to play, and when we’ve all evolved immunity to motion sickness and are playing games on VR headsets that look like Ray Bans, we’ll look back at the simple joys of ‘Brute Force’ the same we we look back today at ‘Doom’, ‘Donkey Kong’, or ‘Sunset Riders’.
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