The Brute Force team ... Hawk out in front of Flint, left, Tex, centre and Brutus A 3D map shows out the software developers create the characters of Brute Force The team, ready for action   Games up for grabs With thanks to Catherine at Hausmann Communications we have three copy of Brute Force on offer. Each Service newspaper will have one copy available for readers so be sure to name this paper when you send in your entry. Entries should be e-mailed to ADFgamesmen@telstra.com with the name of the game you would like to win in the subject line. Please, only one entry per person - subsequent entries will be discarded. Please include your full name and mailing address in the e-mail or your entry won’t be accepted. Congratulations to our recent winners: Kung Fu Chaos –H. Anthony, Brisbane; and X-Men 2 Wolverine’s Revenge – R. Jones, Canberra.

Hit with brute force

Console Corner: XBox
Brute Force. Microsoft. http://www.xbox.com/bruteforce

While Halo continues to rein as XBox’s leading title there are now several games of a similar genre looking to compromise the Master Chief’s position.

Surprisingly, Halo’s publisher, Microsoft, is leading the charge.

After a massive marketing push and a couple of false starts, Digital Anvil’s Brute Force hit Australia with such fury that it even took the girls at Hausmann Communications (the Australian XBox marketing team) by surprise.

Brute Force is a third-person (first-person zoomed scope view) team-based shooter designed specifically for the XBox console.

Players suit up as members of the 151st Assault Troopers, a genetically engineered Special Forces team with the ability to clone themselves if things take a turn for the worst.

The game offers the players a choice of four specialists; a heavy weapons expert, a recon scout, a lethal sniper and an alien reptile ... um ... soldier/killing thing.

In single-play mode the four specialists become available as a player progresses through the campaign.

Starting out with Tex, the Arnie look-alike, a player runs’n’ guns his or her way through six worlds battling an evil race that psychically enslaves whole populations, mutant hordes intent on eating anything that sits still long enough and money- laundering gangsters.

Essentially a player has direct control over one of the characters while the AI controls the rest of the friendly group.

Using a very intuitive interface a player can give basic orders to the AI-controlled characters and, if need be, easily take full control by swapping characters.

The process works well, allowing players to play as Hawk, the recon scout, when a bit of close-target recce work is in order and then switch to Tex or Brutus for when the lead, energy and alien goo starts flying.

When under AI control, the characters display different attributes and I often found myself having to rein in Tex through the command interface as he tended to wade straight in without too much thought.

Each character also has a special ability that wears down and recharges before it is available again.

This ability allows Tex to wade through hordes firing a minigun or other heavy weapon from each hip, Brutus to perform killing body-slam attacks, Hawk to cloak her position and the sadistically perfect sniper, Flint, to pull off Matrix-like rapid targeting shots. In the campaign I found all but Brutus’ ability valuable ... I found shooting my way out of trouble easier than bashing through it.

Like Halo, the best thing about Brute Force is its multiplay experience.

Using plug-and-play technology a cooperative campaign can be played with mates who simply take over one of the game’s characters.

Up to four people can play at once, splitting the screen appropriately and they can enter or leave the game at any time with the AI filling in when required.

On a big TV this makes for excellent teamplay.

There is also the prerequisite competitive deathmatch modes that are expanded when players uncover alien DNA samples within the campaign.

Each new discovery adds a new character and weapon set to the deathmatch arena.

Controls throughout are intuitive and well-designed, having learnt just about everything from Halo.

If you’ve blasted away with Master Chief, Tex will be no problems. In fact the only thing really missing from the Halo experience was vehicle-mounted gameplay.

The addition of capable team mates does make up for it, however.

Brute Force – another visually, aurally and technically extreme version of what the XBox can offer.

While not ground-breaking for long-time gamers (PC games have done the team play thing for a while) it has been adapted very well and deserves its place in the XBox games of distinction list.

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