I recently received a review code on a new title (Released today) named Breach. I received the XBLA version, and I had really high hopes for this title. It’s one of my most anticipated games of 2011. I was extremely disappointed when I cranked it up, to see that I had severely over-estimated my assumptions of this game. After the jump, my review that Atomic will hate me for.

Let’s start this review off with a disclaimer. The game only costs 1200 MSP or 20 bucks on PC. That’s all it’s worth in my opinion. If not less.

Sound 4/10:

The sound on the game was the second most disappointing aspect. Some guns sound like you are throwing rocks at a wall. One sound that REALLY got under my skin was the walking sound. When you walk it sounds like you are hobbling. I comment on this further in the animation section. You will notice a *thump* when you step, and when you run that *thump* just gets faster. Vehicles and large machine guns sounded pretty good. Those sounds alone brought the score up from a 1. My father-in-law that was watching over my shoulder thought the game was from the 80′s due to the poor sound quality…

Animation & Graphics: 4/10:

Animation and graphics were so poor in the game, it was the #1 most disappointing aspect. As noted in the sound section above, the limp that most (if not all) characters walked with, was disturbing at best. I kept waiting for it to stop, thinking it was because I stepped off a large cliff. You literally limped. Don’t comment here saying it’s realistic and that’s how soldiers walk. B.S.! To give you a better mental image of what I would compare this to… Walk around your house today with your right leg 6 inches shorter than the left. Now you know how I felt.

The screenshots of the game don’t give the game justice. You may be taken back by that statement. Let me clarify: The game graphics are sub par at best. You may say: “Crimm, it’s an XBLA game!”. Go play Battlefield 1943 for 1200 MSP and come back to Breach… Tell me that I’m not correct! To be quite honest I would compare some of Breach’s graphics to a game of MineCraft in HD.

Gameplay 6/10:

Atomic gets one thumb up here. The destructible environment was definitely just as advertised. I played with this for quite a while. Here’s the issue though. When playing Battlefield related games, I just find the explosive/destructive environment fits. It just “happens”. You are hiding behind something and then it explodes and you have to find new cover. With Breach, it didn’t feel that way. It felt clunky and forced. The ONLY reason that I saw destructive environment gameplay was when I found random RPG’s laying about. I would use them to blow up buildings. Would I take out support structures of bridges, etc like we saw in the introductory videos? NO.

Introductory video that was mentioned:

The cover system was NICE. It’s something that I wished more games would take advantage of. It’s the only thing that saved the dignity of the game for me. Unfortunately, the controls felt clunky again. I felt myself having to fight the controls to take cover. Most of the time I would die before my character would actually hide behind a rock or wall … It’s definitely not a tightly integrated system!

The leveling and class system felt like a half-hearted attempt to steal CoD players. The skins that you had to choose from came straight from Minecraft and I didn’t feel like I had much customization. It was there, don’t get me wrong, but when you are lacking in the rest of the departments… I’d say release all guns to us on first day. Screw a “leveling system”. It wasn’t worth it to play 1K matches to get the gun I wanted.

Again, gameplay was okay at best, but it didn’t compensate for poor graphics and sound.

Overall 6/10:

Overall, the game is mediocre. A lot of people as well as myself were claiming this to be a very anticipated title. Now that I have tried it out, would I buy it? No. Will I give it another try one day? Maybe. Some of you may think that I have played too much Battlefield or Call of Duty and that I’m expecting too much. If so, get out of here. We are in the era of high end consoles and high end graphics. You can’t give me a game that looks like it was made for the Super Nintendo and expect for me to like it on the Xbox. Physics? Do the physics save the game? No. Go spend your money on Battlefield 1943, and play a game with better graphics, better destructible environment, and spend your money wiser and happier.

Sorry Atomic, as an internet user; I know it’s tough getting negative criticism from someone like me… but I’m just calling it as I see it. I’ll leave you guys with gameplay videos.

More on Breach:
The game is rated “T” and will be coming out on January 26th, 2011. On XBLA it will cost 1200 Microsoft points and it will be $19.99 on PC over Steam.