Fans of online multiplayer First Person Shooters never seem to have a problem with choice. With the likes of Battlefield Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor and, of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops, there’s never any fear of running out of options. That’s before taking into account more fantastical shooters such as the all mighty Halo: Reach. There’s almost too much choice, fragmenting gamers and ensuring that some deserving games will inevitably fall by the wayside. This also means that multiplayer gamers are a demanding bunch in need of being courted by an aspiring suitor before devoting themselves to it entirely. So which is it for Breach? A game worth forgetting about or one worthy of your never-ending attention? It’s actually a little bit of both.

It’s worth noting from the offset that Breach is a solely online game. There’s no sign of a tacked on single player mode, there aren’t even any bots for you to set up a game with in order to practice. This is a dangerous move. It makes Breach entirely dependent on its community. It’s difficult to gauge how sizeable the community will be at this early juncture but it’s an immediate worry that potentially you could have a pointless game on your hands in the future, once the initial rush is over.

Breach doesn’t really deserve to be forgotten about though. While very typical in its approach to the online shooter, it also offers some refreshing glimpses of originality. If only it wouldn’t falter quite so readily, providing players with some occasionally entertaining but always irritating glitches.

Offering five different gametypes and five different maps, there’s a fair amount of variety available. Infiltration, Retrieval and Team Deathmatch will all be familiar to veterans of the genre. Infiltration is essentially a Domination mode, players have to capture set positions across the map in order to earn points and win the map. Retrieval is a military twist on Capture the Flag with players competing to collect a canister and deliver it to one of three set points on the map. Team Deathmatch is its typically unimaginative self so no introduction is needed there.

Where Breach starts to get more interesting is with the Convoy and Sole Survivor modes. Sole Survivor is Team Deathmatch with a twist, namely that players only have one life. Once you die, that’s it for the rest of the game. It makes for a supremely tactical and much slower paced experience. One that I fear will remain more of a novelty amongst players rather than one that is played frequently.

Convoy however has the potential to be something really rather special, at least when playing as part of a solid team. The defending team has to escort a convoy across the map within a strict time limit while the attacking team has to stop them at all costs. Once the first round is over, players swap sides. Throughout each Convoy map there are a series of road blocks and barricades which defending players must destroy by collecting C4 from the back of the vehicle and planting it. In turn the attacking team are also provided with a series of gun turrets to aid them in their attack. The attacking team can then damage the convoy sufficiently enough that the other side must repair the convoy before moving on, taking up valuable seconds of time. It makes for a sometimes frantic but consistently tense experience.

It’s by far the most enjoyable mode available, especially with a close-knit team to play alongside. Finding appropriate choke points are vital in order to succeed and while the going is frequently quite slow, the tension never lets up. Many of the matches I played were won in the final few seconds thanks to either a last gasp push by the defenders or some perfectly timed RPG attacks by the attackers knocking out the convoy. Each gametype can also be played via the hardcore mode – a mode that removes much of the HUD such as the radar and health bar. There’s not even a kill camera or crosshair ensuring that the mode lives up to its name.

The maps themselves are fairly typical in design, offering no great swathe of imagination but the arrangement of choke points makes for an ideal camping game. Indeed, Breach is frequently much slower paced than others of its genre. Team Deathmatch becomes all about who can snipe fastest and who is willing to patiently sit in the background biding their time. It means that the objective driven gametypes are much more enjoyable and less frustrating to play.

As is customary for an online shooter, a series of perks, gadgets and new weapons can be unlocked via a levelling up system. Notably, the experience is linked to what class you’re playing as at the time. Constantly play as a Rifleman and you might have plenty of experience to put into that class, but your Sniper class will be as weak as when you first started playing the game. It’s a well thought out plan ensuring that the classes you pick are as balanced as how you play the game.

The perks themselves are fairly typical in nature. Weapons can have things such as infra-red sights and grenade launchers attached to them, while the player can profit with perks ranging from reduced headshot damage to faster running speed. Gadgets can also be purchased with experience credits providing you with the likes of sticky bombs, body armour and even a bionic ear so you can hear where your enemy is coming from more acutely.

The perks are a little predictable and occasionally uninspired but they are welcome. The fact that experience only goes towards the class you’re playing is a nice touch too, ensuring that players are less likely to be overpowerful too quickly. There’s also impetus to keep playing as once you max out two classes and their perks, you can then play as the Recon class which is a rather fearsome mix of the Rifleman and Sniper classes.

On paper, Breach is quite respectable but lacking in true originality. In reality though, it suffers from numerous irritating bugs and glitches which fast begin to grate. There were numerous times I spotted bodies becoming stuck in walls or character animations faltering, and overall everything just looked a bit second rate. At one point, I became stuck in a convoy truck simply because I wanted to get off a gun turret attached to it. I was stuck no matter how hard I tried to jump, until eventually someone shot me. Even more annoying was the way in which the game froze for a millisecond every time I gained experience from a kill. In a game that requires fast reactions when confronted by an enemy, pausing for a split second is really not good enough.

That’s nothing however compared to unlocking achievements. When I unlocked the first achievement it was during a frantic firefight. I’d run into a building with three enemy soldiers. I shot two of them and then the achievement for gaining a certain amount of experience unlocked. My console froze for more than a millisecond. It’d be difficult to estimate just how long but it was long enough that when the game had caught up, I was dead by the hands of the third enemy soldier. A similar freeze occurred the next time I unlocked an achievement and so on. Infuriating? Oh yes.

Pros:

• Tense, slow paced action
• Destructible environments
• Convoy is a fantastic game type

Cons:

• Once the community is gone, there’s no game
• Glitchy and buggy
• Uninspiring
• Expensive

Overall, if this were a school report for Breach, it’d be a solid ‘Shows potential, but could try harder’. While it’s easy to dismiss as mediocre and generic, it offers glimpses of potential such as the tense, tactical type of play and the Convoy gametype. It doesn’t however feel worth paying 1200 points for. It’s just a little too generic.

Score: 5/10

Video source: PixelEnemy