Breakdown review

The world of Breakdown is set in a semi-futuristic urban Japan, a sterile industrial world controlled by faceless economic powers. Even though my character seemed to be a competent enough warrior (and soon after that, something far stronger than any human) the story and surroundings do a good job of impressing a hopeless feeling that you are but a pawn on a mission that you could never fully understand. This atmosphere is nothing new in the world of anime, but we don’t see too many games of this style on the Xbox.

The protagonist is your standard amnesiac badass. In tune with the Japanese theme, you’re a spiky-haired man with a thin build and incredible dexterity. All of the sci-fi anime stereotypes are shamelessly present: the crusty old scientist determined to save the world, the tough but compassionate female warrior in black leather, the enigmatic white-haired bad guy. The juvenile obsession with military hardware (both real and imaginary) and cool looking super powers drive all of the important game mechanics.

First Person

The big selling point of Breakdown lies in the fact that your avatar is made up of more than a floating gun. You can look down at your entire body at any time and see your limbs, your body in motion looks especially cool when crawling and doing evasive flips. When picking up an item, searching bodies and opening doors, you actually see your hand reach out and snatch your objective. None of this really adds anything to gameplay, sometimes it acts to the contrary: every time you grab an item your character holds it in front of his face before adding it to his inventory. This can be a serious problem if you’ve got a gaggle of enemies gunning for you and you need to score some ammo.

Very early in the game you acquire a mostly useless pistol and an MP5 submachine gun that you will use to dispatch 90% of your human opponents. Grenades and a couple of heavier weapons eventually round out your earthly arsenal. The catch here is that the guns only work on your human opponents, until you develop your basic set of super powers you’ll be running from your new alien friends. Not to worry, soon enough you’ll be able to break through their shield technology with your fists and toss mostly useless fireballs to waste your energy.

Hand to Hand

The hand to hand combat mechanics in Breakdown are sort of a realistic version of the old Punch Out! games. Each trigger controls the corresponding fist, and work in conjunction with the analogue stick to form special attacks and combos. As a former martial artist, I was pretty impressed with the attention to detail paid to each strike. To make an effective strike, your limb must start in a deliberate position (called a “chamber”) and then move quickly to strike and each of these moves looked just as I’d remembered them from the eyes of the main character. Couple together this satisfying feeling of powerful strikes and the intuitive fighting controls and you are left with the best first-person fighting experience on any game thus far.

All of this combat would be sublime if not for the horrendous auto-targeting system. As soon as you fire a shot or throw a punch you are locked onto the nearest enemy, for better or worse. Almost every time I fell in battle it was because I was forcibly faced toward one opponent while the other bludgeoned me from behind. It is possible to switch targets or cancel the lock-on altogether, but it is cumbersome. In the end, I had to keep backing up to try and line up the enemies so that the guys I was not fighting were behind my target and not behind me, some of the time this left me in a corner with few options but to restart from my last checkpoint. It is possible to win fights within this set of rules, but it is unfortunate that the player must spend so much time fighting the targeting system instead of his opponents.

A Muddy Playground

Some aspects of Breakdown are gorgeous. Enemies and non-player characters look great, weapons and your super powers look ultra cool. Certain moments really shine with sharp-looking, downright awesome artistic style. In the end, these moments are too few and far between, as most of the game is populated with dull architecture and ugly, muddy textures. I really don’t see why this game had to be an Xbox exclusive, as both the PS2 and GameCube would be perfectly capable of handling the graphical load. If either the art direction or the level of detail were consistently good, this would qualify as a good looking game in my book, but sadly it falls a little bit short.

About halfway through the game, the scenery makes several dramatic changes. The sterile skyscraper backdrop gives way to a lush green valley, an alien sanctuary and a post-apocalyptic wasteland, all staples of Japanese cartoons. The only unfortunate feature that all environments share is a simplistic and repetitive level design. Going from a predictable building layout to a varied and imaginative organic world could have broken up the game and made for a more satisfying experience, but even the later levels suffer from a constant feeling of déjà vu of the area just meters behind you.

Surround effects are used to good effect and sound great on my ProLogic2 stereo system. Voice acting is decent throughout, and the music thumps with a tolerable, bass-heavy techno beat. There is really nothing spectacular about the presentation of sound, but no obvious improvements come to mind, either.

Final Digs

As a bad a picture as I’ve painted for this game, I still really enjoyed playing it. Few games really compel me to play on like this one did and that is because of the superior storyline and pacing. Control flaws and unremarkable technology aside, this is an experiment in game design that does more right than it does wrong and the good moments outweigh the frustrating ones. I thought briefly about outlining some of the plot twists and mind games that the player will encounter, but that would totally spoil the experience.

As hard as it to convey just how cool this game is, I’m still going to recommend that fans of first person combat (and especially anime fans) pick this one up. If nothing more than an interesting footnote in the evolution of gaming ideas, it would be a real shame to let this game fade into obscurity without at least coming to your own conclusion.