Breakdown (Xbox)

I set my expectations especially low going into Breakdown - the subject of almost non-exceptional criticism and right ripping - but somehow managed to be severely untertained (it's entertained, only not!) nonetheless.

The reality is that despite the utterly few things Breakdown does get right, the ultra sameyness of the environments, the frustration of combat, the daftness of enemies and the lack of anything remotely appealing, gameplay wise, just bogs the entire thing down from already-low-heights to something completely un-recommendable.

If there's one thing that actually works here it's the combos. They're quite clearly rooted in something like Final Fight or Streets of Rage, and pulling them off occasionally does result in a similar thrill. However, the first person perspective just adds countless layers of confusion, disorientation and frustration, and even if you do land a successful combo you can be sure there's some other twat already charging towards your back.

The whole thing descends into a random making-sure-everyone's-in-front-of-you-and-doesn't-fire-lasers mash-fest, and breaking up that action is endless running through corridors, drinking 'juice', which clearly tries to be mistaken for Coca Cola. With all that first person drinking going on, I'm surprised he never has to pee. Maybe the title refers to kidney failure.

The story has its moments.. Feeble ones and far between, but the cutscenes are certainly the highlight. Played in the first person viewpoint and in realtime most of the time just like Half Life 2, stuff feels like it's really happening. There's some crazy scenes when the main character recalls stuff from his past and goes on Eternal Darkness like LSD trips. They're occasionally quite brilliant, actually, and certainly worthy of some praise, but it's a shame the the shoddyness of the gameplay actually has you weighing their worth against one another, and ultimately sort of... don't blooming care.

So yeah, despite my best efforts (as the excercise partly is, in this thread) I couldn't find gold digging into this turd, and I can't really recommend it even if someone throws it at you.

One thing that attracted me most was the 1st person mechanics.
If you picked up a can of coke for health, you'd see "yourself" drinking that cola just like you'd see it in real life, if you picked up a gun, idem dito.