Dork.

Broadly I liked the demo - some rough edges, and why can't I tell my troops to advance without me, but I like the idea...

But my main problem is the crashes I get periodically Bluescreened, with an error about one of my nvidia drivers (I think). This happens with both a GF2 and GF4MX IGP, with a variety of recent drivers. Anyone got any ideas? Other than new hardware I'm waiting for a passively cooled 9600... Does anyone know when Nvidia's drivers stopped being worth updating for GF2 class cards?

The game just needs more time is all. I just hope CDV doesn't pressure Brat into a too early release date. Breed offers basically everything that BF '42 does minus the sea-going ships.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently Playing: Unreal 2 On Deck: Brute Force (Xbox) Reading: "Darwins Radio" by Greg Bear

I agree with Haggard, this game could still be a great game. Forget the singelplayer game. I have played with all the vihecles for a week now and still not bored. And then there's the Breed race and theire vihecles too.

I just hope they fix alot of the sounds, they all seem to be placeholders anyway. I don't really care about the AI at all, this game was made for multiplayer mayhem.

(and to think that I really hated this game before i got the scripts )

This game has "german" written all over it.

FYI the game is being developed by Brat Designs who are in the UK. It seems CDV have stamped their rotten mark on the game to such an extent that people are even thinking it was made in Germany.

As for the audio, you're absolutely right. most of it is only placeholders AFAIK. It's unfortunate that Brat were compelled, perhaps pushed a little, to put out a beta demo when there is still a lot of work to do on important presentation aspects like the voice acting and general sound effects.

I just want people to be aware of this stuff. Breed has a huge following, and I think it has huge potential - you can see it if you play around with the demo, get some third party scripts or do some scripting yourself. Fly some of the vehicles, fly up into orbit, land on your mothership, switch instantly back to one of your squad on the earth witha keystroke and so on...you start to see some of the real innovations going on here and some of the really cool stuff that was unfortunately unavailable in the unmodified demo.

I'm not saying most of the criticism isn't justified. There's a lot for them to do, and I certainly get the impression that every bit of feedback is being taken onboard. It's a beta after all, and I'm sure plenty of ppl who've been on beta programs will testify that most games at this stage are pretty horrible to play - IMHO Breed is not, I've had a tonne of fun with the beta, and I'm still not bored

Let's just wait and see. I just hope everyone gives the game a second chance when it's finally released. Multiplayer promises to be really fun.

This comment was edited on May 28, 12:30.

two of my people died from being too stupid to take cover

The squadmates are a real liability. I actually ended up using one character to clear the path ahead and then go back and get the squad.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently Playing: Unreal 2 On Deck: Brute Force (Xbox) Reading: "Darwins Radio" by Greg Bear

I kept getting stuck on hills (or sliding down them sideways for no reason), had enemies spawn three feet in front of me, two of my people died from being too stupid to take cover, and my heavy weapons dude got stuck on a flat surface and was unable to move.
And yet, when I got to the waypoint, I still heard a voice saying they would "wait here and secure the perimiter".

First post on bluesnews. I just had to pitch in some on this game here, yeah.

This game has "german" written all over it. Anyone having played Neocron knows what i mean. The design is uninspired, the pacing is bad, the AI is painful, the weapons are dull and weak and are way too quiet, the voice acting actually made my jaw drop. I was utterly inspired in fact by the lack of skill at play. The commander voice is one of the most hideously disfigured pieces of voice acting i have ever heard in any game. While neocron was bad due to the german accents, this game is bad because it's plain old fashioned horrible.

Actually if there is one solid piece of argumentation i have against any chance of Breed working commercially, its the sound work. Whoever does audio for these guys, oh man. Poor guy. Volumes are low, nothing has punch, voices are painful listening, weapon audio is disproportionate to the presentation.. The whole thing is simply disproportionate.

And whats the deal with the pacing. The dropship sequence doesnt do a god damn thing. exhibit a) "Ubergun"???????
b) it takes the dropship about a minute to land after youve broken down those thingies.
c) it looks like eh. A flying house.looks like the modeller had fun with the front part and then just stopped giving a rats ass. 2/3 of the ship is made up from approx 50 polygons.

The aforementioned sence of detachment rings very true, because there is little or nothing to love here. There is no intensity to the action to revel in, no depth of game world or storyline to fall in love with, nothing to be amazed by or taken in by. The game simply doesn't do a god damn thing on any level.

I think one of the main structural failings of the game lies in its developer's lack of real direction with the game design. It seems like the focus is half and half console/PC. The interface is loosely console-ish, but includes god knows how many unimportant key bindings. The pacing is console-like in that it's slow and unresponsive. I have no problems imagining the game to be better played with an xbox controller.

Ramble ramble. I suppose i can just sum it up with "uninspired" and uninstall it. It made me laugh pretty hard though;

"ALIENS GET LOST
As the commander of humankind's lone surviving battleship, this is your one and only thought upon your return to earth in the year 2610"

not to forget the timeless:
"The devastating war with the Breed waged in the far reaches of the universe was nothing but a diversion! While the battle was raging far away, THE AGRESSIVE ALIENS TOOK OVER EARTH"

How dumb do they think we are? "Oh fizzuck! All our armies are on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE! Talk about caught with our pants down guys!"

I simply set the resolution to 1024x768 (down from 1280x1024) ... Bizarrely, the game proceeded to ignore v-sync and run at a good 100-150+ FPS.

150+ FRAMES PER SECOND!!!!

I had to drop the resolution to 640 x 480 to get 20+ FPS when their werent too many trees around!! I found the best thing to increase my FPS was to mow as many trees down as i could on the way in on the drop ship (ie press fire, hear sound effect, second later screen refreashes missing a bunch of trees, repeat until dropship landed).

Still, despite the fact that my laptop hates me now, the head bobbing was too damn annoying. You cant see enemys until they start shooting at u (not sure is thats my resolution or wether they only appear when u get near). And the guns suck, you would think big mounted chain gun thingy would shake the room, but no. Who the hell wants to use a lazer machine gun, if it doesent make a loud enough noise??

well thats my rant, i truly hope they listen to the feedback and change it. I dont think it would take much to fix this to give halo a good run for its money, but i guess we shall see!

oh yeah, waaay too many controls too, nothing worse than spending 10mins trying to set up the controls, they should all be the same for all the vehicles etc.

http://www.poorintern.com
- The Voices In My Fruit Loops Tell Me I'm Special -

I can't believe that the people who released this demo didn't include the vehicles. I've been messing around with the vehicles for about an hour ago, and they're a crapload of fun! On the Breed official forums, some guys have even gone and modded it more - by letting you view the cockpits of the fighter and dropship, and also letting you CONTROL the Darwin (the big carrier ship). I like the ability to fly from space onto the planet and vice versa. The vehicles really do give me a new outlook on the game - for those of you that doubted it before, give it a shot with the new vehicle script!

I godda agree that it was alot more fun with the all the viheacles.

There seems to be 2 dropships, 1 fighter and 1 tank inside Darwin. There are also gun turrets on the ship but I could only acces them buy flying outside and then jumping on the ship.
I drove the tank in to one of the droships and flew down to the planet. There I found 1 fighter and some invisble vihecles. A jeep, a flying scout, and an APC. All I could see was the gunner and the front and back lights but they work perfectly.
It's fun to be able to fly up to the mothership again with the tank and all.

This could still be a good game, multiplayer at least....maybe.

This comment was edited on May 26, 18:30.

I've never had a game give me such a bad headache. And the swaying, that's horrible too. Hiring Macho Man Randy Savage as a sarge voice over was pretty bad too. Like I said when the "demo is coming" news came out, I wish it was chrome.

~Halo

Well, the plain vanilla demo may not be fun for some of you but theres plenty to do with some creative scripting. Thanks to one of the regulars at the official Breed forums (all due credit to "waryishe") you can walk about inside the Darwin, play with a tank in the bay, pilot a fighter out, pilot the dropship down to the planet and when you get to the LZ you'll find some driveable vehicles (though they are missing the textures....on my end anyway).

go into the directory where the game is installed, open the "scripts" folder and find the "03_contact.txt" text file. Replace it with the following (don't forget to make a back-up of the original):

http://www.shackspace.com/~dry_hump@shackmail.com/Breed%20script/03_contact.txt (cut-n-paste)

have fun

-Hump


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently Playing:E3 Half-Life 2 movies over and over and over...On Deck: Breed Demo (someday...) Reading: "Darwins Radio" by Greg Bear
This comment was edited on May 25, 22:59.

...got it working. Reading the main site, it looks like certain systems/configurations have a problem with the resolution and/or refresh rate. I simply set the resolution to 1024x768 (down from 1280x1024) and let Windows set the refresh rate at the usual 60Hz (down from 100Hz) and I was subsequently able to run the demo without it crashing at initial load. Bizarrely, the game proceeded to ignore v-sync and run at a good 100-150+ FPS.

As for the demo itself, pretty much everything has been covered. My main impressions were that it was quite rough, the bob level was insane, both good and bad NPCs are fairly dumb (I lost half of my team going across a bridge; two of them decided to swim under the bridge and drowned while doing so), I never knew where an enemy was until it started blue lasers at me, and the voice acting is quite bad.

All that aside, I would say that it is actually a rather good budget and/or small developer title. My main gripes are over the general gameplay and mechanics. At this point, it is a real chore to just play, not to mention lacking any real fun. I do not wish anything bad for the developers, but the title is way too rough for me to ever consider purchasing. Gameplay wins at the end of the day.

Wondering if the graphics were scaled back or if this is final,
Ray

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 24th, 2000: The day I learned that Looking Glass was to be no more.
http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
Currently playing: Enclave, Half-Life (still the best), Rygar, and Raven Shield.

LOL, Dan said it best.

Well, yeah... I already knew the answer.

let us all enjoy crap together

"The" Dan
Intel 486SX, Trident video, 8MB RAM, 14" Generic Monitor, 100 MB HDD, Windows 3.11
http://www.ghostmastergame.com
"It's where it's at!" --Dantastic

spoiled... spoiled so by high-profile 30 man development companies that we cannot enjoy a rough but impressive beta demo of a game by such a small company? Sheesh.

To 64:
Based on your (and a lot of other people's) review, I was having really low expectations for this game. However, I found out that the game isn't really that bad. Sure, it's not the greatest, but it's a good Halo substitute. It won't beat Halo, mainly because Halo already has name recognition, but it should do alright. There are, by the way, footsteps. I hear them fine on my machine. Yeah, the spawning bad guys suck, and so does the DI-wannabe's voice.

uh....well I guess their still is stalker and farcry????


I hear this about every game that comes out. People look forward to one game, then it turns out to suck and they say
"we'll have to wait for game X" It's a big damn worthless treadmill where we are all waiting for the "next game".

Well, guess what- IT NEVER COMES lol. Gaming today is just a vast wasteland of broken promises.

No I'm not bitter, really.

This comment was edited on May 24, 18:11.