Chances are that you have never heard of this game. You'll most likely not have heard of Apeiron, the developers, either. It's one of those obscure Russian titles that have been released in Russia for a few years, and had many years of delay to get a translation going. Eventually, a few months ago this game was released in the rest of Europe. This will be as much of a review, as it will be a simple thread in which I tell you all kinds of lovely things about this game, so you know it exists. Also, the game had a prequel called Brigade E5: New Jagged Union. It scored an average of 4.2 on Metacritic. 7.62 scores half a point higher, on average.
Right! Now that you know this game exists, let's have a look at it.
The main focus of the game is tactical team based combat. It takes a lot of elements straight out of the Jagged Alliance series (hence the title of Brigade E5, though it was originally New Jagged Alliance). A big difference is the lack of turn based combat. Everything is completely real-time, with a twist. You can set events at which moment the game can pause, zoom in on the event, show a shortcut and have a popup. Because one or two seconds can literally mean life or death (or a pistol round into your leg which immobilizes you, but more on that later), it's quite handy to be able to hand out orders on the millisecond. Should you for some reason need to do a part of the battle without pausing, the game allows time compression ranging from -7.5x to +7.5x. This also allows for some pretty cool shots. Apeiron calls this "Smart Pause Mode". Quite catchy, I guess.
Besides micromanaging the orders on the field of battle, there is also the micromanagement of your inventory and loadout. You can carry backpacks, belts with extra pouches, tactical vests, armored vests and you can throw a weapon or two around your neck (while you already have one in your hand). It might be a good idea to take an extra weapon, or a sidearm, into battle.. Just in case you get your main weapon shot out of your hand, but don't expect to switch between them Unreal Tournament style. Fill your pouches up with magazines, hand grenades, tripwires, medical equipment, or weapon modules and such things. Besides being limited by space, you are "sort of" limited by weight. You can go over your weight limit, but this will slow you down and drain your stamina a lot faster. Don't expect to take a big machinegun, a sniper rifle, a machine pistol and full ammo with you. You'll have to compromise, or hire more mercenaries (which isn't such a bad idea).
The game features approximately 225 weapons, and although some of these weapons are variants of another one, you'll probably never get bored of them. These range from the good old Uzi and variants, to sniper rifles such as the SV-98 and SR-25, to assault rifles like the venerable AKM and M16A2s, submachine guns, automatic pistols, normal pistols, machineguns and the more exotic ones like.. well.. Gyrojet weapons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet]. Don't worry, we're not done yet in this department. This is one of the reasons that makes the game so interesting. "Gunporn".
As you can see in this screenshot, this is a lovely AEK-973, chambered in 7.62x39mm. It can be equipped with a suppressor, bayonet, underbarrel grenade launcher (GP-30, in this case), a bipod, optics (currently equipped with a Kobra reflex sight, a flashlight module and a laser module. That's a lot of goodies! The rifle grenades you see are VOG-25Ps. These jump up in the air after they have hit the surface, creating a pretty localized airburst. The magazines are loaded with standard full metal jacket, steel core rounds, but you can also buy subsonic ammunition, or armor piercing ammunition.. or the cheaper ammo that is made locally. Enough to keep the gunfreak happy! Also, magazines come in different sizes, metal or plastic, you can tape together.. This game offers a lot of customization.
The combat can be really intense. You and your band of fearless mercenaries are often, if not always, outnumbered. This is where superior equipment, superior tactics and... quick saving.. comes into play. This game is not for sissies. If you get hit by a bullet, expect blood loss, a skyrocketing adrenaline and stress which really hinders your accuracy. Get shot in the head, and you might get knocked out cold. Get shot in the arms, you might lose your weapon and have permanent decreased accuracy (until you perform surgery or visit a hospital). Getting shot in the legs might render them useless, leaving you crawling in the dirt. This game does not mess about. Fortunately, the AI does not work any differently. Suppressing them with your machinegun will stress them out, occasionally having them freak out and panic, and even if that grenade won't penetrate their armored vest, it will at least disrupt them, allowing you to flank around .. or if you're brave enough, charge him with your bayonet.
So far, this is all good. This is great, if you enjoy such things. Now why does the game have such a pitiful score? Well, let's begin with the story, then.
You are a mercenary, dropped in war torn Algeira.. some fictional South American country where a civil war rages between rebels and the omnipresent government. Initially, you have nothing to do with both of them. You are here for a mission to find some guy who owes some other dude a lot of cash, after all. Finding him without any help will be an entirely different matter, and that's where you side with either the government or the rebels. You perform mundane tasks like delivering packages to people "to prove your loyalty", escort quests and finally you earn the actual trust of your "commanding officer". That's where you get into the real action, but the path to get there can be a nuisance.
[image src="http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6167/brigade762highcalibre5b.jpg" alt="Graphics schmaphics" align="right" width="390" height="293"] http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6167/brigade762highcalibre5b.jpg[/IMG]
Now have a look at the graphics. This game was released in 2007
(in Russia, at least). Hard to believe, eh? The game is pretty poorly optimized, and suffers from a horrible memory leak that the
developers have, apparently, been unable to fix. The only remedy is to restart the game every hour or two, or you'll risk crashing to desktop. You'll also come across a bug or two that will render a quest broken, as the guy you needed to kill or escort out is stuck in a ceiling. It might be funny at first, but it can quickly become frustrating. Time to reload. Save often, save often, save often. The game will probably crash at some point or bug out. The voice acting is atrocious, as well. Fortunately, you can drag the Speech slider down to 0.
To me, however, these are minor complaints. On the other hand, a
professional game reviewer would have to take every aspect of the game into consideration , which leads to a rather pathetic score. After all, the game is glitchy, the story sucks, the graphics are bad .. how can that still earn a 6 out of 10?
There are probably a few things I have missed. Random encounters with bandits, enemy patrols, using explosive traps, or timed charges, the rocket launchers.. There is just so much to play with. Are you going to be a long range oriented mercenary team with sniper rifles and machineguns, or do you like to do the dirty work up close with submachine guns and shotguns? Maybe a taste of a revolving grenade launcher?
If you were into Jagged Alliance or the UFO series (Not X-Com, but the games developed by Altar Games), then you should probably give this a go. The community is small, but dedicated, with a few mods in development. The developers said there will be no patches in the future, so everything is up to the community (and they so happen to have an unofficial patch out. Don't play without it!)
I just wanted to share this with you. It's a shame that these gems are often missed out on. The fact that it only caters to a very specific part of the gaming community doesn't help either..
