nce, I had high hopes for Breed. In fact, if it gets a patch that fixes all of the broken bits (of which there are many), it may be a decent game someday. The ideas are sound, even original, but they’re also all implemented very poorly. I can’t think of a single element of this title that works well, and several don’t work at all.

In Breed you control a squad of space marines, among whom you can switch on the fly, but their AI when you’re not controlling them makes them worse than useless. They don’t just get stuck, they also jump off of cliffs and waste precious sniper ammo in close combat. This is especially disheartening once you realize that level design in Breed mainly consists of two things: Emplaced guns you must snipe from far away or die, and hordes of identical enemies to be mowed down. Run out of sniper ammo, and the mission is all but lost – just one of those mounted weapons can tear your force apart in disgustingly short order if left operational.

Vehicles are present in some missions and help to spice up the gameplay, but driving them is generally less effective than being on foot – especially since your squad can’t join you on them. Weapons are similarly disappointing. Not only do they sound wimpy, but the alien energy weapons you capture are so worthless you can’t help but wonder how they took over the Earth in the first place. The human weapons are named strangely, but they behave exactly the same as the standard FPS rifles, shotguns, and such.

There are some exciting moments in Breed, where you really feel like you’re humanity’s last bulwark against extinction by hostile aliens. Surmounting the insane odds you’re put up against is a great feeling, and some parts of the environments are destructible – it’s pretty awesome the first few times you collapse a tower on top of some aliens’ heads. These fleeting seconds of brilliance, however, are nowhere near enough to make me forgive the problems that plague this game.

Normally I try to refrain from commenting on stability issues, since they’re almost always different from PC to PC, but Breed forces me to. On any of the three machines at GI’s top-secret headquarters, it was a miracle if Breed went 15 minutes without crashing to desktop. If you absolutely must have a new sci-fi shooter you might consider this, but playing through Halo yet again is worlds better in my book.  

MATT MILLER   6.75 Breed is cool because it lets you try so many things, and uncool because it doesn’t do any of them particularly well. The environments are huge, but they lack variety. The vehicles are plentiful, but the controls are often awkward. However, my biggest complaint has to be the AI. Enemies often lack the most basic common sense. And though you can switch between allied team members at will, the computer-controlled squad is woefully stupid. There are also some horrific technical glitches, which the developer would be wise to address in an early patch. Still, the game has some bracing action, and includes a driving, pulse-pounding soundtrack.