Review – Brawl Busters

Review: Brawl Busters
Released: 15^th December 2011
Genre: Third Person Action Brawler
Developer: Skeinglobe
Publisher: Rock Hippo Productions Ltd / Weezor Inc.
Format Reviewed: PC
Players: 1-8 (Online Multiplayer)

On the 19^th January 2012 Olivier Comte, senior vice president for Europe of Namco Bandai, whilst speaking at Cloud Gaming Europe was quoted as saying “Free-to-play games can’t be high quality”. On the surface this would appear to be generally true. If you were to suggest free to play to the casual gamer, their mind may drift to the thousands of Farmville style clones that Zynga produce on a seemingly daily basis, or the two minute flash games at places such as Miniclip.com

Skeinglobe’s new release, at  just over a month old,  aims to break the conventions of the free-to-play genre and establish themselves as the kings in a relatively untapped genre.

From the off Brawl Busters has made the decision that it doesn’t want to waste time with back story or wanting to develop personalities of the characters involved. If you look at their website, which is extremely user friendly and inviting, there is little to suggest a history or story behind the game. Playing through the game itself, you never get overloaded with information of what is actually happening in the game but more importantly ,and this has to be stressed, you don’t actually care.

The trailer for the game, which I would strongly recommend everyone watches (it will be linked at the bottom of the review) adopts the philosophy ‘I brawl therefore I am’, a natural take off of Descartes I think therefore I am. But a humorous addition to the game and the first of many little additions that made me smile through the game, which is also apparent in the trailer, is the enemies who you will be brawling against.

Zombies.

At this point a number of you maybe rolling your eyes, that a new IP has taken the clichéd route of zombies in order to make their game appeal to the casual gamer, but I actually feel that it was an extremely shrewd move. For as long as there have been computer games there has been zombies and in every incarnation of them there has been sales and numerous shipped units. Take ‘Call Of Duty: Black Op’s’ for example, a game which by all rights was slated in the press yet to this day has a top percentile of users still playing Zombie Mode.  However when the origins of zombies begins to be analysed, a gamer tends to lose focus and just want to take a 12 gauge to their brains.

But I digress, in Brawl Busters you are a brawler who is killing zombies or opposing teams in a large variety of entertaining ways. It’s at this point Brawl Busters truly sets itself aside from zombie convention and begins to carve its own niche in the genre.

Upon registration you get to create your character, male or female (something which I very strongly feel should be a part of more games) and you can make them as thin or fat and attractive or ugly as you choose. I chose a large fat man who wouldn’t be amiss from a sumo ring. However the next step is to choose your class and this threw me entirely. There was no sign of a shotgun here. What was presented to me were a number of professions , Slugger (Baseball Star), Blitzer (American Football Star), Boxer, Rocker (think Brutal Legend) and Fire-fighter- each with their own series a special moves and attributes, which allows the player to hone their experience to how they prefer to play, be it attacking from range or tanking.  You then run through a very short introduction level/tutorial which runs through the controls and gives you the first look at the game running.

The Range Of Classes Available

On first look it could quite easily draw visual comparisons to Team Fortress 2 but with a more top down view which I can most liken to the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, which when you consider this game is free to play and according to some people not high quality, is a very high accolade indeed. Everything that you see within the game environment is there for a reason. If there is a fire hydrant hit it and you will be launched to a building’s roof. Use a telephone booth to teleport from one part of the arena to another. Everything will give the garner some sort of reward if you hit it enough. It’s also very pleasant on your ears, up-tempo rhythms keep you going when the action heats up but without being too dynamic as to distract the player.

Due to the game having been active for over a month, I felt it would be prudent to play through the single player mode to begin with to gain a greater affinity to the controls, without having to run through the perpetual minefield of online gaming without practice. There was one negative that immediately came to mind as I worked through the training levels which introduced the varying classes and even that wasn’t to do with the game directly, but more the control configuration.

On first play it became very apparent that the game didn’t mesh too well using just a standard laptop track pad. When charging forwards, it became difficult to turn at the same instance. However I later tested with an external mouse and it was infinitely better, but I feel it is something that needs to be bought to attention and possibly addressed for future, just so that it doesn’t take away from enjoyment of the game or make gamers form an incorrect first impression.

After the initial control issue, I continued to work through the single player missions, which need to be played through in order to progress and unlock further missions. For those that are old enough to remember the original Playstation games Loaded and Reloaded, the game play is very similar and just as accessible. Each character has two basic attacks and a special move to dispose of the onslaught of the undead and whilst this might not seem like too much variety, the previously mentioned power up’s such as Chameleon’s Helmet, Jelly and Bombs prevent the basic game play from becoming stale.

A number of unlockables and rewards become available through play although these are all cosmetic such as sunglasses or hats for your chosen character. What is probably more crucial though is to earn experience points in order to unlock other classes for multiplayer play. It should be said however that the single player missions quickly became a chore  rather than entertainment and you got the feeling that single player was a boot camp preparing you for the true nature of the game. As such I ventured into the world of multiplayer.

And wow. I enjoyed it.

It’s at this point I have to point out that as a general rule I don’t especially like online multiplayer.  I often find the online communities of games to be far too elitist and you are often deemed to be an outsider if you aren’t able to perform on god-like levels.

I didn’t get this feeling with Brawl Busters.

A number of game modes are available from Team Deathmatch, teams of 4 v 4 against each other, a horde mode taken straight from Gears Of War and a recently implemented Boss Battle mode. Diving into horde mode I was teamed with three other players who, based on stats, were all significantly more experienced than myself. As with single player all the defensive and offensive power ups were still available and the added bonus of no friendly fire made it even more appealing to the casual gamer.

Playing through the five waves whilst there was no real sense of togetherness and team work was minimal (something which was needed far more in my venture to team deathmatch) what struck me most was that despite my rank being bottom of the team, I didn’t feel that I was a hindrance to them as is so often the case in multiplayer games. As such it felt extremely accessible and this meant I was able to continue playing for a significant timescale without the enjoyment ever waning; only tiredness was resulting in me having to stop playing.

It should also be noted that aside from a small level of lag during the final round of horde, there game ran very smoothly and even when there lag spikes came, they were so brief that it didn’t take away from the enjoyment of the experience or cause a substantial break in the action.

As with most free-to-play games there are plans to implement the option to purchase additional content. However I don’t see that this would enhance the fundamentals of the game too much and would probably only be recommended for those who would truly want to dedicate a substantial amount of time to the title.

For a free-to-play game, Brawl Busters needed something to make itself stand apart from the Flash Games and relentless Bejewelled Remixes which currently have a stranglehold over the genre, which is why I firmly believe that Brawl Busters has found their place in the free-market. It’s the perfect middle ground for those who don’t have time to commit to an MMORPG like DC Universe which has recently gone free-to-play.

I believe the basics would take a while to master but would be a fulfilling and more importantly provide a fun experience along the way. On a personal note I can certainly see myself playing this in the future but would want further developments to be made, possibly increasing the number of waves in horde mode and a wider variety of boss fights. That said the game is still very much in its infancy and developments are happening on a regular basis.

So whilst Brawl Busters will never score a perfect ten out of ten as there are flaws in the game, I would point Olivier Comte to it as an example of a free to play game being high quality and he would struggle to suggest otherwise.

Rating: