Namco is looking to bring something new to the table with Breakdown. The first thing you’ll run into is the theatrical style intro that is pretty amazing, showing off a lot of things that you will be doing, fighting, and running away from. It’s only a taste of it, so enjoy it while it last because nothing is as easy as it looks.

The graphics in the game are superb with cool eye candy from time to time. While in training, you will see that everything is done in first person view. So when you do a roll or a back-flip, you will see your view spin around according to the maneuver you performed…a back-flip will show your hands touching the ground as you throw your body over. Sounds like this could be some really good stuff to do when you are in the heat of battle and want to dodge incoming fire. Well, we’ll talk about that more in just a few.

The soundtrack in the game is pretty average. Namco appears to make their own music for their games, so expect something that goes with the mood or setting in the game…but nothing you would want to play outside of your Xbox. The voice talent was pretty good, though sometimes the sound gets a little scrambled when there are too many sounds. Other than that, everything is fine.

The controls in the game are very tricky to learn. At first, you will go through a training to get you acquainted with the basic controls. Then you go through the hand to hand combat training along with weapons training. Here is where things start to get a little weird. When working with weapons, your new found interactivity allows you to pick up a clip, but your character does not store it anywhere. He picks it up, looks at it waiting for you to press the use button again to put it away or toss it. This can get very annoying when you are in a gun fight and you run out of ammo, forcing you to ravage a dead body for extra clips, and then having to go through the long process of inspecting your clip, and reloading your gun. Meanwhile, opposing forces are using your body as a bullet depot. Once you run out of ammo and don’t have enough time to grab ammo, you will have to lay the smack down with your two handheld dogs and kick ass with your feet. Remember when I mentioned that things seem easier when seen…well, this is the hard part. For you to land a punch or a kick, you have to be right on the person, forgetting what ever you learned about depth of vision and leg reach. It’s very hard to hit an opponent with your hand to hand combat tactics. And it gets even harder when the person you are fighting has a gun. Expect to die immediately.

The game itself is very hard and will have you doing certain areas over again. They start you off with a machine gun with one clip. As soon as you leave the safety of your room, you will engage some resistance. You would expect with an auto targeting system available, you would breeze through the game…but that is totally misleading in this game. In most cases, it hinders your fighting ability. Once you get the hang of knocking out military scum, you are thrown another twister…you start hallucinating that you can see your skeleton. Aside from that, your enemies become unbeatable forcing you to run from them before they clobber you with their enormous fist. Eventually, you will unlock this power that will allow you to fight this new breed of enemies, but you’ll have such a hard time getting to that point that you may lose interest in the game all together. Sure Breakdown adds a nice twist to FPS, but the difficulty level is extremely high on even just the normal setting. At the moment, I’m still stuck in an area that I’m being pounded into a bloody pulp in a broken elevated by these dudes with impenetrable shields and a wicked grudge for humans.

Final Thoughts
Breakdown offers a nice view into the FPS line of gaming with its first person perspective on everything from gun fights to hand springs. I find the gameplay to be incredibly hard. I would recommend this game as a rental to get a taste of something new. But to own it, will only cause countless hours of frustration and annoyances as you replay checkpoints that appears to have no possible or reasonable method of escape. But the storyline will have you gripped till the end.

Graphic 75%
Sound 65%
Controls 55%
Gameplay 65%
Overall 68%

Click here to check out the Official Breakdown website.