Arguably one of the most anticipated titles slated for release on the Xbox, Digital Anvil's Brute Force captured the attention of eager shooter fans with a constant trickle of graphically drool worthy screenshots and promises of the most exciting squad-based tactical multiplayer action during the console's infancy. Several delays and a few trips back to the drawing board later, the long overdue title has finally seen the fluorescent light of stores nationwide with surprisingly minimal fanfare. And the question on the minds of many gamers is just exactly how much of the promised gaming bliss has Brute Force managed to deliver?

This third-person shooter begins with the assemblage of a squad of professional soldiers for hire called, well, Brute Force. You will spend the first few missions in the single player campaign getting to know the four characters available to you (gradually as the story progresses), each an expert in a specialized field of combat. From dual weapon wielding commando Tex to female cyborg sharpshooter Flint, the characters are designed with group work in mind. It is up to you (and preferably your merry friends) to utilize their skills to accomplish the multitude of missions thrown in your face. Speaking of merry friends, there are also multiplayer havoc to be wreaked in the form of a split-screen/system-link co-op mode and your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch modes which I can hardly wait to gloat about.

But like all good things, that will have to wait while I break the single player campaign down for you. Fans of Halo (I managed to hold off the Halo comparisons until now, but you all know it is coming) will be disappointed to know that an engaging and/or epic tale is sorely missing here, instead, an array of missions that rarely deviate from the shooting of things while :

(a) retrieving some object

(b) protecting some mentally challenged individual who enjoys pain in the form of getting shot a lot, and

(c) shooting more things,

are all that we get here. On the other hand, to the credit of the developers and to my personal delight, Brute Force inherits the extremely intuitive control scheme of Halo with a few additions to accommodate its squad-based gameplay. Each player can only carry two weapons at once, and switching between your weapons is accomplished with a press of the Y button. X handles the reloading and holding it down while standing over a dropped weapon will, Halo veterans can say it with me, discard your active weapon and pick up the new toy.

Additions to the control scheme include the quick health-pack action and the special abilities (we will get to that) mapped to the black and white buttons respectively, and the D-pad used to give commands to your AI-controlled teammates and to body-hop between the human (and not so human) vessels that is your team. Everything is vanilla ice-cream peachy except for the third person perspective which I find slightly annoying at times. Your view of the action is displayed from several feet behind a character, and so places enemies further from your view point and effectively smaller on screen. This issue rears its head (a small tiny head in this case) during split-screen matches and has caused for the closing of the distance between my couch and TV. This is, however, just a small gripe and I am sure many will have no problems at all adjusting to the view.

Although lacking in the story department and losing points for its generic missions, Brute Force makes a comeback in a respectably large way with the fierce battles against some creative rivals in environments that come close to graphical nirvana. The action is quite fast-paced and just several missions into the campaign will have most players thanking the developers for the lifesaving gift that is the quick health-pack button. Commendations should also go to the development team for placing a respectable arsenal (with some accessible only to certain characters) at our disposal. Each weapon feels quite distinctive and I very quickly picked my favorites.

The enemies bent on blowing you up (and giving the cloning facilities at home base a lot of business) during your visits to the many worlds exhibit a variety of AI routines that reward discerning players for being tactful when approaching enemy camps. A memorable (and extremely maddening) specie of spell casters is able to teleport around the battlefield while lesser minions bounce back and forth between crystal formations to keep your team on your collective toes.

To further spice things up and distinguish between the playable characters, each is bestowed with a special ability that can be useful, but only if you deliberately make it so. For example, Hawk, the stealth expert, can become invisible, in a lovely Predator kind of way, and sneak up on opponents to strike them down with a melee attack. The practicality of this skill, however, can be limited if you are not the most strategic of mind. In a single player game, you will have to order your teammates to stay back while Hawk pulls a infiltrate and eliminate so as not to trigger enemy responses, but then Hawk might get in trouble amidst a crowd of ferocious hell beasts with high-tech kill devices with help about 3 miles away.

During multiplayer, I find that my teammates, often in the roles of Tex and Brutus, two cold-blooded (Brutus especially so considering his lizardman lineage) life-sized action figures, would always charge in and cut down everything that moves before I even have a chance to go hollowman on them.

The tactical aspects of the game suffer from the same fate – you can use them, but it is usually easier to just run in and shoot things in the head, if they have heads. Plus, the friendly AI on your teammates is fairly underwhelming and characters will often require constant supervision to stay alive and accomplish the tasks you intend for them. After some frustrating attempts on the later levels, I found it much more effective to hide my unused characters and bring them in one by one to do their thing. A consolation is that only one team member needs to survive in order to complete the missions.

Once you plug in a few extra controllers or go system-link, however, fun starts to roll in at an exponential rate! Multiplayer co-op, aside from the aforementioned split-screen annoyance associated with the third person view, is simply some of the best fun to be had for a small group of dedicated gamers. The deathmatch modes, especially squad deathmatch, will also consume much of your time, as it allows you to take your squad of four members and to head-to-head with another team led by your friend. It therefore pains me greatly that plans for Xbox Live! Support (aside from some unspecified downloadable content) had been scrapped during development.

As I have hinted at before, and probably to the knowledge of all who have seen screenshots of Brute Force in action, this game is graphically quite outstanding. Environments are open, varied and rendered in great detail. And the initially impressive surroundings eventually give way to even more mesmerizing sights that very few current Xbox games can rival. It is a slight disappointment that these visually stunning locations are not very interactive with the exception of some objects that explode or deteriorate when shot at. Also it had me wishing that the level designs were as impressive as the levels they themselves looked.

Characters, both friend and foe, look respectable, even upon closer inspection (not recommended for foes) and have fairly nice animations to go with the eye-catching bods. The nice graphics do come at a small price by the way of minor stutters on occasion, but I would happily pay this toll for the admission to graphical heaven.

The sound effects of Brute Force also show a degree of polish that further proves its Microsoft first-party pedigree. Weapons sound as you would expect them to, even for the more exotic kinds that I hope none of us have had the pleasure of hearing in real life. The dialogue is also quite well done in a campy action-movie kind of way. I especially enjoy the nonchalant way that Tex deliver his lines, it always brings a grin and occasional chuckles to my face. The music does not fare as well, but complements the action with adequacy. I think the game would benefit from some more intense tunes during the heat of battle, but it isn't missed much. On a whole though, I am sure that your ears will be happily occupied as your eyes ogle at the beautiful sights while your fingers deal sweet death to your enemies.