Breed - So, what's the deal with coop multi?

[Aszurom]

Anybody got Breed yet? I've heard a little of good and bad about it - more good lately than anything else but no mention on any major sites that I've seen in relation to the final product.

One thing that really caught my eye is that it's supposed to have coop multiplayer. I assume this is in the normal campaign mode that single player uses - like Halo basically. Since Halo does NOT do this, and I'm looking for something to coop with my fiancee on the LAN, it seems like something worth looking at.

Any opinions based on experience with the title yet? If so, what are the requirements/restrictions on coop multi? (As I understood, direct IP via internet wasn't working but LAN did - but this may be old info.)

[Hump]

The game is a bloody mess.

Evidently theres some type of developer vs publisher situation going on that resulted in Brat submitting their final build a long time ago (rumor has it they stopped getting milestone payements). CDV , for some unfathomable reason, secured an earlier build, took a meat cleaver to it and replaced many of the assets, scripts, etc. For example, the subtle pallette and shaders Brat used in the renderer were replaced by a garish overly-brightened ones that seems to enhance every shortcoming in the Mercury engine such as low-poly character models and low res textures. The AI is a broken mess. Pathing issues abound. You'll get one of your squad 'mates who is supposed to get on an elevator run into a wall next to it and keep running in place and will keep going back even if you "take over" the character and try to set him right again. The AI won't reload their weapons even if they have their ammo supply maxed out. You'll bascially watch them stand around as you get to fight dozens of oncoming opponent NPC's by yourself. The character interface which you order your squadmates around with will stop working for some unknown reason. These little bits just keep coming on and on.

I stopped playing at around the 3rd level. From what I hear, it doesn't get any better later on. I'll never know because I refuse to play the fucking thing.

If theres any positive aspect here it might be the multiplayer but I havent seen more than 3 people on a server at any given time so that will have to wait. I dont have much faith though as the game has been out in Europe for awhile so you'd imagine ther'd be at least one game thats populated with more than 10 players but it looks like thats not the case.

I dont consider myself a whiner. I tend to enjoy shooters that others find lousy (I liked Daikatana and also Gore multiplayer for instance) but this thing is just crap.

Its unfortunate because this had some promise at one time.

[Aszurom]

Cool, saved me $39. I'll get Painkiller instead.

Yeah, I'd read a review that agreed with you. I also saw this gushing thing over at gamershell that made me wonder which one of them was smoking crack. Now I know.

[TheWombat]

The box has a big sticker on the back covering up the printed info on game features; the sticker looks exactly the same except it replaces the info about multiplayer with something like "challenging two-player deathmatch mode." Not a positive sign.

[Peter Olafson]

That would explain the persistent delays in the US version. Shades of the Take-Two edition of Battlecruiser (though Breed presumably works).

Anyone know the details on the dispute?

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to pick up the UK edition, which has been out for a good six months. Does anyone know if this represents the developer's version of the game?

Peter

[Dazmeister]

The UK version hit the shops about 3/4 weeks ago. It's safe to say that it's shit and not worth bothering with.