Breached (PC) Review

At first glance, it seems like the perfect project for a team with a minimal budget to undertake. The drones' hovercraft-style propulsion is basic "snap to terrain" movement programming, and the enemies appear only as spheres of coloured light. This, combined with the fact that most events are conveyed through text and graphical filters, means that scripted sequences could be accomplished very simply without lessening their impact. The drones may have an unorthodox control scheme that accelerates sluggishly but can stop on a dime, the collision physics may be totally weightless, and the admittedly appropriate sound design may get fairly dull after a while, but it almost doesn't matter. The game is so well-presented that the atmosphere of being separated from this beautiful but inhospitable setting by a thin layer of technology still shines through.

Unfortunately, once the actual gameplay gets underway, all hopes of entertainment steadily evaporate. Its first and most obvious fault is that it quickly reveals itself as nothing but a collection of shallow fetch quests. From the outset, players are given two tasks: open supply capsules for parts to repair the oxygen generator, and gather minerals to synthesise fuel. There's a tiny bit of strategy in prioritising different capsules with different probable contents, but it doesn't make unearthing them any more enjoyable. The magnetic anomalies that form the only obstacles merely exacerbate this tedium. They "attack" by disrupting the protagonist's video signal and pulling drones to their demise whenever one passes near. It would be a lie to say that desperately trying to escape one's magnetism isn't engaging, but they're so unpredictable and inconveniently placed that they're more irritating than anything.

It doesn't help that huge chunks of the game's three areas contain nothing but magnetic anomalies, even when their structure suggests they should be hiding something more valuable. All three of them exhibit this flaw, though it's not overly frustrating in the case of two of them. The third one, conversely, is set in a mesa-filled canyon, with seemingly everything worth finding located on the upper levels, which can only be accessed by taking highly specific, barely noticeable paths upward. Exploring this place is the definitive nadir of the entire product, but at least it looks gorgeous. The level design in general is quite realistic, helping make its eerie stillness inexplicably striking.

The greatest disservice Breached does to its own concept, though, is fail to see it through. It feels like this should be the first two hours of a much more complete game. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that those two scavenging objectives are intended as an introductory mission - the map that scavenge locations are selected from clearly shows dozens of additional grid spaces, and each capsule contains a unique sci-fi tool that might easily have some future gameplay purpose - but they actually comprise the entire game. The anomalies are similarly underused. The different colours they exhibit presumably indicate some altered behaviour or ability, but if that's the case, it's far too subtle to actually be noticeable.

Speaking of which, would you like to know what the significance of the anomalies turns out to be? So would everyone else, because the game certainly doesn't want to offer an explanation. The story commits a lot of sins, but ignoring many of its own driving questions is easily the most severe. Not that the questions it does answer are really worth solving. The most significant one - what happened to the civilisation you're poking around the ruins of? - ends up being so bland that even the vagueness with which it's delivered can't incite the imagination to come up with something more interesting. There's a few different endings depending on some final actions, but each one is as anticlimactic and ultimately meaningless as the last.