Review: Brawl Busters (PC MMO)
On the surface it’s hard to forgo the obvious similarities of Brawl Busters to Valve’s popular Team Fortress 2 title. There’s no escaping the fact that the character models share the same whimsical charm, and that it’s red vs blue, but once you dig a little deeper and get a few games under your belt, it starts to show its true colours and proves to the world that it’s not just a simple knock off.
To kick things off in Brawl Busters, you’ll need to choose a class – The long ranging Slugger, The slow but durable Firefighter, the sluggish but heavy hitting Blitzer, the speedy but fragile Boxer and the all-rounder Rocker – to then head straight into online action, or engage in some single player missions to sharpen your skills.
Upon starting the game, you’re given a brief tutorial of the game’s controls which are simple but effective, though certain actions including dodging do make it feel that Brawl Busters could have benefited from gamepad support. They chose to opt for a third person camera, as opposed to the ever popular first person viewpoint, which can make playing with a keyboard and mouse a little more tricky than if it was a first-person shooter. However, these are minor issues and not deal breakers and you’re more likely to be less responsive due to ping rather then the controls. Overall you can say that the controls get the job done.
On the presentation front, Brawl Busters is very successful, even the menus have an “in your face!” attitude to them with the bright colours, extending to the stats screen with their funky charm. The level are very well designed, each one showcasing a theme and varying in size; with Pinball Avenue you’ll find yourself battling over a stage that’s laid out like a pinball machine, having to concentrate on dodging rolling balls and flying vehicles on top of both environmental hazards and your opponents themselves. Rumble Factory has you fighting in a small arena with everyone having to be careful they don’t fall to the ground below or else they will be quickly burned. The classes look pretty nifty and animate quite well and while the special attacks won’t have the anyone’s jaw’s dropping anytime soon, it’s still proves to be entertaining.
What’s great is that for a good looking game, you don’t need a powerful machine. In fact what you should be concerned with more is how good your connection is, as that will determine if you will have fun or just find the hectic experience that Brawl Buster provides frustrating.
For game modes, you have the classic Team Deathmatch, and while this may be familiar to any shooter fan, the main goal is to be the first team to achieve a certain score (in Brawl Buster’s case, nine points). There’s also Glow Rush, proving to be quite weird as it can be over quickly or very drawn out. The aim of the game is to get a certain amount of points (or have the most when time has run out) and each player begins with eight points. When you kill a player with points you take those points BUT also add to your own value. So killing someone with eight points gives you 16 points but if someone kills you they get those 16 points. It’s a mode where beginners will be punished more harshly by skilled players than any other mode and so you may find it either fun or very frustrating.
Free-For-All also makes an appearance, especially if you can’t stand being in a team and two co-op modes if you can’t stand fighting against human opposition; Zombie Survival and Boss Battle. It’s nice that Brawl Busters caters to all kinds of players, even if most will go for the Team Deathmatch or Free-For-All.
One of the more surprising postive elements about Brawl Busters is the music, providing a very funky backing track with different menu screens having their own distinctive tunes. While it’s not perfect, Brawl Buster’s soundtrack is probably one of the more enjoyable ones compared to other F2P’s (Free to Play), since it’s very catchy. Hopefully they’ll be adding more toe-tapping ditties and even have personal tunes for the classes themselves.
With being a F2P game, Brawl Busters does of course offer you the chance to gain an edge via a the ever popular micro-transaction item shop. There are two types of currency; Buster Points which you get through gameplay and allow you to buy permanent fashion clothes which have no affect on gameplay but allow you to look your best while kicking ass, and Rock Tokens which have to be brought with real cash and allow you to get weapons and armour that will give you a definitive advantage but only for a number of days. It is nice some of the stuff in Brawl Busters cash shop doesn’t require the process of spending actual money.
So what about the game itself? While some will play Brawl Busters for hours and hours (like you would any typical MMO game), getting to level 20 (required to play Ranked Matches) takes a lot of time. Brawl Busters seems to be more of a game that you’ll play between 30 minutes to a couple of hours each day. Having a good connection will see you play for longer and if you’re lacking skills or interest in this genre, Brawl Busters will not change your mind (though being a recent release means that it’s the best time to jump online).
Overall though, it’s a fun hectic game that has tons of personality and potential for growth. It’s not a Team Fortress 2 beater, but it looks like Brawl Busters isn’t trying to be. It’s just a fun arena based shooter with it’s own fun spin on the genre.
7/10
Note: Brawl Busters is a free-to-play Online Multiplayer Action video game developed by Korean developer SkeinGlobe, and published by Toronto-based publisher Rock Hippo Productions, and is available for the PC. The game was officially released on December 15, 2011.
You can download it here – http://www.brawlbusters.com/download
