BRUTE FORCE. Publisher: Format:Xbox. Price: £44.95: THIS game has been a long time coming. I remember seeing screen shots not long after the Xbox hit shop shelves.

Then Brute Force looked like Halo, the game that established the Box's reputation among hardcore gamers.

Now it's here, has Digital Anvil spent the intervening time fine-tuning a successful formula or settled instead for a cheap knock-off? The truth is neither.

Set in the future, Brute Force sees you and your buddies cast as a team of four soldiers whose job it is to cleanse the universe of alien scum. They have to work their way through monster-infested levels working together to overcome impossible odds. When the bad guys are dealt with, a teleport appears and they are whisked away to the next mission.

It sounds like every beat/shoot 'em up since Streets of Rage and Gauntlet and, to be truthful, there's very little here that seasoned games players won't have seen somewhere before.

Thankfully for those of us who prefer our gaming to be a solitary affair, the Xbox will take control of the other three team members if there aren't enough humans to go round. You can still dish out the orders and should a pal drop by mid-level, they can still plug in a game pad and take over from the CPU. This is a real boon because it means you don't have to restart a level (or God forbid the whole game) again.

This flexibility is perhaps the biggest achievement to be found in Brute Force and what raises it above the level of just another Halo wannabe.

Your characters have unique attributes that need to be used sparingly if you are to clear the levels.

Tex is tooled up to the eye-balls - he's perfect for big fire fights but use him all the time and you'll soon run short of ammunition when you're in a jam. Hawk uses stealth tactics to complete her missions. Flint is a sniper of towering ability and Brutus is half-man, half-reptile and all special weapons.

Incredibly, the death-match mode allows for the link up of two Xboxes for an eight-way shoot 'em extravaganza. It's a neat idea but one likely to be little used with the advent of true multi-player gaming on-line.

At the end of a successful mission, you're rewarded with cash but there seems to be nothing to spend it on.

The controls are pretty much standard issue Halo and, like that game, you can also equip your character with weaponry dropped by the bad guys making for some interesting variety.

It looks good with some exceptional destructive effects and a smooth frame rate.

Digital Anvil probably couldn't afford to wait any longer for a release otherwise this game would have been pitched head-to-head with Halo 2 - an unsavoury prospect for any publisher no matter how good the title.

Thankfully, Brute Force stands on its own as a fun to play shoot 'em up that eschews the first person for traditional arcade antics.

Published: 04/07/2003