Breach & Clear: Deadline is a real enigma of a game. If someone suggested a tactical strategy game with an open world and zombies – among other monstrous baddies to fight – I probably would have left it alone. I mean, there’s not a massive amount of strategy when it comes to mowing down hordes of the undead, right? But for Breach & Clear: Deadline, I’m glad that I was dead wrong.
The original Breach & Clear is a military style tactical strategy game, with similar mechanics to XCOM, only without the turn-based combat. Deadline however, is a whole different kind of monster, adding an open overworld, plenty of dungeons and levelling and loot systems; it starts to feel a bit more like a Diablo-esque style RPG. It is two genres that I thought would never mix very well together, but to my surprise the end product is engaging and intriguing.
As far as story goes, there’s not a massive amount to go on. After a quick tutorial that guides you through the basics and showcases a few abilities and tactics to use against the undead, as well as introducing a little of the story, your squad – of which you can customise and name each and every member – gets dropped in the thick of it. While the story isn’t too thick, it’s possible to pick things up from conversations with NPCs and over radio chatter with your squad’s handler. Apart from that you’re pretty much left to explore, discover and survive to your heart’s content.
While the enemies in the game are not so much ‘zombies’ as they are evolving parasitic worms who infest human bodies, they shamble and behave like you would expect. The majority of ‘roamers’ are slow and just run straight at you as soon as they see you. There are also a few special enemies that force you to change up your tactics.
The core of the gameplay is pretty solid; you can either tackle fights in real time similar to a twin-stick shooter or you can use the tactical camera to pause time and issue specific commands to your squad. This gives you the option to use real time to explore, pick up loot, open ammo crates and tackle smaller fights. I found myself relying on this mode to start with as the combat didn’t seem too difficult, however, I found that for tackling larger hordes of infected or engaging human enemies it quickly became too difficult to manage and I became overrun.
The tactical camera lets you pan the camera pretty far to examine the battlefield, although the fog of war is still an issue and can lead to you being ambushed. You can issue commands in steps, use items and coordinate your whole team at once, then advance time manually with the pull of a trigger rather than in a turn-based style. This is where the ‘Clear’ part of Breach & Clear comes into play; I often found myself using members to sweep across lines of sight and clearing any avenues of attack, especially against human opponents. I found that when dealing with the infected, especially in bigger hordes, creating bottlenecks to funnel enemies into was the best way to deal with them; also making sure that I had positioned my various classes appropriately was the best way to ensure I didn’t get overrun.
The RPG elements work really well for a tactical shooter, with various squad members being split into different classes. A dedicated intelligence officer who can use snipers or assault rifles could pin enemies down as well as detect hidden enemies, while the weapons sergeant can suppress both human and infected enemies with an LMG. While all the classes are geared more towards a specific role, they often don’t feel all that dissimilar except for the weapon they have equipped. That being said, I found it useful to have weapon diversity within the squad so that I could engage enemies from different angles and distances depending on the circumstances.
Each class has a skill tree which they can invest points into when they level up. Certain skills unlock new abilities or passives, while others increased the proficiency with a certain class of weapons. Each weapon has its positives and negatives, meaning the positioning of characters was vital to success. The new abilities and tactics, combined with certain items, made for far more options when it came to dealing with enemies, however, I found that apart from a few standout skills, some of the abilities were next to useless.
There are also multitudes of side quests for players to explore which are dotted all around the overworld and these stop it feeling so empty. Loot plays an important part of Breach & Clear: Deadline as it allows you to make your squad much more powerful. Rare weapons and armour as well as weapon parts and modifications allow you to refine and improve your weapons much more. Players can also dismantle unused weapons, gear and equipment for scrap as well as finding it on enemies; this scrap allows you to invest in gear and weapons to permanently improve their base stats making that squad member much more powerful.
For the most part, the A.I. is fairly competent, shooting the closest target in sight unless ordered a specific target or order. Although on a few occasions their pathing completely messed up and I found them miles away from the action when I needed them the most. While the camera is good, I prefer mine a little further away from the action to give more situational awareness, but it does add to a sense of being surrounded by the fog of war. Apart from that I found minimal bugs and didn’t encounter anything major or game-breaking.
The sound on Breach & Clear: Deadline is fairly minimal; there’s no voice acting at the moment and the musical cues are fairly subtle. That being said, the weapon sounds are great and hearing a barrage of gunfire echo across the city is quite something.
Overall, Breach & Clear: Deadline is an interesting hybrid of genres. Mixing the planned and methodical aspects of a tactical shooter with the chaos of zombie hordes works quite well together. I would have liked to have seen some form of co-op included, but as it stands now, Breach & Clear: Deadline is a pretty solid experience and is well worth the price.
