The easiest comparison to make when talking about Breach & Clear: Deadline is to the XCOM series but that wouldn’t really be a fair comparison for either game. Breach and Clear: Deadline is a strategic shooter with an isometric camera that allows players to swap between two different ways of controlling the characters on the fly. There is no turn-based move system like in XCOM, rather, the only fluctuation in time is how slow or fast time is moving forward simultaneously for both sides.

The difficulty never becomes too challenging but there are definitely scenarios where at least some forethought is required to be able to be successful. As the game progresses there becomes a wealth of choices for players with how they want to play and what they want to do, but it leaves one question to be answered: is any of it fun?

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Here’s what I liked:

Fast travel –  Plenty of games have fast travel but developers don’t always manage to make it work. Luckily, that is not the case with Breach & Clear: Deadline. The game consists of four different areas that are unlocked as the story progresses. Each of these areas is it’s own little open world. Each area is separated from the others but once a fast travel location is unlocked, it is usable from any fast travel spot in any area. This makes it far easier to go back and finish side quests, explore the map and conquer dungeons. It also helps to encourage players to explore beyond the scope of the story as each area has multiple fast travel spawns which makes traveling back and forth for quests a lot less tiresome.

Scope of the game – The world of Breach & Clear: Deadline is fairly large but the amount of content that is available in the entirety of the game is massive. The story alone can take upwards of 15 hours to complete and that’s with leaving side quests unfinished and only barely sampling the depths of the games dungeons. All of the additional content is serviceable to fun depending on how much you care about loot and enjoy the combat system.

Swapping between the two combat styles – There are two different combat styles in Breach & Clear: Deadline, and it is possible, and frankly encouraged, to switch between them on the fly for whatever works best at the given time. The first combat style lets players control one character at a time and move him about freely from an isometric perspective/ Think a twin stick shooter. The second combat style is more of the approach that the XCOM series takes to its combat; time is frozen unless the player is choosing to allow it to move, individual targets as well as vision cones for shooting and the exact movement path each character takes is chosen by the player. The first combat style works great in smaller scenarios where less strategy is needed while the second is perfect for giving players all the time they need to think about how they want to approach each scenario when the going gets a little tougher.

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Here’s what I didn’t like:

It’s often tedious – While there certainly is a lot of content and there are a lot things to do in the game I often found myself fairly bored. Any combat scenario that involved zombies instead of humans could almost always be handled by circle strafing around the area and slowing killing the hordes. While fighting humans definitely required more strategy and planning, at the very least more advanced than circle strafing, I still found myself bored because I would be waiting a minute or two for a single special ability to come off of cooldown so that it could be used again. If a fight dragged on long enough the combat would begin to feel like a chore instead of being fun. I also found myself heavily relying on half my parties special abilities and the other half I practically never used. The game never really encourages adapting multiple play styles because the enemies and battles are fairly the same throughout the whole game despite new enemy types that get introduced.

The story – Breach & Clear: Deadline has a story but the story does little more than simply exist. Besides being able to say that it’s about the military, zombies, FEMA and a cult I wouldn’t really be able to say much else. And that’s not for lack of paying attention. A story exists in the world of the game as a reason for each quest and the existence of zombies. The most fitting part of the story is that as the game is clearly winding down the game actually abruptly ends and cuts to credits. I had been expecting at least a spec of character growth or explanation as the game came to a close but even that was asking too much. If you’re looking for a game with a narrative that will make you think or shock you, then you’d do best to start looking elsewhere.

Small annoyances – Throughout my time with Breach & Clear: Deadline a handful of annoyances became fairly standard during my playthrough. The game froze and needed to be restarted a few times, graphical bugs were prevalent in every area, load times were horrendous and one side quest seemed to have encountered a glitch and was unable to be finished. The graphical problems ranged from enemies flying off or falling through the map, poor textures and some pop-in. While these annoyances were by no means game breaking they were however quite frustrating to have happen multiple times during a couple hours of play.

[Editors Note: The Developer has told us a patch is planned to address some of the outlined technical issues for the Xbox One version.]

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Wrap-up:

Breach & Clear: Deadline had a lot of promise and it’s clear that Mighty Rabbit Studios’ vision for the game was very large. And for the most part, everything it seems they wanted to accomplish at least made it into the game and is serviceable. Switching between the two combat styles and exploring the world is a fairly fun experience. However, Mighty Rabbit Studios may have bitten off more than they could chew. Even though all the features made it into the game, a lot of the time it was largely tedious and verging on boring. A bare bones story and a host of technical issues makes it easy too not outright recommend Breach & Clear: Deadline but the right player will have a blast sinking their teeth into the game.

Score: Reader’s Choice

Breach and Clear: Deadline was developed and published for Xbox One by Mighty Rabbit Studios. It was released on August 3, 2016 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Mighty Rabbit Studios for review purposes.