Customer Reviews:
 Fun, Unique, and Too Hard February 22, 2005
Here I am, at a large, circular room full of creepy T'lan out to kill me. I have already killed four waves of them, but now all of them come out at once: the large Alphas, the fast Warriors, the cloaked Stealths, and the laser-shooting Assaults. I kill the Warrior first, but wait! Another one spawned in its place! I kill this one as well. I do this for five times, but yet another one spawns once I kill the previous one. I simply run away, but, when I do, I run straight into a Stealth that finishes me off. I am still stuck on this part today. I am on easy, but it seems more like medium-hard to me.
You are Derrick Cole - a former elite soldier who has forgotten his past when an odd substance is injected into his body. Later on in the game, you get super powers that let you kill the superhuman T'lan before Nexus transports them all over the world! The frustration starts when you meet the T'lan before you have the powers. You alone have to find out how to avoid them. How was I supposed to know that I had to jump through the elevator's open access panel to avoid those T'lan? The game does not even offer a single hint. What is more? You lose your heads-up display in the late portions of the game, so you do not know what items that you can use or anything. Wait; there is more! You go through a time warp, and, unbelievably, you have to do an entire portion of the game all over again!
Even with all of its flaws, it has a unique experience and a great gimmick; you are always in first-person, even during cut-scenes! This makes you, the player, feel like you are truly Derrick. His super powers feel like you have them as well. His gulping sounds when he has a beverage feel like you gulping sounds. Even his vomit ... uh ... you get the idea.
It is still a great game. The story, in particular, is guaranteed to captivate you, so, when you need to take a break from the typical "kill this guy, shotgun-blast this guy's head off, and slowly bleed this other guy" game, play this one instead.
 Banging my head against the wall is as much fun November 26, 2004
2 out of 15 found this review helpful
This game is too long. Just when you think that you've beat it, another 10 to 20 hrs of play is added. Fighting umpteen monsters in first person is rather tiresome and when you are able to defeat them all, you know that it is luck. I must say this is about the worst game i've ever played
 Calling all masochists- Your game has arrived August 30, 2004
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
I must be losing my touch; This is the second game in a just a few weeks that I'm accusing of being "too hard" on normal difficulty. To be fair, most of the game is good. It might seem like a first person shooter at first, but it's really more of an action/adventure game. It has far more exploration and environment interaction than most FPSs. Also, in the final analysis the combat system is more geared towards hand to hand combat than shooting.
While the first person immersion is one of the highlights of this game, sometimes it's taken too far, to the point where it inhibits the fun factor. Simply interacting with an object involves up to THREE seperate commands: 1) Extend your arm 2) Pick up object 3) Examine/keep/discard object. That becomes tedious very early on. Furthermore, during combat you're often knocked down. While they did a good job of simulating the first person view of someone being punched hard enough to be sent reeling to the ground (believe me, I know what that's like,) the process of falling down and then getting back up takes far too long. Again, realism at the expense of fun. Adrenaline rush subsides into pure aggravation.
Much of the problem solving in this game is completely counter-intuitive. There are too many occasions when there are simply -no- hints or clues as to what you must do in order to progress and you're left to twist in the wind until you somehow figure it out on your own. Example: You're being chased through a maze by an unstoppable foe who will kill you outright if he catches you. Your only hope is to escape the maze before he catches up to you and snuffs you out. When you finally reach the end of the maze, the exit door won't open. Why? Figure it out, stupid. Want a clue? Too bad. Just figure it out somehow. Eventually I got fed up and had to check a FAQ. Once I knew the solution, my one thought was "Now just how in the hell did they expect me to figure that out?" Maybe I've been spoiled by games like Metal Gear Solid that hold your hand through every obstacle in the game, but I think there should have been at least some little hint to point me in the right direction so I could have figured out how to get the door open. Aside from this sort of situation, there are some occasions toward the end of the game where you're expected to fight groups of enemies that just beat the living tar out of you time and time again until you get lucky. I spent over three hours trying to fight my way through the last few sections before I finally succeeded. I had stopped having fun long before I finished the game. To add insult to injury, towards the end of the game there is something you can interact with that will dispense arguably the most important plot information and exposition in the game. This is something I would say 90% of people playing the game will miss. I myself would have missed out on it, if not for a friend telling me to look for it. This is not good game design, Namco.
Frustrations aside, I have to admit that a lot of Breakdown was fun and I don't necessarily regret playing it. As someone else mentioned earlier, it's obvious that the creators of this game were influenced by Half Life and The Matrix. And perhaps 12 Monkeys.
 I died August 24, 2004
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
It was too hard on easy mode. It's a first-person shooter with the combat engine geared towards martial arts... but in such a way that guns are still the most lethal, and most logical, option.
The concept is interesting, but the playability is close to nil, and winds up having an "overdone" feeling. Objects are hard to use... you have to stand *just right*, and you have to press once to pick up, once again to accept, and once more to use any object. I'm sure there's a compelling conspiracy story in there somewhere... there almost always is with the Archetypal Amnesiac Adventure Hero made popular in the early 90's by "Total Recall," but the white-on-white text makes it very difficult to read what it is.
I really wouldn't recommend this game to anyone, but enough people seem to like it that it may be worth a shot.
 worth the money, good game...but July 14, 2004
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
closer to 4 1/2 stars. this is a unique game in the view point and is also close to being a survival horror game. This is also the first game i ever seen use Hallucination sequences that you actually control (like walking in a dream) what has kept me from giving this game a 5 so far (and im still playing it)is the fact that ive play a good chunk of this game and it has mainly been all indoors. It would be nice to get some scenery here and there. Walking the endless buildings and halls can get old after awhile. Other than this, this game is awsome, and at the price you can not go wrong.
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