Game review: Brawl Busters

Brawl Busters is a new online multiplayer action game developed by the Korean developer SkeinGlobe and will be published by Rock Hippo Productions, a relatively new publisher who brought out another similar veined if more anticipated action game called Microvolts in June of this year.

If you put a nerf blaster to my forehead and demanded that I précis the game in five words and one numeral, I would describe it as a “third person team fortress 2 clone.” It has similar cartoony graphics and class-based characters but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. The main difference, as mentioned, is that it is third person which is actually a pretty good idea for this sort of game, as it allows more tactical awareness of your immediate area and it makes lining up strategies with your friends a lot easier. Rock Hippo is committed to increasing the number of classes as and when the game reaches gold. Indeed, it has increased the number of classes available within the beta that I have been playing.

Screenshot from online game Brawl Busters

Brawl Busters is free to play, and the people behind it assert that you will never have to pay to access the basic parts of the game. In-game credits in which you can buy various destructive goodies go by the moniker of ‘rock tokens’ which you can earn in game by carrying out various missions and winning battles. Of course, as with many of these type of FTP, you can top up your rock tokens with real life money using Paypal or other forms of payment (they may not take actual rocks as a form of payment however but go ahead and ask them).

The game plays quite well if a little laggy, but that is only to be expected in a beta environment. It’s pretty fun to charge around the animated landscapes, forming cliques and battling against enemy players and bots. Statisticians and professional winners will be relieved that there are online leaderboards and in-game stat tracking.

It is a universal truth that no game is an island (SimIsland being the exception to the rule), and it is impossible to predict that this game will receive the critical mass to make it profitable. However, the game itself is solid and the third person point of view could make it a potential hit.

Head over to www.BrawlBusters.com to sign up for the open beta.