BrainBread 2

Designing a multiplayer shooter nowadays is no easy task, mainly because the competition is fierce to say the least. When you have to share the market with franchises like Battlefield, Call of Duty and Team Fortress, it’s obvious that you must bring something unique to the table in order to attract some attention. However, maybe a zombie theme is not the best way to go, not after so many survival games have been released in the last couple of years.

BrainBread 2 is a multiplayer FPS designed using Valve’s Source engine, in which the main course on the menu is zombie meat. Everything is designed to facilitate the undead massacre, but the gameplay needs a lot more work before it can be classified as fun or balanced. In fact, there are few things that work as intended, but you can at least enjoy some interesting game modes.

Hence, one of these modes challenges you to kill a certain number of zombies as quickly as possible, and the whole team must work together in order to achieve this goal. Another mode is basically an arena filled with zombies and players, with the end goal being survival. The interesting thing is that a boss zombies makes an appearance if you do not manage to kill every zombie, which is pretty fun.

Besides the glaring gameplay flaws regarding weapon accuracy and general shooting mechanics, the most frustrating thing about BrainBread 2 is the leveling system. Although the idea is nice, it’s very badly implemented, because in the beginning you can’t pick up most weapons due to your low level. You can see the weapons right there in front of you, but it’s impossible to pick them up, and this breaks immersion.

One idea would be to integrate the weapon system in a separate interface somewhere and remove them from the actual maps, or to be able to use the said weapons anyway, except not as accurately. On top of that, the graphics are pretty low quality as well, even if we all know what Source can do when it’s in good hands. The graphics wouldn’t normally be a problem, but in this case it’s yet another annoyance that keeps you from having fun.

At the end of the day, BrainBread 2 is definitely not up to standards yet, but there’s still hope. The development team seems pretty committed and enthusiastic, so this may still take off sometime in the future if enough work goes into it. However, it’s difficult to say whether it’s worth bothering with it at the moment.