LRG Archives: Breach & Clear

LRG Archives: Breach & Clear

A look back at PlayStation Vita release #001.

Platform: PlayStation Vita

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy

Developer: Mighty Rabbit Studios

Initial Release Date: May 12, 2015

Limited Run Release Date: Oct. 29, 2015

In hindsight, Breach & Clear seems an improbable cornerstone for the Limited Run Games publishing empire. That’s not to say it’s a bad game by any means—it’s quite well designed, even addictive. It’s just that Breach & Clear makes for an odd fit within the larger Limited Run catalog. Its style, gameplay, and overall vibe share little in common with the games for which the company has become known.

Developed by Mighty Rabbit Studios, Breach & Clear precipitated the entire launch of Limited Run. Mighty Rabbit owner and Breach & Clear director Josh Fairhurst established Limited Run as a boutique label under which to publish a small, 1,500-copy run of the game for PlayStation Vita to help bolster Mighty Rabbit’s bottom line. The initial run of the game became an instant, sell-out success, and from that tentative foray into physical media Limited Run quickly expanded into one of the industry’s fastest-growing and most prolific publishers ever. It all started here, with Breach & Clear, at the beginning: Limited Run Games catalog release #001.

Though Limited Run Games as an entity debuted with the physical Vita release of Breach & Clear in October 2015, the game itself was more than two years old by the time it shipped in cartridge form. It originally debuted back in July 2013 for iOS mobile devices, with the Android platform quick to follow in September, and it first saw a Vita digital release—a relatively painless conversion made possible by the developers’ decision to power the game with the highly portable Unity framework—in May 2015.

Breach & Clear was produced in collaboration between Mighty Rabbit, the developer, and Gun Media, who assumed the role of publisher. Mighty Rabbit had already made a modest name for itself with its retro-style indie comedy role-playing adventure Saturday Morning RPG, a game whose aesthetics and design were miles removed from those of Breach & Clear. On the other hand, this was Gun Media’s first significant project. It was a perfect fit for that studio, which had been co-founded by Robert Bowling, an army veteran who made a name for himself at Infinity Ward, working as a community manager and creative strategist on the Call of Duty series.

Though Breach & Clear shares little in terms of actual gameplay and mechanics with the Call of Duty franchise (especially in light of its lack of any form of multiplayer whatsoever), both series share one element in common: Their semi-realistic approach to modern military tactics. Indeed, tactics are the entire point here: Rather than play as a first-person shooter, Breach & Clear pulls back its camera viewpoint to give players a tactical view of the battlefield. There’s more Rainbow Six than Call of Duty to be found in Breach & Clear’s moment-to-moment design.

Players take the role of commander, maneuvering a four-man fire team through various urban environments that range from cramped office complexes to wide-open marketplaces. It’s very much a game about the modern American military, with a highly grounded, even realistic take on the subject. Players can assign their squad members one of half a dozen combat roles, each bringing its own special skills to bear on the battlefield, and upgrade their team with better weapons and gear as they complete missions and rank up.

In terms of its granular play mechanics, Breach & Clear has much in common with 2011’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars for 3DS—and, not coincidentally given the heritage it shares with Shadow Wars, 2012’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Each mission plays out through a two-phase, turn-based process. With each round of combat, players take in an overview of the current map, direct their squad members to move or hold their ground, and determine their actions for that turn.

Once you’ve set the machine in motion during the first phase, the second phase allows you to sit back and watch the results of your tactics. Everything plays out automatically, including your team’s attacks. Rather than specifically targeting a foe, you instead define each soldier’s field of focus (and fire) each turn. As squad members and enemies play out the turn, they’ll automatically fire at opponents who fall into their line of attack.

Unlike in, say, a tactical role-playing game such as Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, your soldiers don’t simply fire off a single attack at the end of their move. Rather, fighters on both sides of the fray fire repeatedly as they move across the battlefield and take up position at their assigned waypoints. A blind spray of fire will typically do trivial chip damage to targets, but it’s possible for a combatant to get lucky, slipping behind an opponent’s cone of fire to score multiple direct hits in a single turn—a satisfying turn of events when it’s an enemy going down in a hail of bullets, but much less appealing when the bad guys get the drop on you.

Each action phase represents just a few seconds of real time, and a lot of factors come into play during these brief sequences. A soldier’s combat capabilities are largely determined by a handful of stats, including accuracy, speed, and evasion. Speed dictates the distance they can move during a given round of combat, while accuracy and evasion determine their likelihood to hit a target and avoid retaliatory damage in return. As your squad members level up, you can invest skill points to boost their statistics and improve their performance in battle. Raw character stats aren’t the be-all and end-all for your team, however. Buying and equipping new gear allows you to further customize a soldier’s capabilities, often with trade-offs. A heavy tactical vest will greatly improve a fighter’s health and durability, but the encumbrance of its weight will decrease their mobility.

Further trade-offs emerge in the moment-to-moment play as well. For example, you can elect either to rush into the battlefield at full speed or move at half speed. Cutting your speed reduces the range of ground you can cover in a single move, but it also steadies your aim and increases the likelihood your shots will find their mark. At the same time, it also leaves you open to enemy attack. Understanding the lay of the land and how best to use the environment for cover—including when to remain in place or use equipment like grenades or med kits—becomes critical for survival. Flashbangs are a great help, too, briefly blinding enemy forces and allowing you to buy time for your squad to retreat to safety or move to a more strategic vantage point.

While Breach & Clear doesn’t make use of a traditional fog-of-war mechanic, situational blindness does exist here due to obstructions like doors and barriers. Your squad can only track enemies present in the same exposed contiguous spaces as they are; opposing forces hidden inside a sealed-up room won’t appear on your combat overview until they emerge or you break down the door. This is where the “breach” part of the title comes into play: Each mission begins with your squad entering the field by breaching a door and jumping into action. In some situations, it’s possible to use a lockpick to silently enter the scenario without alerting enemies, though you can only break down doors noisily once you’ve exchanged fire with your foes. You can buy unmanned drones that allow you to scan the battlefield in advance, which can be especially valuable on large maps with multiple points of entry.

Breach & Clear contains several dozen maps spread across multiple locations around the globe. Each location relays a sort of progressive story that plays across the maps it contains, with your team (for instance) moving ever deeper into an occupied office building or across a hostile city. Completing a map and earning star ratings for your performance—the speed and accuracy with which you finish and the number of casualties you suffer—allows you to unlock more advanced maps. You don’t have to play through Breach & Clear’s maps in order, though it’s not a bad idea; their difficulty increases sharply, and you’ll be hard-pressed to survive the advanced maps of Russia or China with a set of green recruits equipped with stock gear. This is especially true if you choose to play Iron Man mode, where a fallen soldier stays down for good; playing carelessly and losing a skilled veteran is the kind of setback you may never recover from.

In addition to the standard breach-and-clear format, you can also revisit each map in two other modes. The first of these is a bomb-disposal mode in which you race the clock to disarm explosives, with each phase of combat deducting five seconds from your hard deadline. Rather than clearing out enemies here, your goal emphasizes infiltration, scouting, and defense. In addition to surviving waves of soldiers, you also need to locate a bomb and assign a squad member to defuse it. The task of bomb disposal requires that soldier’s complete attention, which leaves them defenseless—meaning the remainder of your squad needs to cover them against the opposing army’s fire.

The third play option, an escape mode, is essentially breach-and-clear in reverse. Rather than fighting your way into an enemy stronghold and wiping out the army inside, you’re fighting your way out of the stronghold before the army inside wipes you out. Taking out hostiles is much less important here than simply navigating your way to the exit as quickly and safely as possible.

Each map varies in theme and layout. Your battlefields range from cramped offices to wide-open spaces such as marketplaces and cargo ship decks. Each scenario requires a different approach, and while a map may be easily navigated in one mode it can pose a nightmarish challenge in another. For example, the open lines of sight in an outdoor plaza can be a boon when you need to quickly clear out a small militia, but those same lines of sight can make surviving long enough to defuse a bomb a truly nerve-wracking prospect.

In short, Breach & Clear is a meaty game with a large volume of content and considerable variety. About all it’s missing, really, is a multiplayer mode—and maybe a sense of whimsy; again, the serious military pseudo-realism of Breach & Clear feels strongly at odds with the vibrant indie games and retro reissues Limited Run Games would go on to be known for. It’s a sober, straightforward slice of modern-era combat theater. But even if it offers little hint of the kinds of games that Limited Run would celebrate, its business model—catering to collectors by bringing digital-only releases into a limited physical form—would prove to be downright canny.