Brute Force

Brute Force is a 2003 sci-fi action shooter developed by Digital Anvil, the studio founded by legendary Chris Roberts, creator of the Wing Commander series, and published by Microsoft as one of the console's big marketing hopes. The player commands a four-member squad of soldiers who can be switched between at any time, each character possessing unique abilities—from a sniper through a hulking heavy fighter to a technically skilled stealth specialist—requiring tactical mission planning across exotic future planets.

Switching between characters lies at the heart of the whole concept: the player can send the sniper to high ground, take over heavy fire support themselves, and position the rest of the squad into cover or send them forward with simple commands. This was joined by split-screen cooperative play, letting up to four people go through the game on a single console, each controlling one of the characters. The game was promoted as one of the technological high points of the console's early era thanks to expansive open environments, large numbers of enemies on screen, and an emphasis on cooperative gameplay, drawing comparisons to the popular Halo series.

After release, however, it met with a mixed reception. Reviewers praised the ambition and variety of the four playable characters but criticized the repetitive level design, the squadmates' artificial intelligence, and an overall uneven difficulty, where tactical action often devolved into a simple firefight. Despite high expectations and a massive marketing campaign, commercial results fell short of expectations, and so Brute Force, despite its interesting concept of four heroes, ultimately went down as a wasted opportunity among one of the most promising Xbox exclusives. After this setback, Chris Roberts turned away from large publisher-backed projects for a long time and only returned to making games many years later with the Star Citizen series.