Brand: A sword perhaps best left in the stone (for now)

The waiting game is often a tricky one. Sometimes an extended wait can lead to having some of your wildest expectations fulfilled, and then some. On the other end of that spectrum, however, lies disappointment. That doesn’t necessarily mean that what you had finally received was poor by any means, but it simply didn’t live up to what you were hoping for. Brand is one such title which unfortunately suffers the fate of the latter.

When we first got wind of it in August, Brand was seen as a beautifully textured and modeled platformer, with all signs pointing towards a hit: A rarity on XBLIG. In terms of appearance, it has fulfilled its end of the bargain and carries quite a bit of the weight for the rest of the product. The models are crisp, the textures and color palette are vivid, in addition to being diverse. Each of the three stages has its own distinct feel, despite being inhabited by many of the same enemies.

The level design is cleverly done too, with a sense of Metroidvania at its heart. A minimap can be pulled up at any time that illustrates your progression from one part of the map to another by a series of connected squares, similar to the dungeon maps in the Legend of Zelda series. As you delve deeper and deeper into the three stages, the enemies become progressively more difficult, thereby hindering any sort of advancement until you properly upgrade your weapon, which is the focal point of the title.

Upgrading your weapon is done by visiting one of three vendors: the blacksmith, chemist and mage, each of whom offer a quest in exchange for an enhancement to your sword. Therein lies the problem with Brand. The game boils down to a series of 15 fetch quests, which are simply “return to this part of the castle/mine/necropolis and get me X number of these.” The order you go about going after these upgrades is up to you, but you can only complete one quest at a time.

The hero enters the zone at the same location each time you return, but exiting the stage is done well; you simply have to select an option from the menu to return to the home screen, and 5 seconds later you are teleported out, unless of course you are attacked during the process.

So far, Brand seems to hold up pretty well, but once you get under the hood for a bit, it begins to tear at the seams. The hit detection system doesn’t quite jive well, in that I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to hit the enemy or not, which was caused by a number of reasons. There wasn’t any sort of feedback other than the enemy glowing for a moment to notify me that I actually hit it. The crack of the whip in Castlevania always stood out in my mind as an excellent reminder of how to do it correctly. Simon Belmont briefly came to a stop; the enemy froze for a moment and then shot back or disintegrated.  It’s a subtle thing, but noticeable, and I would have loved to see Brand incorporate something similar.

There are upgrades to extend the length to which your sword is a threat, but there is no way of the player truly knowing how far that distance is because the sword itself never grows or offers any visual indication of doing so. This becomes a problem as your character literally bounces off of enemies when you come into contact with them. For some reason they can only damage you when they perform an attack, otherwise you can keep hopping on top of them and can continue to do so as long as you point the hero in their direction. It’s an odd design decision, to say the least.

With a bit more work and (more) time invested in this project, I really believe it would have been a shining example of the top-tier product that XBLIG can deliver. Unfortunately, a number of the gameplay elements cause it to fall a bit short of the mark, where it will most likely be buried among the mediocrity that is the current state of XBLIG. I hope that the developer takes these comments to heart, and should Nine Dots Studio choose to release a PC port, implement these changes that would allow the opportunity to flourish in a new market. Still, for $1 (80 MS points) it is one of the prettiest games around. In closing, I’d say this sword is best left in its stone.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Brand was purchased for 80 MS points ($1). You can download a free demo on the Xbox Marketplace. 

By at .

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Dave Voyles in Previews, XBLIG Previews

About Dave Voyles

Dave is based out of Long Island, NY and is currently working on projects using the Unreal Engine. He earned his degree in Communications from SUNY Oneonta and currently doing his MBA in Management of Information Systems. Dave is also Co-Coordinator for the Indie Games Summer Uprising on Xbox Live. You can follow him on Twitter, at @DaveVoyles

  • Anonymous

    Darn, was hoping my impressions of a few rounds with the trial was just
    me being picky.. but then I read this and seems I was right on. A shame,
    ’cause it definitely seemed like a solid effort.

  • http://twitter.com/AlanWithTea Alan

    The thing that really got to me while playing Brand was the turning. You turn sluggishly on the ground, which makes fighting more than one enemy deeply annoying since you can only block in one direction at a time.

    Worse though, far worse, is the inability to turn in mid-air. The two combine to form a horrible death-baiting mechanic whereby you can’t turn and jump to a platform that has enemies on it, because the two problems taken together mean you will inevitably land with your back to all the danger.

  • Anonymous

    I had the same issue with not being able to turn in mid air as well, but I wasn’t sure if that was me being nit-picky or not. 

  • Anonymous

    :(  Shame that it didn’t hit all the right notes…looks amazing for an Indie game!

  • Anonymous

    Exactly. Making the character turn like he’d just gone full stop after
    a sprint just doesn’t work for this kind of game. They should have left
    that to non-combat platformers, and have made the
    character turn instantly instead, to make it all flow much better.

    Ah yes, jumping onto platforms with enemies.. the kickback
    from being hit by an enemy sent me flying backwards countless times,
    which resulted purely in time wasted as I made my way back up the
    platforms. Thankfully I did not experience falling to my death from the kickback.

    I really hope they’ll patch these annoyances, if possible, ’cause it did seem like a worthy purchase otherwise.

  • http://twitter.com/AlanWithTea Alan

    Yes, my second-place complaint was being launched the entire length of the universe whenever an enemy glances in my direction. It’s ludicrous.

  • http://twitter.com/AlanWithTea Alan

    Ordinarily it might be nitpicky, but in Brand’s case it caused me more frustration and more deaths than anything else in the game. Something that should have been a minor niggle became a major sticking point simply because it happens constantly.