Developer: Walk with Kings
Publisher: Treasure Hunters FanClub
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Hot Brass – Review
Hot Brass is a top-down action strategy game created by Walk With Kings that puts you in the shoes of a SWAT operative that gets sent to various areas to neutralize threats and save civilians as effectively as possible. This game is playable with multiple players up to a total of four players. Now, we got the chance to take a look at this multiplayer action game.
Story
In Hot Brass, there’s not really a storyline that you can follow. You are a SWAT operative that gets sent on a series of missions to stop bad guys, rescue civilians and save the day. Hot Brass is comprised of a series of levels with each their own objectives and challenges. By completing a level, you’ll unlock the next level and so on. As you progress through the levels, the difficulty of these levels increases as well, giving you a tougher challenge along the way.
Graphics
Hot Brass looks quite simple. SWAT operatives, civilians and hostiles are all indicated by colored circles, like the one you see in the logo of Hot Brass. An arrow at the edge of the circle indicates in which direction someone is looking and within the circle, you’ll see the weapon that’s currently equipped. Sure, it would’ve been a lot better if you’d see actual soldiers and hostiles walking around instead of colored circles, but this also adds to the game’s uniqueness. The game does have some great effects, for example, a flashbang will cover a whole room with bright white light that will slowly fade away over time. Furniture and other items look quite good with quite some detail to them. What did surprise us, was that after some holes were shot in a wall, the light of your flashlight would shine through these holes. This shows that tiny details were taken into account.
Sound
The audio in Hot Brass is good, with a soundtrack that matches the genre of the game pretty well. The background music is filled with police radio sounds, like the creaking of the communication devices and the calling of police codes. The sound effects in this game are good as well with the most awesome feature being able to shout at civilians or criminals to lay down their weapons and surrender.
Gameplay
Hot Brass is a top-down action strategy game that puts you in the shoes of a member of a SWAT team. You’ll get sent to various places where you need to detain criminals, save hostiles and stop all the wrongdoings there.
As you start Hot Brass, you will be sent straight into a tutorial that will learn you all the basic controls of the game. After this training level, you’ll definitely know how to use all your equipment. There are several ways to take out suspects at a crime scene. You can shout at them until they stand down. Some of them won’t be scared of your shouting and they need to take a buzzing hit of your taser before they surrender. When all of this doesn’t work, you’ll need to use lethal force to take them down. Taking down enemies with lethal force also has an effect on surrounding enemies as they will suddenly surrender when they see no options of getting out alive. The color of the edge in each character’s circle indicates their state. Hostile characters are red and can be neutralized with force, neutral characters are orange and these can be persuaded to stand down by shouting or using your taser, and green characters are compliant and will obey you.
In Hot Brass, you are equipped with a range of equipment suited for a SWAT operative. You’ll have protective armor, tactical equipment like a UDC and binoculars, and lastly, you’ll have two different gadgets at your disposal in the form of flashbangs, grenades, breaching charges, and more that will make your intrusion a lot easier. As for weapons, you’ll be equipped with a bigger primary weapon in the form of submachine guns, assault rifles or shotguns and as a secondary weapon, you’ll have several pistols to choose from.
When all criminals have been neutralized and all evidence has been gathered, the mission will be completed. It’s quite easy to fail a mission as every wrong action you make will immediately result in a failure which means you need to try again. This will occur when you tase a civilian or a non-stubborn hostile, kill unarmed hostiles or when hostages get killed.
As each level has certain objectives that need to be completed to complete the mission, there are also challenges you can complete in each mission. These vary from neutralizing armed hostiles without killing them, breaching through buildings in a surprising way, time trials and more. With these challenges, you will unlock new gear for your SWAT operative, such as better armor, new weapons, gadgets, and more. These challenges push you to keep trying again to complete the mission with all its challenges. After completing a mission, an arcade version of that mission will be unlocked that offers even more playtime as you can alter the difficulty of the level, add more enemies, and more, to create a more intense version of each level.
Hot Brass can be played in single player, but this game gets even more fun when you play it with some other players online, be it with friends or strangers from around the world. Even if your friends don’t own the game, they can still join your game through Remote Play Together via Steam. Hot Brass has an in-game server browser that lets you create a game session or join someone else’s game. Sadly, the player base of this game isn’t really that big at the time of writing, so we didn’t have the luck to play with others. When you do, however, the game will be even more fun to play as with more people, you can devise better strategies to take down those pesky criminals.
Conclusion
Hot Brass is a fun tactical action game where you take down criminals as a trained SWAT operative. The gameplay of the game is fairly easy to master and with the variety of different missions available in the game with the challenges that unlock new gear, you can enjoy yourself for quite a while with this one. The game is both perfect to play alone or with others and with the game’s online mechanism, it’ll offer an easy online experience when the player base has grown a bit. If you like top-down games, using your wit to devise efficient strategies, and maybe have some friends to play this game with, we’d definitely recommend this game.
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