Review

Brink

I have been a fan of First-Person-Shooters (FPS) since the days of the freeware version of Doom. Since then I’ve satisfied my appetite for gunplay with everything from Duke Nukem and Serious Sam to Counter Strike and COD: Black Ops.  So, it’s safe to say that I’m familiar with the genre. That also means I am aware of how stale the genre has become over the years. It’s gotten so bad that developers are resorting to mixing in elements from other genres into their shooters. Weapon unlocks? Really? The results range from interesting to down right broken (COD: MW2 I am looking at you). This is why I was excited to hear about Splash Damage’s new title, Brink. Their ideas about how these new FPS staples should be integrated into a shooter intrigued me. Not only that, but the ability to freely traverse the landscape was a groundbreaking idea for FPS’s. After spending a large amount of time with the finished product I can say that I am pleased with its outcome!

Brink is a unique title. It is the first game I reviewed where the majority of the scoring comes from my opinion as apposed to the facts presented. Most video game reviews have a little of both (facts and opinions) that are molded into a cohesive thought, resulting in a score of some sort. Brink on the other hand, could be evaluated from almost a completely “opinionated” view; a game where you could love or hate just about every aspect. For instance, we have the campaign or story behind Brink and how it is told. Due to the effects of global warming and the rise of the Earth’s oceans, most of the planet has been covered in water. One beacon of hope was the Ark, a massive floating city anchored somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The Ark’s founders expanded the island by creating smaller adjoining islands to house all of the refugees that were flocking to them. As you would imagine, the resources began to become scarce. The refugees feel like the founders (or rich) keep the best for themselves while everyone else is fighting for scraps. Due to their protesting and threat of violence, the Ark Security steps in to keep the peace. A civil war erupts between the two groups. The refugees feel like they need to escape the Ark and to do so they need to steal what they need from the rich. The Ark Security feels that there isn’t any place left standing besides the Ark and that they need to protect it. This is where we enter the game. While the story is interesting and the idea of everyone thinking they are “right” is intriguing, I have mixed feeling about how it is told.

Splash Damage wanted to make a game where they merged single player and multiplayer into one mode. The way they did this was to simplify the campaign so it plays out like a normal multiplayer match that you might see in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. You’ll play as either faction in a multiplayer match against bots. I say bots because they are just that; the opponents aren’t staged enemies you would see in a normal campaign. They act like players online. The second thing they did was allow gamers to join you during the campaign by either joining your side or the opposition. Really, the only difference between campaign and full blown multiplayer is the ability to change match settings. Every time you play a multiplayer match, you will see the same cutscenes you saw in the campaign mode. On one hand, they did a great job. Gamers who are scared to play online can slowly add in more human opponents over time or just chose to play with only bots. They can also have seven of their friends join them to cooperatively complete each story arc (one for each faction). On the other hand, there should have been more to the story. The fact that you can play these campaigns in any order adds to the feeling that the narrative is unimportant. You are shown the cutscenes whether you play the campaign mode or not, giving you the feeling that the story was just tacked on to give you a reason to shoot people.

The next area of debate is how balanced Brink is. Everything flows together. Splash Damage introduced S.M.A.R.T (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain), a system inspired by Freerunning that allows you to climb up, jump over, and slide under obstacles. There are limitations based on body type; heavy move slow and can only climb over things just above the waist, medium is faster and can climb over anything up to head height, and light is the fastest and can wall hop, allowing them to reach higher ledges than normal. On top of this system you have the classes: Engineer, Soldier, Medic, and Operative. Just like in Enemy Territories or Team Fortress, each class has different abilities in the field. The Medic can heal, revive incapacitated allies, and boost teammates overall health meters. The Engineer can repair equipment (like a robot needed to cut through a steal door), boost weapon damage, and builds gun turrets. The Operative can disguise himself as an enemy, can hack computers and gun turrets, and can steal enemy info in order to display their locations on their team’s map. You can switch class at anytime by going to a command post controlled by your team. Also, there is an easy to use objective wheel that highlights different jobs you can do at any given time to help your team. Once you pick a job (that works with your class) you character will announce what they are setting out to do. Anyone looking at the wheel after that can assist you in completing your chosen job (or escort you to the objective). All of these factors have to be implemented into your strategy whenever you’re playing Brink in order to be successful. There isn’t a straight up Team Death Match as each map has objectives that need to be completed. This means that you can’t go at it by yourself like you can in Halo or COD. Lone wolves will be killed on sight; trust me!

Now for me, the emphasis on teamwork rocks. When playing Brink there are moments where everything just flows together in such a way that it easily trumps scripted scenes found in other games. Durring one match, I was playing as a Medic and one of my fellow teammates was incapacitated near a dangerous choke point in the map. I was able to use the S.M.A.R.T system to get to him using makeshift shortcuts without being noticed by the opposition who was guarding the area. Once I revived him, being an Engineer he laid down a gun turret to help take out the guys guarding the area. After that he gave me a buff that increased my weapons damage and I buffed his health, making it more difficult for him to be killed. We did all of these things without speaking a word to one another! Splash Damage has not only made it easy to coordinate with teammates, they also made it fun to do so. Throw in the fact that your gain the most experience (used to level up and unlock better skills, clothing items, and weapons) when you’re helping someone and you have a team game that rivals Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2!

Even the weapons themselves are made to be used in conjunction with others. Sniper Rifles will only one-shot-kill light bodied players and grenades aren’t super strong. However, when used with other weapons (or near teammates) these weapons become invaluable. For instance, when a grenade goes off, it knocks down all nearby enemies. This sets up the perfect opportunity for teammates to take them out. Again, Brink was designed to be played using teamwork, which is great. At least, that’s how I see it. Some people, with good reason will call foul. Why can’t I go off and do my own thing? Why not just have the grenades kill your enemies all the time? Why not include headshot kills? Splash Damage feels that this type of thing frustrates gamers who don’t play competitively online all the time. Jumping into a match only to get headshot by a spawn-camping sniper just really isn’t fun. Most hardcore gamers get past this frustration after a while and usually wind up becoming the sniper behind the headshots before long. Brink eliminates this dilemma by allowing gamers to play as a team on a level playing field. Many gamers might feel that their hands are tied at first, but after they understand how the mechanics work, most will have a good time with this game.

So far I’ve gone back and forth on each element of gameplay. As you can see, depending on what you want from Brink you’ll either love it or hate it…when it’s working properly. When I first got Brink, there was a lot of lag over Xbox Live. Not only that, your AI teammates weren’t as smart (no pun intended) as your AI controlled enemies. Bad AI and laggy gameplay made it nearly impossible to enjoy some matches whether you were playing online or not. Then there is Brink’s graphic quality. The stylized character models are customizable; gamers are given a lot of options to play with. The problem is that, at times these detailed characters looked blurry. There seemed to be an issue with Brink loading all of the details displayed on each character during a session. Same thing goes for the environment. There were times where I would look at a computer I was going to hack and all of its intricate parts would be displayed. I would turn to make sure no one was sneaking up on me and then turn back to the computer to find that Brink had forgotten what it looked like. It was just a bunch of pixels in the shape of a computer. Now, at first all of these things were going to bring down Brink’s final score. But, Splash Damage quickly put out a patch that addressed these issues. They even tweaked the backend which updated Brink without requiring gamers to download another patch. They did this so fast, that I felt they deserved a higher score even if everything wasn’t 100% perfect. Right now they are still missing some major staples like a decent lobby system and maybe even clan tags. These components would help Brink’s chances of building a great online community. Despite that, with the fixes presented in each update, I was able to get back to having a great time on the Ark.

All and all, I loved my time playing Brink. Now that I have played it, I am going to want to be able to jump over obstacles in my way in every other FPS I play. I am going to want to customize everything and work as a team to accomplish goals. Truthfully, it’s going to be hard to go back to older online shooters. At the same time, I can understand why this game is an acquired taste. For all the new things it’s trying to do, Brink can’t please everyone. It doesn’t help when a few of these new ideas have faults of their own. The lack of clan tags and a decent lobby system also increases its chances of being traded in. Then again, Splash Damage has been working non stop to please their fans with fixes and tweaks to gameplay (without changing the core elements). I feel that the main thing standing in Brinks way of becoming a very popular online shooter is a gamer’s reluctance to play something different. At the same time, I understand why they feel that way!