Brink is a game which completely took me by surprise in every way possible. Expecting to see a solid yet not particularly mindblowing shooter, boy was I wrong. Before reading this I urge you to push any expectations of the title aside and approach it with a completely open mind, as I guarantee when Splash Damage finally decide to show some gameplay screenshots and footage to the public - you will be impressed.
Brink takes place in the near future where the Earth has been flooded. What's left is a Utopian City called The Ark, originally designed for 5,000 residents the city's population has now reached 50,000, and is literally on the Brink of Civil War. As a player you choose the role of either a member of the 'Resistance' or 'Security'. Each has a unique visual look and feel to the environment and the player appearance itself. The game is actually an FPS with RPG-Lite elements such as gaining XP to unlock weapons, upgrades, visual appearance items etc.
Paul Wedgwood started off the demo by highlighting the game's unique movement - a feature which they call 'S.M.A.R.T'. This system looks similar to those seen in Mirrors Edge or Assassins Creed, from a visual standpoint. By holding one button, which doubles up as a sprint button, and then pressing the appropriate button for the situation (duck/jump for example) your character will fluidly move across the environment. Want to vault over a small wall? Just press the SMART button and jump when you reach it and your character will smoothly flow between the terrain.
After this Paul pulled back to the menu and showed off the game's character creator. Although not the kind of editor which allows you to craft a picture perfect version of yourself, the character creator looked extremely powerful. The game features a very striking 'future punk' visual style, with characters having exaggerated features, similar to games such as the Timesplitters series (yet far less 'cartoony'). Paul also showed off some of the game's visual customization options which looked extremely robust. Apparently players will be able to unlock clothing and what not through XP gained in missions. He showed off a relatively experienced character who looked far more battle hardened, and drew highlight to the fact that each faction's visual style represents their background, such as the Resistance using any materials they can find to craft their armour. After then picking a Security character he went off to show us the game in action.
The mission shown was where a group of Security must infiltrate a Resistance area and escort a robot/machine through the level. Straight away the game's visuals blew me away. This is a shooter which genuinely looks close to Killzone 2 in its graphical standards (for reference Paul was playing the 360 version). Not only that but the sound work was absolutely phenomenal. As every bullet whizzed past you could hear it perfectly, creating a super intense feel to the game's combat. Its overall presentation took me by complete surprise, it really did look and sound that good. For that reason you will see no screenshots in this impression (Splash Damage would not allow us to take photos or footage) - I honestly think the cinematic angle style shots released so far by Splash Damage give the game a poor initial impression compared to seeing the real thing in action, trust me on this one.
The game plays out with Multiplayer and Singleplayer seamlessly connected. If you want to play the game by yourself you'll be backed up by AI teammates, however these didn't appear to just be generic bot helpers, and instead gave off the vibe of playing like most other standard AI in today's singleplayer titles. Where the Multiplayer part comes in is your buddies can jump in at any point and replace one of these AI teammates. The game features up to 8 players 'coop', but players may take over the opposing faction too, therefore allowing for 8 on 8 objective style matches!
The gameplay itself looked heavily influenced by Splash Damage's past work on the Enemy Territory franchise, with players being able to switch classes on the fly (such as Engineer, Spy, Soldier etc - 4 in total). Paul showed us that players are rewarded an XP bonus for switching to a class whos role is needed at that time. For example if a bomb needed diffusing the interface would reflect this in the objectives radial menu, showing the player that they would be rewarded for choosing the appropriate class and also changing other players' objectives to defend said player. Classes also appeared to be pretty customisable, apparently being able to unlock different forms of equipment and what not. During the Q&A session Paul also told us that weapon customisation is indeed in there and excitedly replied "it's pretty cool" but wouldn't talk about it yet.
Much like Call of Duty the satisfying XP popups are there after killing an enemy. Paul said XP could be use to unlock 'atrribute modifiers, items, supply stuff' and "a ton of weapon customisation". Also it's worth noting that although the game is set in the future it is not particularly a 'sci-fi' setting - the games weapons are influenced by their real life counterparts. He showed us a mission objective where he had to interrogate an enemy, which he did using a future iPhone style device to eletrocute the Rebel. He also showed us how the mission system does not only provide Primary Objectives but also Secondary ones which will benefit the team however do not need doing. He switched to an engineer class and demonstrated planting a bomb on a door, which he then had to defend, allowing the team a shortcut through the level - however this was totally dynamic and appeared as a mission on the fly.
The demo ended with the machine opening a large container. The characters looked into this container surprised however it was not revealed what exactly it contained. Overall I'm extremely excited to see and learn more about the title. I can't stress enough how much Brink completely blew my expectations out the water. Of course without playing the game it's impossible to know how exactly it will pan out, yet from what I saw Brink is shaping up to be a triple A title which will shock alot of gamers by how good it really does look.
If you'd like to know more about Brink feel free to ask questions in the comments section. There was alot to take in that I may have missed out when writing the article.
Update : The footage which we witnessed has now been released to the public. Check it out below!!
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