When Brink was first announced, I for one was very excited about the game. It looked like a mix of first person parkour action adventure gameplay with some RPG-lite elements and a heavy emphasis on teamwork. After multiple delays the game has finally arrived, but has it lived up to the potential that we saw from trailers and early previews of the game?
Brink is a game that you'll either love or hate, there's no middle ground; you will either pick the game up and think this is brilliant or put it straight back down and never play it again. But before you make that decision you have to choose which side you're going to play - to save or destroy the ark.
The Ark is the setting for Brink; a floating city that is now on the 'brink' of war. There are two factions in the game; Resistance and Security. The game allows you to play both sides of the story, from the Resistance and the Security's point of view, but other than that, the actual story-line is completely uninspiring. The cinematics at the start of each level look good and give you the low-down on what you'll need to do, but other than that the missions are just simply objective levels, and no effort is made to connect the player with the characters on screen. This proves that Brink is built almost solely for online play. Even though the developers claim that Brink can be played single player, which is true, it's much more bland than when you have friends or other online buddies by your side, or even against you for that matter.
Brink is a pretty unconventional game, in that every mission and challenge allows for both co-op and versus play seamlessly, letting you play a story mission with both friends, and against other people online. Integrating the whole game as a multiplayer experience is risky, but it does work, providing the connection is good. Although at the time of writing there are some major lag issues (which are apparently being addressed by the developers as we speak), when you play the game online you'll realise that the online experience is far superior to the singleplayer one. Despite the AI not being brilliant in Brink it still manages to hold it's own; that said it'll never match the experience of having a real person working beside you, which is why after playing Brink online you will get damn frustrated by the bots.
Brink is always going to be a multiplayer-only game despite it offering a solo mode. If you do not have access to the online portion, then this game is not for you. As not only will you struggle even on the easy mode to get things done, but you'll see AI medics running past you not helping you up along with them not performing the primary objectives at hand - it's not an enjoyable experience. If you're planning on picking up Brink, jump straight into the online!
When you launch the game, the first thing you'll do is watch the lengthy tutorial videos. The game actually offers an incentive to do this by giving you 1000XP as a bonus to watching the relatively dull yet informative video. It takes you through the absolute basics of the game, most of the stuff will be common sense for FPS veterans, but there'll be some things which you should take notice of. It is after this video you discover how in depth the game really is. Brink offers a huge customization system which anyone could spend hours upon hours on fine-tuning their character exactly how they want it to look. But before I go into detail about that, the basis of the game is on 4 classes - soldier, medic, engineer and operative. Each class has its own perk set which you can unlock new skills for as you level up. Also when you enter the match and select which class you want to be, you'll receive class-specific objectives, as well as the main objective of the mission. This means that not everyone is running to each side objective to try and leech XP, but instead players have their own individual thing to do which benefit the team in different ways. All the classes feel balanced, and not one stands out as being overpowered.
Splash Damage have made Brink a truly team orientated game, so communication is vital. Knowing which class everyone is using and having a good balance is the key to winning the mission. If everyone went soldier then whenever you died you there'd be no-one to resurrect you; this just wouldn't work and as a result would hurt the team. They also do a fantastic job of making it a team game by bribing you with large amounts of XP to actually do side-objectives that are beneficial but also help out on the main objective. You could be a fantastic shooter player killing the enemies over and over, but that's not going to gain you anywhere near the amount of XP you'd get if you were guarding the objective for example.
Each class you play as gets it own little perks also, from disguises for operatives, adrenaline boosts for medics, unlimited ammo for the soldier and turrets for the engineer. These all sound great but you do have to use them wisely, as you have a meter which refills itself after a while. This means you can only give out so much ammo as a soldier for example until you can't use any of your abilities. To gain access to these perks you simply have to level up which grants you an unlock token that offers you the chance to unlock any perk for any class, so choose carefully. Also at varying steps in level you'll also increase in 'rank' which allows you to unlock the next, more powerful, tier of unlocks, but do not fear as when you're starting the game you can tick the option to only playing against your own rank, resulting in a level playing field, clever huh?
The character customization is where a lot of people are going to be spending a huge chunk of their time in Brink. You will get the chance to change near enough everything on your character - shoes, hair, jackets, gloves the whole lot. With so much variety in the game (see 'Crunching numbers with Brink' article) you'll never look the same as another Brink player, as there's simply too many options for you to do so. As a result of this the game allows each player to have their own unique identity, except of course if you're a girl playing Brink; I'm sorry to say you'll be forced to create a male character!
Along with character customization, there's also weapon customization. In order to unlock attachments and what-not for your gun, you'll have to play challenges. Challenges are the 3rd and last mode in Brink, after campaign and free-play. These offer you short scenarios which when passed grant various rewards such as new guns and attachments. There are four specific challenges; 'Be More Objective', 'Parkour This', 'Escort Duty' & 'Tower Defence' - all can be played on 1, 2 or 3 star levels of difficulty. You can also choose whether to play solo or with up to 3 other players. You must first play star 1 and work your way up. These also support fully integrated leaderboards allowing you to compete against your friends and everyone around the world. These unlocks range from vanity attachments such as different muzzle flashes to useful scopes, silencers and grips. Also the challenges actually help you to learn the ropes of the game as they're short, snappy and teach you a thing or two. That said you can only play the challenges in 3 star difficulty with friends (3 star = no unlocks only leaderboards scoring), meaning to unlock all of the weapons and attachments in the game you're forced to plod through the challenges alone.
Choosing from the wide variety of weapons can be quite difficult at first but once you find your favourite you're quite likely to stick to it and not use anything else. I found the best setup to have is an Assault Rifle and an SMG, but it really is user preference. Also grenades are useful in Brink as objectives are normally defended pretty well, throwing a well cooked grenade into the mix will temporarily knock down enemies allowing you to get the upper hand; although the grenades aren't extremely powerful, they can be useful when used tactically. Each gun works how you'd expect from other FPS', with extended bursts offering large amounts of recoil. Brink also uses an interesting SMART free-running system which is similar to that seen in Mirrors Edge, allowing players to smoothly traverse terrain in a speedy fashion. The game mixes the SMART system into the first person shooter elements well, and there's nothing better than climbing and sliding around then causing death from above, or below, or anywhere.
Unfortunately Brink does have some major issues. Any multiplayer game which doesn't have a lobby or party system will cause uproar in this day and age, and Brink does exactly that. It is so focused on merging the multiplayer and singleplayer components into one that it doesn't offer you an easy way of getting into games on the same team as your friends - bizarre for such a multiplayer centric game. Splash Damage really should have considered a party system as it would have made things a lot easier when trying to jump into matches with friends. Also, having to leave matches every time you level up to improve your skills and use your new unlocks can be especially annoying, considering you will then have to try and quickly re-join your friends game, or jump through hoops once again to attempt to get into a new match together.
Despite a lackluster story line - and single player altogether, Brink in many regards has raised the boundaries for multiplayer games. The game is clearly designed with only multiplayer in mind and when it works it does it brilliantly well, but there's something about it which just isn't quite perfect. Overall Brink is a very good game, but it's not at that excellent level just yet due to its flaws.
Brink Gets An Official Game-Pad: 8.3/10
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