For about the last month, we’ve been spending time with Brink off and on, not sure what to make of it. By now, we all know the concept of the game. Players pick one of two sides as either Security or Resistance (fairly generic rebel versus government orientation), and battle for control of a once thriving flotilla known as The Ark, on a flooded planet Earth. Developed by Splash Damage and published by Bethesda, Brink has all the makings of a high end title. Featuring 16 player online co-op or competitive play, Brink also lets players have a go at AI bots if online play isn’t for them.
This format may sound somewhat familiar to players who were early adopters to the Xbox 360, as not too long ago we were given another core online shooter in Shadowrun. While we’re not opposed to a game’s core experience being online, that experience better be well executed and free of run of the mill errors. Brink, unfortunately is neither. While the game does feature some very innovative gameplay in it’s parkour movements, players have experienced glitch issues, extreme graphical problems and unreliable online connectivity since day one. Part of the reason this review is as delayed as it is, has been to assess how these issues will be resolved. While Bethesda has done a nice job of cleaning up the bulk of these problems, most of the damage has either already been done, or can’t be fixed as the core concept of the game enhances any problems that would typically be minor into game altering experiences.
Expect to do a lot of this in Brink. Running towards objectives.
Customization is second to known throughout Brink, as players have the option to alter their characters in innumerable ways. Bethesda has claimed there are over 102 quadrillion possibilities if minor alterations are taken into account. Most will find less combinations that this gawdy number, but at it’s core, Brink does allow players to customize their experience to a stunning degree. Three player models start things off with a traditional heavy, medium and light package to start things off. Skill sets in each of these ‘sizes’ are what anyone would expect and once players select their model, they can start customizing their skill sets based on ideal player classes. Players can select one of four in game classes in soldier, engineer, medic or operative which is akin to a spy. Selection of player class is fairly important as this will determine what a player can and can’t contribute to their team, as a medic can heal, engineers can build or disassemble, so on and son. All of this looks great as well, as Splash Damage has give Brink a rather unique artistic styling, somewhere between cell shaded and stunningly detailed.
Players can spend hours customizing themselves if they want.
While all of this sounds promising, the lack of initial sales has made finding a game with ‘real’ friends difficult. We were fortunate enough to have a handful of real like colleagues pick up the game so we could experience the game with everything from known teammates, players we found in online lobbies, as well as the game’s AI bots. For those unfortunate enough to not have a good amount of friends online to play with, the game may not be as enjoyable. It’s no secret that playing with ‘randoms’ online can frequently devolve into a trash talk fest with next to no teamwork. In a game like Brink, teamwork is necessary for success. This is also a concern in playing offline with bots. In some of our matches alone, we found certain objectives (it should be noted Brink is an objective based game, and while it does have an emphasis on ‘killing’ the opposing team, the actual goals are all objective based) were next to impossible to reach with the AI teammates. Frequently we’d get ‘stuck’ in the sense that our teammates would simply continue to crowd a chokepoint, get mowed down, rinse and repeat with us left to our devices to try to reach an objective with no help and no deviation from a perceived ‘straight line’. This error in execution and poorly developed AI for all intents and purposes breaks the game as a single player experience, thus our comparison to games like Shadowrun.
Work boots and capris? He got what he deserved.
Additionally, while the parkour style movement handles fairly well and smoothly, the shooting mechanics of the game are a little loose for our tastes. While we understand this can be a matter of personal preference, in a 16 player shooter, we’d prefer for our controls to more closely resemble those of franchises like as Call of Duty or Rainbow Six, rather than Left for Dead and Borderlands. Like we said, this might be more a preference thing, but we felt that by and large the game rewarded a more ‘spray and pray’ style than a tactical and methodical method. With a gameplay focus on teamwork, we felt this didn’t make sense and thus became an issue.
Between missions players will experience narration, depending on the side they choose to align themselves with, depicting the story of Brink. It’s a shame that with Bethesda’s breadth of experience in storytelling that Brink doesn’t have more of a story to experience. What there is here is good. The problem is that with a limited expanse of missions, the story wraps up fairly quickly, with players left to fill in the gaps on their own depending on what happens during their matches. This is the downfall of having a shooter with a story line based primarily in online play. Too much is left to the players imagination, none of the characters have any real significance and the story becomes an afterthought to leveling up and improving stats.
Look twice, save your life. Campers are everywhere.
Ultimately, our time with Brink was bittersweet. It’s no secret that I personally clamor for almost anything and everything set in a dystopian, apocalyptic environment. In this week’s podcast, I mentioned that I felt the game of the summer at this point was LA Noire. My hope just a few months ago was that Brink would be that title to get me through the summer months. With a batch of free DLC coming in soon, I may have reason to dust off Brink and give it one more try. As a core package, Brink is a cautionary tale both for humanity and gaming. Overpopulation and greed inherently lead to bad things and the story of Brink tells us that story in small pieces. In gaming, creating a story driven game that is primarily an online experience can be a slippery slope. As non-MMO gamers, we’re quick to write off the MMO market at times as not being creative enough, pushing the envelope enough, etc. We’d be remiss though if we didn’t applaud the genre for doing what the FPS market has not successfully been able to do up unto this point and that is create an engaging story that both captures our imagination and rewards us for consistently coming back for more. It’s in this area that Brink fails, as once players have experienced the limited story, all that’s left is further customization, disjointed gameplay, and the though of what could have been.
Overall Rating 6.5/10
**Thank you to Bethesda for Providing Review Materials to Gameseyeview**
