Developer: Splash Damage
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Players: 1, 2-16 (online)
Console: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Hours Played: 20
Progress: Completed the Resistance campaign
It was almost two years ago at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) that Splash Damage, the developer behind Quake Wars and Return to Castle Wolfenstein gave us a glimpse at an innovative new, multiplayer-focused FPS, named Brink. With a greater emphasis on story and innovative, parkour-style gameplay, not to mention a great looking art style, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this title. Out for almost four months now, this review takes the recent price drop, current community status and new DLC into consideration in its final opinion.
Brink is set in the near future, on an artificial island known as the Ark. As sea levels are on the rise, much of the planet has become uninhabitable, making the Ark humanity’s last hope. With continuous streams of refugees flocking towards the Ark, many have been relegated to live on makeshift overflow islands in less than comfortable conditions. With resources quickly dwindling things come to a head as the Ark’s security forces face off against the Resistance, which represent the interests of the refugees and are determined to have their voice heard, through violence if necessary.
The story of the fight for control of the Ark plays out through cut scenes in between missions, prior to the cut scene the player will be presented with a load screen, during which a voice over sets the stage for the conflict to come. Although the cut scenes show off the game’s great art style, they are unnecessarily brief and do little to build up the thin story. Because of this the player won’t have the opportunity to connect with any of the characters, or indeed to even get to know them and with most of the narrative boiling down to “shoot this” and “blow that up” there really is not going on much, story-wise.
Early demos of the game showed bright, futuristic looking environments with great looking characters who benefited from a cartoony art style with elongated faces and detailed textures. Therefore it is a bit of a mystery to me how two years later we have a finished product that looks nowhere near as good. The biggest problem is that the whole game seems to be drenched in this murky filter that blurs color and detail, making opponents difficult to make out.
I really appreciate the game’s art style, which is most apparent during the character customization screen. The cartoon-inspired characters look original and their facial details along with the variety in the customizable equipment is quite impressive. It is just such a shame that once you jump into the actual gameplay, all of this goes out the window. Although there is decent variety in the environments and the frame rate is consistent, visually Brink is a letdown.
The game has a nice, edgy soundtrack that accompanies its fast-paced futuristic setting very well. Voice overs are pretty sparse due to the thin story, however they are generally solid, filled with British accents of various inflection. The sound effects, although functional, carry less meat to them then I would have liked to see, or hear rather, especially when it comes to surround sound implementation. Directional sound effects are used much less than in other first person action games, which hurts the level of immersion a bit.
The controls in Brink are pretty stand FPS fare of the variety that uses the right bumper button for grenades and clicking the right thumb stick for melee attacks. The left bumper button, aside from tapping it to enable sprinting, employs SMART (Smooth Motion Across Random Terrain) mode when held down. When approaching any type of obstacle, SMART mode automatically has you navigate obstacles, if it is low enough you will vault over, high enough and you will slide underneath. By pressing the appropriate face buttons the player can also make their character slide, run or jump whenever they like, without using SMART mode. This all works relatively well and gives a sense of easy movement and fluidity although it is all underutilized considering the layout of the majority of maps.
Brink‘s focus is almost exclusively multiplayer. Although it is possible to play the game single player, all you are doing is effectively trading real life opponents for bots, there are no game modes that are strictly single player. The way the game is set up is quite different from most competitive online first person shooters we have seen. Aside from a hand full of challenges and free play mode, the bulk of the game is played in campaign mode where you and other players take on six missions each for both the resistance and the security forces. These campaign missions are not the straight forward deathmatch sessions you have seen elsewhere. Everything in Brink is objective-based, experience points (XP) are doled out far more generously for supporting your team mates and completing objectives than for killing opponents.
Objectives vary wildly and can encompass everything from cracking a safe to extracting a hostage. Where things get very interesting is that each mission requires the completion of several different consecutive objectives in order to be won, with each faction pursuing different objectives. For example, the security forces during one mission may need to accompany a security bot, keeping it safe and fixing it as it breaks down. Once guided to a vault sensitive data needs to be retrieved and ran back to an extraction point. The opposing team in this scenario, in addition to taking down the bot and eventually stopping the runner with the data, can construct barricades and gun nests to slow down their adversaries.
Brink is a class-based shooter, which means that unique skills and abilities are available to specific classes. Players will be able to switch from one class to another throughout the mission by accessing command posts within the environment. Often you will be required to switch classes because objectives changed and your current class does not have the ability to complete this new objective. For example soldiers are able to place explosives to eliminate barricades and other obstructions while operatives can place hacking devices on electronics to access them. Both are examples of objective-based skills, however classes will also have many combat-based skills that make them unique. The tasks your character is able to complete for the mission in question can easily be accessed by pressing up on the D-pad, from there the player can choose their desired task which will show up on your HUD by virtue of a colored icon. Skills can be upgraded as levels are gained but that is not where the customization ends, all aspects of your character’s appearance can be altered with new items of clothing and equipment being unlocked as the player advances in levels or completes challenges, in addition, weapon attachments, as well as new weapons, can be unlocked and equipped by completing challenges.
That takes care of the positive aspects of the game, unfortunately there are some serious negative ones that weigh down the game. One centers around the promise of the parkour gameplay, the freedom of movement often talked about and shown in the game’s demos. Even though the SMART control scheme allows for easy navigation, the majority of environments in Brink do not allow for a multitude of wall vaults or floor slides. Instead the player will be trudging through too many hallways and open environments that provide no incentive or purpose for any kind of physical agility. A much bigger issue is the fact that, unlike every other competitive mulitplayer game I know, you can not choose to play exclusively with other human opponents. Instead the game will start the mission you selected from the campaign mode after a brief loading time and fill in any missing human players with bots. Not once since I first played the game did I find myself in a match that was entirely populated with human players, quite the opposite actually, it is much more common to find oneself with only computer-controlled team mates and opponents. I really wish the game would have given me match making options that allowed for me to enter a lobby, wait until it was full and then start a match with a full arsenal of human players. There are some very limited game settings you can tweak before jumping into a match however they mostly focus on who the game is visible to and what rank of players you would like to compete with. The irony here is that although Brink is essentially a multiplayer-only game, the majority of the time you will be playing it with- and against bots, a sign that Brink‘s online community is sadly lacking.
Seeing as how virtually all of Brink‘s gameplay is multiplayer-focused, this section has already been addressed in the previous “gameplay” segment. It is important to note that a multiplayer game is only as good as its online community and that has been the biggest issue here. The gameplay, although flawed, is fun, and would I have been able to play each match with a full-, scratch that, I would have taken half full-, compliment of human players, Brink would have been much more enjoyable. The quality of your bot companions and opponents leaves much to be desired. The bots on your team do not complete objectives and provide little in terms of support, making it extremely difficult to finish missions without the help of other human players. Opponents will often just stand there as you blast them in the face and repeat simple patterns much too often, unfortunately they usually seem to be more adapt at killing you than your computer-controlled team mates are at killing them.
Publisher Bethesda must have realized that the seemingly abundant promise of Brink failed to fully materialize as the price of the game dropped to under $40 at most major retailers recently, with stores like Best Buy even running limited-time sales allowing gamers to grab the tile for just under $20. With very few game modes outside of the campaign missions and no separate single player experience, Brink would have benefited far more from being a downloadable title at a lower price point. Early adopters were turned off by the flawed experience and the game simply ran out of steam too soon in order to build a solid online community. Lowering the price and providing the first DLC pack, which offered two new maps, for free were great steps in the right direction but we can not help but feel that it is already too late.
Brink definitely provides a more involving FPS multiplayer experience than many other titles out there, reminding us a tad of other class based shooters like Team Fortress but with a far heavier emphasis on objectives. Although there is certainly nothing wrong with a thinking man’s Call of Duty, the inability to specify to only play with human opponents, underutilized parkour-style gameplay and disappointing visuals, drag this game down to mediocrity. The recent price drop and free DLC pack are a welcome move and I certainly recommend any multiplayer FPS fans looking for a change of pace to pick this title up for around the $20 price point, however the fleeting online community may just prove to be the final nail in a premature coffin.
Story:
+ The fight over humanity’s last hope for survival is an interesting concept
– Very little story- or character development
Graphics:
+ Great looking art style is evident during character customization and cut scenes
– In-game visuals are drab and blurry
Sound:
+ Memorable soundtrack
– Thin audio offering
Controls:
+ SMART system is easy and satisfying to use
+ Choosing and viewing objectives with the D-pad works very well
Gameplay:
+ Gameplay is very involving and provides a lot of variety
– Environments do not allow full use of parkour-style movement
– Matchmaking does not allow you to specify to play with humans-only
Multiplayer:
– Online community is too thin forcing far too many bot-only matches
Usagi Factor:
+ Recent price drop and free DLC are great to see
– With not enough people playing this anymore, regardless of price, Brink becomes hard to recommend
