Brink, available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC.
Now let me clear things up for you a little. Brink is a first person shooter video game available on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Early on in its development, it was hyped as being the end-all-be-all of class-based shooters. Brink was going to take the core, fundamental values of PC class-shooters like Team Fortess or Enemy Territory and smooth them out with pretty graphics, slick interfaces, and streamlining all around. Brink was going to be the best of its kind.
Unfortunately, things didn't quite go as planned. Upon its release about two months ago, Brink was almost universally panned by critics. The reasons behind this sudden surge of unpleasant reviews were many, but among them, the idea that Brink delivered a very mediocre package was chief. Everyone started talking about how laggy the game was, how the textures took forever to load, how the objectives weren't dynamic, and how there weren't enough maps. People made it seem like the game was some kind of rush-job that had absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and to be frank, this is just not true.
I will admit, that in some areas, Brink does lack. However, these faults are almost entirely contained within the visual aspects of the game, and in truth, they do not hinder the experience all that much. While there are areas in which Brink needs improvement, the truth of the matter is that Brink is the class-based shooter you have been waiting for, and if you can just look past a few problems in its execution and design, you're also going to find one of the most rewarding gaming experiences of the year.
Gameplay
Brink is a multiplayer, class-based shooter in the vein of Team Fortress 2. Your sole purpose in the game is to secure a series of ever-expanding objectives that have some relevance to the overall story. To complete these objectives, you'll utilize one of the 4 distinct character classes, those being "Soldier", "Engineer", "Operative", and "Medic". Each of these classes has their own distinct set of abilities which you can use depending on the situation you're presented with.
In theory, this set up is extremely similar to many other games of this type. The idea of picking a specific class with unique traits and using that class to complete objectives along with your team mates is almost as old as online gaming itself. However, where Brink finds it niche is in its execution of these concepts. As mentioned earlier, Brink seeks to make this entire process feel smoother and more intuitive, and it does this by not only providing a very sleek and easy-to-read interface for you to interact with, but also by giving you unlimited options for how you want to customize your gaming experience.
You see, the classes in Brink are more than just pre-made characters with certain abilities, they are templates which you can use to expand your play style in the way that you want. If you want to be stealthy, you'll be an Operative, or if you want to assist players you might be a Medic. So on and so on. However, by choosing a class and sticking with it, you open yourself up to a tree of skills for that individual class which can be further honed and refined. If, for example, you play as an Operative, you aren't stuck using a bunch of silenced pistols and some C4. If you please, you can do away with everything and just focus on hacking and spying abilities to get the job done. Or, you could specialize your skills so that you are more adept at close-quarters combat rather than hacking, explosives, weapons, or anything else. You really do have unprecedented control over your character's uses and the number of options and sub-classes you can forge are simply astounding.
The customization aspect of Brink doesn't end there, however. To further compound on the class and skills you've chosen in shaping your character, you can even modify your character's looks, body style. First and foremost, you can edit your character with a vast number of different clothing options which serve as both an anchor for your unique identity in the game's world, and also a strategic option. You might choose to outfit your character with dark brown clothing rather than bright green so as to blend in more with a particular map. Or, perhaps, you'll choose light clothing over large, hulking armor as to decrease your chances of being hit. Better still is the fact that you can choose between having a light, medium, and large body style, each with their own benefits. The light body style will provide you with near unlimited movement options at the cost of health, whereas the large body style will strip away all of your athletic ability in favor of a massive health increase and the ability to wield larger weapons, and the medium body style provides some of the advantages of both without being too intensive in any one area.
Better than all of this, though, is the fact that you can customize your weapons, and this feature will most likely end up being your most valuable asset. To begin with, you'll have access to dozens of different weapons, ranging from SMG's and assault rifle's to shotguns and pistols. Once you pick your two default weapons, you can customize them with even more attachments like the Reflex Scope or Drum Magazine. What's interesting about this creative process is that you'll never gain a complete benefit from modifying your weapon- there are always upsides and downsides to what you attach. While a totally blank weapon may not have any fancy gadgets, putting lots of scopes or gadgets on it could make it harder to aim or reduce its damage. It's all part of a trade-off, and all part of Brink's focus on choice and strategy.
Once you have your character outfitted with everything you desire, its time to hit the battlefield. Now once you actually get playing, things start to seem a little more familiar, as you'll be spending most of your time capturing or defending objectives, assisting allies, and mowing down baddies- just like any other class-based shooter of this kind. However, yet again, Brink differentiates itself from the competition by offering two significant innovations: the command wheel, and the "S.M.A.R.T" system.
First let's talk about the command wheel. In many games, you'll find a system where you can push a button and it'll bring up all of the commands or abilities that are accessible. This is particularly common in console games where fewer buttons dictate the need of an easy way to access many different options on the fly. Brink too has this same system, but the way it handles it is makes the process feel natural and fluid. Some of the skills you outfit your character with are active skills, such as ones that allow you to throw a Molotov cocktail or lay down a proximity mine. You can only map three of these skills to your command wheel at any time, but seeing as there aren't all that many usable skills to begin with, you shouldn't have a hard time picking the ones you want to use often.
The most unique thing about the command wheel does not lie in its easy-to-use design though, but rather its function for accessing objectives. Unlike most games of this type which only have a single objective to work on at any given time, Brink presents the player with a whole range of different goals to complete, which not only adds to the replay value, but also allows players to participate in a way that they feel comfortable with. The process is very simple: you simply press and hold the up button on your d-pad (or whatever key is designed for that purpose on a PC), and a large blue and yellow wheel will pop on to your screen. From here, you can just rotate through the objectives that the wheel presents, and pick the one you want. By doing so, the area that the objective lies in will be outlined in yellow on your screen, and a small marker will indicate how many meters away from it you are, so you can quickly and easily approach.
Now, once you actually happen upon these objectives, things start to get a little less intuitive. While the basic concept of completing these goals is perfectly fine, the problem lies in the reward the game gives you for doing so. To unlock new weapons, outfits, etc, you must earn credits in the game by performing tasks. Credits will be given to you for almost everything you do, whether its protecting an objective, shooting an enemy, or what have you. Normally, you would think that protecting the objective would yield the most points- but this is not always so, as it depends on the activity surrounding it. If you are swamped by enemies who are trying to penatrate the goal, you'll start receiving little credit bonuses of, say, 75 every few seconds. This is a very large and generous number of credits to receive, and if you're able to stay alive long enough, this can yield very serious rewards. However, if there is no direct threat, you could actually receive as little as 7 points every few seconds for just standing in place and doing nothing. Conversely, you can easily receive upwards of 30 points by killing a single enemy, or even around 200 by engaging in a full-on firefight. While I understand that its all relative, and that you shouldn't need to defend the objective if its not under attack, it still would have been nice to receive a more balanced set of credit rewards. After all, if you're only getting 7 credits for doing nothing, you might end up trekking half way across the map to someplace else, only to find that all of the enemies suddenly have run to the now-empty objective, captured it, and caused your team to lose. It's just not a proper design.
Now, the command wheel is really only one part of the whole experience. As I mentioned before, another defining feature of the game is the "S.M.A.R.T" system, which stands for "smooth movement across random terrain". While its actually just a fancy way of describing parkour-like movement, it works incredibly well, and there's really nothing else like it in video games. The system essentially allows you to move quickly and easily over a diverse series of obstacles without having to perform any complex button combinations. You could, for example, run through a hallway, run on a wall at the end, jump across a few boxes, and then pull yourself up on to a ledge, and do it all by just holding down the sprint/S.M.A.R.T and pointing yourself in the direction necessary. While there are times that the system does not work, and can be somewhat aggrevating if you're in a hurry, I'd say that around 90% of the time it will do exactly what you want, and will really make traveling easier.
Outside of its many customization options, objective system, and use of S.M.A.R.T movement, there really isn't much more to Brink. However, this is not a bad thing, because in reality- how much more could you really ask for? You have an advanced character creation system, a weapon modification system, an enourmous amount of classes and skills to choose from, and all of it is wrapped together in fun gameplay. In truth, there really isn't anything all that bad in Brink's gameplay. Outside of the sometimes annoying parkour moves and the unbalanced credit rewards, Brink is a game filled with fun, class-based action. It's got a little bit of Team Fortress, a little bit of Call of Duty, and a whole lots of its own unique flavor; and for that, I commend it. While you shouldn't go in expecting some kind of popcorn shooter that you can pick up and play after 3 minutes, you'll find that if you put in the requisite time and learn all of the game's many complexities, you're going to love playing it. Brink is one of those games that will always put out what you put in, and I happen to think it plays great for it.
Presentation
While most aspects of Brink's game play are good, the presentation is not for many reasons. However, let me just get something out of the way first: were it not for its annoying graphical bugs, Brink would be a great looking game, and luckily, the art style is truly just awe-inspiring. However, I'll save more praise on that end for later, because right now, we need to delve into the many problems Brink has.
First and foremost is the blurriness of the game. Whether this was intentional or just a fault of the design I do not know. What I do know though is that it is (at first) very, very annoying. While everything close to you will seem perfectly clear, as you look into the distance, characters will seem blurry, pixelated, and distorted. This can be helped by disabling the "Camera Bob" option available in the setup menu, and in truth, you'll grow to care less and less about it. But, the problem is still there. No matter what way you slice it, it was just a bad idea to let such a visual flaw ship with the game. I'm not a programmer, but you don't see many games with such aliasing problems these days, so it can't be that hard to change.
Next comes the lag. Now don't get me wrong, changes have been made by the developers to improve the stability of the online play, but further measures need to be taken. There are times when the lag is almost entirely absent, but then there are other times when it will seriously screw your game up. You'll be running along when all of a sudden, your screen will seem jerky and contorted, characters will fly by, and you'll just instantly fall down dead. The connectivity issues of a 2001 PC game shouldn't be present in a 2011 shooter, especially one on an advanced network like Xbox Live.
Last but not least, there's the texture loading. Of all the problems in Brink, this is the most significant. Not because it seriously impacts the gameplay, but because it strips away the visual fidelity of what would be an otherwise good looking title. Instead of walking through a corridor and looking at all its shiny splendor like any other modern game, in Brink you'll be wading your way through areas with constantly-loading textures. Walls will gradually look smoother, the trash-littered ground will appear in pieces, and objects will start out very low-res and eventually fade in to clarity. Frankly, it just looks bad. I kid you not when I say that there are times when Halo 2's textures outclass Brink- it can get that bad. The good news is, because the game is generally fast and you'll be moving through the environment quickly, you won't really have time to stand around and notice this happening, and it only happens frequently in cetain areas. However, this is really just my petting of a serious problem in the game, because even though it is tolerable, it only serves to ruin the experience by stripping away the unique art style that is so prevalent throughout the game.
While all this bad news regarding the graphics can seem a little depressing, at least there's a bright side: Brink's art style is just incredible. If you can imagine a dystopian, hyper-realistic environment bathed in clean, metro-inspired designs and contemporary attributes, you'll have a good idea of what the game looks like. Everything is smooth and rounded and looks like it was ripped straight out of a European airport. Everything tends to be very bright and white with certain areas contrasted by rich shades of blue, green and red. To say that the visual style is unique would be an understatement, as its definitely one of the coolest looking games out there.
Not only are the environments styled though, but the characters and menus. All of the inhabitants of the game have been given a somewhat exaggerated look, almost like Team Fortress 2. You'll see a lot of tall, long, lanky builds on the battle field, as well as lot of unnaturally big, stocky ones as well. These are also complimented by a vast array of interesting outfits. Better yet, the menus in the game are pretty cool as well. Everything has a very "polished" look to it, with nothing seeming jagged or unnatural. It's very pleasing to the eye, and navigating everything is a cinch.
Thankfully, unlike Brink's visuals, the audio doesn't leave much to be desired. While there isn't much actual music in the game, what's there is good. It fits the futuristic theme very well, and while none of the tunes are of the kind you might find yourself humming, there's no doubt that they sound good.
Another impressive feat in the audio department would be in regard to the sound of the firearms. According to developer diaries, all of the guns in the game are supplied with sounds from real-world weapons, and it definitely shows. Careful attention was paid to the sound of each individual gun, and even small things like the falling of shells upon the floor have an eerie realness to them.
The only flaw I can find in Brink's audio is with its voices. Every time any significant event takes place during a match, such as the procurement of an objective or the loss of a command post, an ally will comment on it. While this battle-chatter is definitely cool to begin with, it starts to get very, very old after you listen to it for a few hours. This feature can be disabled fortunately, but I would have enjoyed being able to keep the feature on- I just wish they could have found a way to make it less annoying.
All in all, Brink's audio-visual display is relatively poor. The game has great art design and sound, but when it comes to everything else, it falls drastically short of its mark thanks to lag, distance blurriness, and texture pop-in. This is not one you'll be playing for its good looks.
Value
Overall, Brink offers a pretty nice set of features. You've got 8 maps that can be played through two different modes, and will probably take you around 20 minutes to conquer each time. Furthermore, you can experience these maps through a structured campaign, a "FreePlay" mode that lets you tailor the game to your liking, or you can take the fight online and battle against people all around the world. Unfortunately, due to the fact that objective locations never change, you might find the gameplay to get a bit repetitive if you end up playing the same maps a lot. It's best to play something different every time, and try to mix up your play style a little bit to keep things from getting stale.
The majority of the game's content however are actually in its unlockables. In Brink, you have thousands of different outfits to think up, dozens of different weapons (all of which have attachments for every part of the gun you could want), multiple body styles to choose from, and different ways to truly customize your character through skills and classes.
While it's not going to take you more than a few hours to see all the maps and play through the campaign, the fun of Brink lies in both its customization options and very fun multiplayer. Even though you may have played a certain map a million and one times, if you're playing with friends and competing against a good team, the combat will seem visceral and entertaining regardless.
Conclusion
Even though Brink does so many things right, it is, unfortunately, still bogged down by tech that can't realize its potential. Were it based on a steadier engine, and were the online play a little more stable itself, Brink could be one of the better shooters on the market. But, the problems are here, and they aren't leaving any time soon.
The good news is, despite a few odd design choices in the gameplay department and the obvious graphical flaws, Brink is still very much a good game. Its intuitive, its aesthetically impressive, and best of all: its just fun. So, don't let the bad reviews or mucky graphics turn you off- if you can get past the flaws that Brink has, you'll see that it really is a fantastic game worthy of both your time and money.
Final Score: 8/10
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