Brink Review

Jumping, leaping, shooting and customising: the main things you’ll do in Splash Damage’s new title Brink. Unfortunately, you’ll perform these four gameplay features over and over again to the point where they become unbelievably repetitive. This is Brink’s biggest problem.

Set on the idyllic, floating city of the Ark, Brink tells the story of a world decimated by severe floods. The world’s population fled to the Ark; a massive utopia out in the sea. To receive order, the Ark was split in two. Unfortunately, one of the sides now suffers a violent civil war. Security forces who are residents of the other half of the Ark must stop the Resistance from escaping the floating, metallic world.

Whilst this is an interesting setup, the story of Brink is something you will never care about. It’s intriguing initially, but it never steps beyond that. It’s disappointing, really, as this setup could have led to a good story that manages to stretch beyond just a backstory that only gives a reason as to why everything is happening.

However, it’s the addictive gameplay of Brink that will keep you going, rather than a compelling narrative that keeps you guessing at every turn. Rather than a story-driven campaign, Brink is more of a multiplayer shooter that can be played both online and off. Everything you do in Brink, be that killing enemies or completing missions or challenges, earns you experience points that in turn allows you to level up and unlock new items for your customisable avatar and upgrades to your weapons.

Customisation in Brink is a crucial part of the gameplay. The more you level up, the more items that can be used to make your character look more badass. There are many items in the list that make your character look plain awesome. Jackets with rips in, masks that are, at times, genuinely scary and even staples in the face which will make your character, when assigned, more unique and personal. These customisable characters look even more awesome thanks to Brink’s incredible art style.

Characters and environments in Brink are big and over the top, with elongated features that wouldn’t look out of place in a Pixar movie. Environments are similar, with one colour seeming to dominate each one, be it red or blue. Unfortunately, when the match begins there is considerable texture load-in and the screen tearing in the game is beyond ridiculous. It’s not something that can’t be fixed in a patch or two. It’s a shame these occur because otherwise Brink is a nice looking game that completely benefits from its cartoony art style.

The guns in Brink are well designed, varied and are highly customisable; with attachable scopes and extra magazines. Extra notice should be paid to the sound design in Brink - it is brilliant. Whilst the voice acting isn’t anything revolutionary, the guns are loud, meaty and pack a seriously big punch. If you own a powerful speaker system and want to use it to full capacity, then Brink is the game for you.

Brink is also the game for you if you enjoy playing as a team rather than everyone for themselves. The game promotes working as a team - to the level that it is the only way to survive a match. Brink requires each member in the team to play a leading role in ensuring that the mission is completed by changing classes on the fly. This is done by accessing control points that you must take over whilst playing a match. These control points can also be used to buff up health and more. One objective may require you to storm a command post, which is a good chance to use the soldier class, whilst another objective may need you to repair a machine which is something only an engineer can do.

It’s this on-the-fly, fast-paced, team-based style gameplay that makes Brink stand out from the rest of the crowd and is a change from free-for-all type matches that can be found in Call of Duty or Medal of Honour. Unfortunately, this all comes with a price; the game can become a little too frantic at times and that can stop you from being tactical and forces you to resort to a “shoot everything that moves” approach. Because the team aspect of Brink is so important, it’s a shame that this doesn’t carry on at all times and can become rather frustrating as you don’t have time to perform the tactical manoeuvre that could win you the match.

Whilst the team-based gameplay is fun and the customisation is extensive, they are not the best thing Brink has to offer; that position is saved for the new SMART technology. SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) is easy to pull off and is regularly fantastic. With just the press of one button, players are vaulting over ledges and performing death-defying leaps. The SMART technology recognises when a player comes into contact with a ledge or wall and automatically sends the character sprawling up it or jumping over it, Mirrors Edge-style. The fact it is all so easy to pull off is brilliant as it allows even the most Call of Duty-addicted player to perform tactical movements within no time.

The multiplayer aspect of Brink is unlike anything that is available on the market today. Whilst it is more team-focused than military shooters out there now, it’s also significantly different to Call of Duty or Homefront: the game doesn’t feature a standard multiplayer component and lacks game modes like Capture the Flag or Team Deathmatch. Instead, Brink’s main campaign levels are playable online in co-op mode or objective-based multiplayer sessions. As both the missions and the multiplayer are practically the same, it’s hard to say which one is best as each has its problems.

The AI in the campaign is pretty bad with characters running in all directions, constantly getting shot and running in front of your line of fire, whilst the online features shocking screen tearing and unbearable levels of lag and slow down. But, like the graphics in the main campaign, these problems are nothing that can’t be resolved with a patch or two. However, at the moment online is kind of hard to play and it stops what should be a brilliant multiplayer component from really flourishing and creating a breathing, healthy online community.

All of these problems do add together to create a frustrating experience but Brink’s main flaw is in its repetitiveness. Unlike most games where the campaign and the multiplayer are two distinct things, Brink’s separate parts are exactly the same. Whilst this can be good at times as you can get your skills up in the single player where you just fight against AI bots before taking yourself online, it quickly becomes annoying and unbearably repetitive as you play the same mission over and over again. Since there are only about ten missions in the main campaign anyway, it doesn’t take long before you’ve seen everything and mastered all of it.

All of these negative points may make Brink sound like a bad game, but it’s not. It genuinely has some good ideas; the art style is brilliant, the sound is fantastic and the SMART system will never get old. But unfortunately, there are some annoying niggles that hold it back from the brilliance it should be, mainly its excruciating repetitiveness. If you like team-based shooters and would like to play an online based experience that is different from Call of Duty and tries something new, then Brink could be for you. But if you’re a person who just wants to run around and kill things, then Brink may not stay in your recently played list for long at all.