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The Ark. In the biblical story, the Ark was one of the earliest symbols of survival and salvation. In a roundabout way, it is fitting that Brink has its own Ark, which to an extent, represents the same things in this futuristic setting, as it did in the time of Noah.

To cut a long story short, the game depicts the civil war currently raging between the two dominant factions residing in the city; The Security Forces (led by the ominously named Founders) who seek to bring order to the chaos within the walls of the Ark, and The Resistance, who want nothing more than to flee the decay and squalor.

Let us rewind a bit however, and take in the bigger (and arguably, most important) picture here. Right from the start, developers Splash Damage have always sought to portray their new IP as “immersive first-person shooter that seeks to blend single-player, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay into one seamless experience.” If you take the time to study that blurb, and accept it for what it is, then my next few words will come as no surprise to you at all. There is very little “story” to be had here. If that declaration has blown your senses, then I’d humbly suggest re-evaluating your preconceived ideas of what this shooter is actually about. Feel free to check out our extensive coverage before proceeding.

The campaign missions - Security and Resistance

Both factions are fully playable across a variety of missions. These missions are just varied enough to engage you momentarily in the thin plot, yet possess the repetition required to ground you in the skills needed to survive online. Remember that “seamless experience” I mentioned earlier? This is one of the areas in which Brink as a class based shooter not only excels, but falls flat on its face in equal measure. You can play this game however you want….solo, with the aid of a friend or with a team (of your friends or complete strangers). The problem lies in the fact that the first 2 options basically boil down to a bot shooting gallery. The satisfaction of this game lies in taking it online with humans. Quite why the developers allowed a system where the levels could be tackled in any order (first time round) is beyond me. No matter, as blazing a trail through the missions and objectives with human interaction and thought processes is considerably more rewarding than playing with, or against AI bots.

Being a class based shooter, you have the choice of different classes to choose from. The Soldier is the demolitions expert, required to blow up doors with his explosive charges. The Medic is “Mr Fix-it”, dispensing health buffs to teammates, and reviving those who become incapacitated in battle. The Engineer escorts and fixes vehicles, can defuse an enemy soldier’s explosive charges and deploy turrets. Finally, The Operative is the “Sneaky Spy”, with the ability to hack terminals, and disguise himself as fallen enemies. You are thankfully not limited to one class during the course of a match, as you can switch on the fly at any friendly command post. Each team begins with one command post at their spawn point, and can capture others on the battlefield. Teamwork plays a key role in this game, and organised teams/ groups will do well to make full use of both the class system and body type advantages; Heavies can soak up more damage before becoming incapacitated, but have the slowest movement speeds. Light body types tend to die a lot quicker, but are the most agile. Medium types strike a happy balance between the extremes. So where a heavy “tank like” medic might work for one team or in a particular scenario, it would fail when applied to a different team’s playstyle.

Dammit! I left my lunch at home again.....

Brink serves to hammer home the teamwork message at almost every turn. In game, players can easily bring up their team list, showing how many of each particular class they have deployed at any one time. Being almost entirely objective driven, a team full of Operatives, for instance, is going to fail miserably at winning any matches. Smart players will constantly be aware of the team balance, and seek to rectify any weaknesses. You’ll sometimes get an audible cue alerting you to the fact that you do not have enough of a certain class on the field in order to complete an objective.

Speaking of objectives, your team’s current primary objective is clearly displayed on screen with a yellow outline. Pressing up on the d-pad brings up the objective list (as a radial wheel), thus allowing you select which objective you’d like to go after. You’ll even receive a little XP boost if you manage to aid a teammate in completing a critical objective.

At a glance, you can see how many of each class your team currently has.

And then there is the SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) system, which adds what can be described as some fairly realistic parkour to the game. In reality, SMART opens up considerably more possibilities to the player than most would be used to in a standard FPS game. Where you’d normally think on a horizontal plane (ducking behind cover to escape enemy fire for instance), SMART encourages you to add some verticality to your play (wall hop on to the top of the crate in front of you to escape bullets). The unpredictable dynamic this adds is a jolt of immensely fresh air. Gunplay moves away from who sighted who first, to a more “who can use the terrain effectively to get the drop on their opponent” type of battleground. One button slides, wall hops and railing grabs feel natural, and thanks to fully customisable controls, the SMART button can be mapped anywhere you feel most comfortable.

Being one of the selling points of this game, the slew of customisation options in Brink do not disappoint. This goes for both the character models as well as the weapons. While most of the attachments have more than just an aesthetic effect on the weapons themselves, a lot of these effects are hardly noticeable in the grand scheme of things. It should also be noted that despite all the different customisation permutations available in Brink, there are no female character models. I’m not going to go into speculation as to why Splash Damage didn’t or couldn’t include female characters in the game. I am sure, however, that a lot of people would hope this could be included in forthcoming DLC.

Closing Thoughts

There have, and will be inevitable comparisons made to Team Fortress 2, and these are, to a certain extent, justified. Splash Damage should be commended for attempting to liven up what is for many, a stale genre at present. I say attempting because Brink suffers from some issues. The lack of a standard multiplayer lobby system boggles the mind. Furthermore, the review build I was sent suffered from some serious texture pop in and blurry visuals, which were present in both the cut scenes, and at various points of the game.

Admittedly, Bethesda had already notified the press of such an eventuality, stating that “….sporadic visual glitches at distance, texture pop-up and some minor networking issues” would be addressed in a release day patch. While I was prompted to download a patch of 8MB in size over Xbox Live, it seemed to me that the texture issues still remained all through my playtime. I can say that I didn’t suffer much in the way of network issues, bar the occasional, expected, geographical lag. Connecting to friends however, was a bit hit and miss, mainly because the matchmaking is heavily level dependant. There could be another release day patch for the European region on Friday 13th May. If so, I will update this review to reflect that. I would also question Splash Damage’s decision to include only 8 maps, complex as they are. While this may not hurt the game’s longevity, it would be interesting to see how long it takes before the community that forms around this game calls for more content.

Overall, Brink is a thoroughly enjoyable game, IF played with friends or other humans. It brings some nice features to the shooter category, and the unique art style is a joy to behold. Sadly, I feel it falls agonisingly short of the potential it set itself in the run up to release. If you get this to play solo however, then you may end up feeling a little short changed.