Brink

Game Info

On the “brink” of a disaster, Bethesda and Splash Damage bring us to a place somewhere in the distant future to an almost abandoned modern metropolis,  floating above a sunken city, known as The Ark.  This fortress has been desolate for over twenty years, aside from the remaining elite humans.  On the inside an inconsequential war is raging and Splash Damage has put the player right in the middle of the action.

Brink gives off an almost pseudo-simulated online feel during its campaign, but your online friends are more than welcome to jump in at any time with your approval.  When you first start the game, you are asked to choose a side, but you soon find out how irrelevant that is.  Split into two factions, Splash Damage gives you the option to choose your side between good and bad.  You can choose to be on the side of the Security, which puts you into the role of a Security Guard, Protecting the Ark, escorting hostages, defending safes and other various objects.  The Second option is going the Resistance route, which unfortunately is one of the many disappointments in the game.  The lacking story line doesn’t change much here folks, as you are basically performing the same tasks of Security, just different objective names.  This terrible story telling makes for a very monotonous and almost pointless campaign.

The characters of Brink are quite imaginative with their long faces and cartoonish appearance. There are four classes, Soldier, Medic, Engineer and Operative.  The level cap is 20, it is almost irrelevant though, being a level one is not much different as a level 20 in combat. Your characters face and tattoos are the only features which are permanent.  All the clothing, weapons, faction and player size are interchangeable almost instantly out of the box.

One nice feature of Brink is the SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) system, which gives the game a nice parkour feel.  This system easily allows players to scale over walls and obstacles or by holding LB(Xbox) and pressing B to do a smooth dive into a slide past your enemy while taking them out.  With only 8 maps and missions being very similar in objectives, challenges and requiring no real thought, it becomes almost a chore to play Brink.  Gamers can acquire 50 total skill points which 20 of them are designated to specific classes.  The ability to change and reassign skill points is another pointless feature and fails to give the feeling of ownership over your specific character and class.

Even though we have been promised a patch by Bethesda and Splash Damage for a fix of the pixelated lines and muddy graphics, I suspect that it  won’t be enough to help Brink’s repetitive gameplay and meaningless goals.  While some die hard First-Person Shooter enthusiasts may enjoy this for a rental, the average gamer might want just want to stay with series they know and trust such as Halo or Call of Duty.