Back From the Brink!

Time to restart this blog with a word or two on one of this month’s big releases, Brink! I know, I know, talking about a game weeks after its release? Well, given how many people have complained about the pros reviewing an essentially broken version of Brink (the one without the day-one patch) for the sake of an early review, I’m sure a review after the game’s been patched a couple of times is quite relevant!

For any who would take offense at my little snipe against those who stood up to defend what they thought was a good game, a brief disclaimer: I was like you once. I admit I wanted Brink to be good, but was perfectly willing to accept that a new series by a developer with a short history (though I’m told Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was quite good) might not come out swinging (and Bethesda doesn’t have an immaculate track record as a publisher, Rogue Warrior anyone?)

Without going into detail, some of the reviews I read raised my eyebrows. Most glaringly, it seemed as if everyone was heavily criticizing the bots and the single player of what was clearly meant to be a primarily multiplayer game. Gameplay videos I watched after the release made the game look like something I could have fun with, so I happily plunked down $50 for something I hoped would be fun but knew could well be quite flawed. I had to see for myself, and I’m happy to add another voice to the conversation for those who are still on the fence and don’t have $50 or $60 for an experiment.

I’m going to get this out of the way first so I can spend the rest of this review complaining: if you like medium-scale team-based multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2, you’ll definitely find something to like in Brink.

Brink is a multiplayer shooter focused on teamplay and different classes, all with a comic book aesthetic. If that sounds exactly like Team Fortress 2, well, it’s not far off. In the same way that the recent Crysis 2 was pretty much Call of Duty with nanosuits, Brink is really just Team Fortress 2 with a much more complex objective system.

Brink sets itself up as a new kind of multiplayer shooter, one where players can do more in any given game than just pile bodies in a few choke points. Through its “objective wheel” interface, players can choose between a few different objectives to focus on that change depending on their class. While the game depends entirely on winning or losing one main objective, taking side missions can help with that objective by opening up new paths, building machine gun nests, or capturing command points to give your team buffs.

The unfortunate reality is that the level design ends up restricting players to a few choke points anyway, and the side missions don’t usually provide an effective alternative that makes the player feel like they’re helping the team more than trying to break the stalemate over the main objective. The vaunted SMART system of movement, which lets you hold down a button to maneuver around the environment almost to the degree you would in an Assassin’s Creed game, is similarly wasted on levels that are mostly flat with a few crates to climb up here and there.

The classes are well-balanced, and since Brink makes your choice of weapons dependent on your character’s body type (heavy, medium, or light), you could well be a chaingun-toting medic or a light and nimble soldier. Though there are a large number of guns that can be greatly customized, they make so little difference that you’ll face roughly the same number of real choices as you would in a Call of Duty game.

Further potential is wasted on the story. Brink gives you quick cutscenes before the matches on the conflict consuming the futuristic city known as the Ark, where one faction is rebelling to escape and the other is fighting to keep law and order. The bits of story manage to cram compelling writing on the issues of this sort of timeless, brother-against-brother warfare, framing the game in a world more interesting than the one you’re actually playing in.

The best that can be said about Brink is that when everything comes together, there’s no doubt that the game feels epic. With everyone working together as different classes across multiple objectives, Brink provides the thrills found in the best team-based games. It was this kind of experience everyone was looking forward to with Brink, and very often it’s there to appreciate.

But when it’s impossible to find and join a smooth game successfully, when the audio drops out randomly during matches, when the maps give you no other option than throw bodies into tight corridors and the game turns into a slideshow with all settings turned down on a capable computer (to say nothing of the alleged console bugs), you’ll at least get a sense of why this game is so polarizing.