- Publisher: Bethesda
- Developer: Splash Damage
- ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen
- Genre: First-Person-Shooter
- Pros: Solid gameplay; well thought out class-based system; character customization
- Cons: Playing with A.I. is boring; character designs hit or miss; lag online; perhaps a bit too complex; lacking content
Features
First things first, Brink is an online multiplayer-focused game. There is a campaign mode, but it is just normal multiplayer games book ended by story cutscenes. You can play the campaign as well as any other modes with both human players and/or A.I. bots. Playing with bots, however, is pretty boring unfortunately, The A.I. is absolutely terrible and offers you no real help. This is an objective-based game, with multiple classes that can each only complete certain objectives, and when you can't rely on your A.I. teammates to actually do anything the game becomes a real chore. I absolutely cannot recommend Brink if you intend to play it by yourself. The game just flat out isn't fun with bots. If you do intend to play on Xbox Live, read on.
When you start the game, you choose a side in the story and create a character. You are free to customize your character's appearance with a bunch of clothes and stuff, and can even change sides in the story at will. Different body types let you move at different speeds or carry different weapons, and you can, again, change body types at will.
Bethesda
Brink takes place on a floating city called The Ark in a time when global warming caused glaciers to melt and flood normal cities. Security forces try to keep the peace. Resistance forces are weary of the increasingly crowded floating island and want to leave the Ark entirely to try and find dry land.
Classes
Brink is a class-based game where you can choose to be a soldier, medic, engineer, or operative (spy). Each one has different special abilities - soldier can give extra ammo to teammates, medic can distribute revival syringes to fallen teammates or buff the health of the team, operatives can disguise themselves as dead enemies, etc. Each class can also only complete specific objectives. In single-player, this means returning to command points in order to change your character's class to complete objectives. In multiplayer, you should have a varied team that includes all classes so someone of the proper class should always be around to finish up objectives.
As you play you earn XP for doing pretty much everything that you can then spend to upgrade your character. While you can distribute points freely between the classes, and even redistribute points whenever you want, a popular tactic with players online is to specialize in one or two classes and spend all of the points on just those abilities. Having a team full of people that really know what they are doing with their given class makes a world of difference compared to playing with people that try to switch back and forth between classes. Good teams of dedicated role-players will always have an advantage.
Gameplay
The shooting is actually one of the weaker areas of the game, however. The guns don't pack much impact, but the players are fairly frail and can be taken down pretty easily. The game also has a strange quirk where if you use iron sights your bullets seem to automatically track to enemies without you having to really aim.
Issues
For the most part, the game is fun, but there are a couple of issues. It is really overwhelming at first, and probably too complex overall. The learning curve to actually play it well is pretty steep compared to other shooters. Also, and this is a real kicker, but there is some pretty serious lag online that adversely affects gameplay. For a multiplayer-focused shooter, this is bad news. It should get better eventually as the "Flavor of the Week" online-FPS hive mind inevitably moves onto something else.
Bethesda
Visually, Brink is a nice looking game. It is pretty clean looking overall with slick menus. I don't like the cartoonish and exaggerated character designs that much (mostly just the faces), but that is a personal preference. Overall, it looks fine, and a day 1 patch fixed most of the problems with visuals other reviews may have mentioned.
Sound
The sound is merely okay. The voice work is so-so and repeats a lot when playing with bots. The guns lack impact and don't quite sound right to me.
Bottom Line
All in all, Brink is a pretty solid game all around. It doesn't really do anything spectacular, but it combines enough good ideas - movement system, well thought out class system, skill point system, etc. - that it is definitely a fun game overall. Playing by yourself is pretty awful, but if you have a group of friends that all want to play on Xbox Live and spend the time to really get good, Brink stands right up there among the most satisfying shooters on Xbox 360. It really is a team-based and objective-based game, which is a lot more satisfying than agonizing over your kill/death ratio like players in other games do. One thing that affects Brink's overall value, however, is a lack of content. Campaign or custom free play matches all play pretty much the same and there are only 8 maps. You will run out of stuff to do fairly quickly, which is unfortunate. Don't bother if you're a loner, but for Xbox Live multiplayer fans, Brink is at least a solid rental.
