On the brink of something...but what?!

    
     Good morning, afternoon, or evening fellow gamers! In this blog I'm going to talking about my feelings of Splash Damage's latest creation, Brink. This game has been out for over a month now and I am confident in saying that I was really let down by this game. I had high hopes for it. I talked to friends about it and read about every article written about it. I thought this was going to be a great multiplayer and co-op experience but I was wrong. Now let me stop right here and say that I don't think Brink is a steaming pile of crap. I didn't absolutely hate the game, but it just wasn't what I had hoped for.

     Let me explain the story of the game. There's a large floating city called the Arc that serves as a refuge or haven for everyone. This is the main focus point of the war that goes on in the game. You can choose to play as two different factions. You can play as the Security (police force) and fight to protect the Arc. Or you can play as the Resistance (common man) and fight to escape the Arc in search of a better place. There are two separate campaigns for each faction for you to play either solo or co-op. In theory this sounds great. In actuality it isn't.

     Repetition is the name of this game. It doesn't really matter what side you choose to play the campaign as because it's basically the same thing. You will try to either capture points, defend points, hack terminals, plant bombs, and steal enemy intel. You do this for both sides. Sure your teammates look different and you are playing as a different factions, but it's the same thing. The bad thing is that the online mutliplayer isn't much different. The big difference is that you are playing against actual human players. You still have the same objectives and the whole thing just gets very repetitive and old. 

     There are four classes that you can play as. These classes are the soldier, medic, operative, and engineer. The soldier is the gunman of the group. He can resupply ammo to himself and teammates, and also gets special grenades. The medic is what you think. He can heal himself or teammates and give health buffs to increase overall health. The operative is the spy of the group. They can disguise themselves as the enemy to sneak around and hack things. The engineer can buff teammates overall damage and create turrets to use for extra protection. Each class varies from each other and the team buffs are nice to have.

     Brink also offers a feature known as the S.M.A.R.T. movement system. This stands for Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain. Basically what this means is your character can move "freely" over obstacles by using parkour mechanics. If there is a crate in your path you can tap a button and your character will quickly vault over it. Want to reach a high ledge? Quickly climb up onto boxes, jump, and pull yourself onto the ledge. This all sounds great, but it's kind of a mix bag. Sometimes I found that my character moved somewhat sluggishly while vaulting over a railing or such. Other times it worked pretty well.

     One area that Brink does very well is customization. When you first create your character you will be able to choose your appearance from a preset build. You can pick the facial features, skin color, body size, and hair style. While you play the game and complete objectives you will level up your character. Much like other games, new weapon attachments and costume pieces will be unlocked. There are tons of different attachments to add to your weapons. These range from camouflage, sights, barrels, clips, grips and more. The same goes with your character's appearance. You can change there armor, tattoos, head gear, face paint, and other things.

     With all that customization to the weapons you'd think each weapon would feel different from one another right? Wrong! To me most of the weapons seemed the same. The main difference I could tell was how many bullets the clips held, and the sound of the gun was different. Of course if you equipped a pistol and then switched to an assault rifle you can tell a difference. As far as the damage and overall feel of the gun, they just didn't seem to be different from one another. They sure looked pretty with all those fancy new attachments though (insert sarcasm here)! 

     For several weeks after the game's launch it was full of bugs and glitches. The frame rate would stutter, people couldn't connect to games, and textures would pop in and out. There has been a patch released and the developers are releasing a dlc map pack for free. Brink is not a terrible game. Part of my dumping on the game is because I was looking forward to it so much. On the other hand, this game is very repetitive and that causes it to get old fast. I think the developers tried to do too much with the game and nothing was really complete. I know there are people who really enjoy this game and that's fine. I just know that after having the game for just over two weeks I traded it in. Maybe in the future I'll get it again and give it another try. Then again, maybe not.

Final Verdict: 6/10

Written by: Alter Ego 83