Brink Review

Brink review

By Cyraxis

During my last review which was an overview of the Call of Duty series I mentioned that I didn't like critics and didn't think people should take their world about a game as law, but then I mentioned that I had been nothing more than a simple critic in my two reviews as I only really talked about the negative points of the games. This time I have decided that I am going to be fair and unbiased against the game and really try and put it over instead of driving it into the ground so lets start with...Brink

Brink is a first person shooter set in a future city that is floating about in the middle of the ocean as the rest of the world has been reduced to chaos by war and stuff I assume. The back story is explained through audio logs that you uncover more of as you play but I really cant be arsed to play this game for the 20 odd straight hours it would take to unlock them all and to be fair the back story is irrelevant to the rest of the game so why anyone would bother I don't know. The city is split into two warring factions, the people who were on the city from the beginning who are represented by the police, and the resistance...or revolutionaries...or whatever their called, their symbol is just a big R so maybe I'll call them that.

The point of the game is that you are supposed to be able to see the war from both sides of the conflict. The police are trying to maintain order and stop the fighting while the politicians try and find a way to make everyone happy. However I find it difficult to relate to the R as they are a bunch of people who came to the city after it set sail and set up camp and are now just expecting to be taken care of despite the city sailing away having been optimised for the people who were already on it. Its like a bunch of travellers being set up in a field and then demanding to be fed by a near by village under threat of war. Now that's an image to savour.

The gameplay in Brink is very much that of a standard FPS, you run around the map and hold down the kill button whenever you see an enemy, making sure your looking in vaguely the right direction until one of you falls down dead. You may think that's a very loose description of how shooter games work but when you think about it that's all that ninety percent of the people in the world can do when it comes to gaming (and if you are among the ten percent of people who argue that there is skill in FPS games then kindly present your self so I can cut of your bollocks and sell them on the black market to people who deserve them because you clearly don't).and in my opinion shooter games are going to stay this simple and dull until a shining saviour comes to save us from the CoD induced slumber 'cough new Deus Ex cough'

Brinks way of trying desperately not to be tied to the generic masses of CoD rip off shooters is to implement its new movement system, S.M.A.R.T, which stands for smooth movement across random terrain, an acronym that sounds like they made it up just because they could. This basically entails your character being able to run around and 'parkour' their way over any obstacle they may encounter. This system works incredibly well with the frame rate keeping up easily with the movement (on the 360 at least, I've heard there are problems on the PC) and the animations when you see others doing it are crisp and look really good. The problem with this idea though is that the maps are never big enough or cluttered enough for this movement system to make a difference. Why jump over a wall when you can take two steps to the left and walk round?

Another unique selling point, yes this game had two, is that you can customise your character to an unprecedented level and it has been quoted as having “near unlimited customisation options” well I take your near unlimited customisation and smack you in the face with it you cheap lying whores. The customisation options are admittedly varied but for each section of customisation there are never more then 15 options of what to use and I was very let down by this, I expected hundreds of things to wear like some sort of demented dystopian future Barbie doll. Maybe by unlimited options the developers meant that you could say wear a gas mask and your favourite brown shirt or maybe you could wear a pair of goggles and that same shirt, in which case I would help them up after their smack because you can certainly mix and match a lot, however I would then punch them back down because changing the colour of your shirt isn't customisation.

After these two unique points brink falls back into the same rut as all other shooters. It has basic objective based gameplay such as grab object A and bring it to point B, hack that console and then defend it for five minutes. Even worse the game only comes with a stock of about ten maps so you will find yourself playing the same games again and again whilst you grind away trying to get your character to level five so you can grab those really juicy perks, but then you get their and realise that you really don't have the heart to keep playing now that you have even less of a purpose.

Brinks parkour is helped by the addition of three body types, the small and skinny, the middley middle guy and the big fat slow guy. But even this is made redundant as the small guy dies in a few shots and the big guy can't jump so in the end you'll just end up sticking to the basic middle guy the entire game. Brink also tried to implement a class system but all the classes play the same way with the exception of a few context sensitive actions so the point of changing between classes is limited .

In the end Brink is a couple of good ideas that have been focused on but are just absorbed by the sea of mediocrity that is the rest of the game. The movement is done well but the maps make it mostly redundant. The customisation is limited to compared to they hype and for the most part just makes it hard to tell friend from foe. However I find it more fun to play then other recent FPS games because it is unique ideas handled badly but still unique and if there is a squeal like the end of the campaigns hint at maybe it can resolve these gripes and come out with something truly spectacular.

Going back to my point about other critics that I brought up in my CoD overview, if you haven't read it you don't have to of. One thing I heard is critics saying “all the guns feel the same” and this is true...to a degree, all the assault rifles, SMGs and LMGs all feel the same but there are two snipers that play like snipers, three or four shotguns and a grenade launcher so there is variety. Lets look at a generic, boring run of the mill, realistic shooter lets say CoD black ops, the assault rifles all play the same and so do the SMGs, there are only two snipers that anyone uses and only one shotgun worth its salt, also there are RPGs that people use but are more for shooting down support. So I'd say that this argument is invalid as the amount of guns in Brink is the same as the amount of guns that you are likely to use in CoD.

To finalise the game is good for the £20 price tag it has in most stores at the moment, it has its unique points in there and if you play in moderation you will certainly have fun, plus now they have free DLC out (CoD makes us pay a tenner for about four maps) it is certainly better value. And all in all I'd give this game a good 7 out of 10. unique enough to play if you are bored of the generic shooters that every other company produces.

Final thought: CoD may sell itself as a realistic shooter but with the riots in London the events of this game seem a lot less far fetched then having a huge war between America and Russia. I put it too you that in context Brink is more realistic then CoD.