Ah, the long standing tradition of games not living up to the high expectations their developers set for them.. Brink is one of the biggest examples of this. And it's incredibly disappointing to say that. They created a vibrant world, nice character design, and a compelling concept. Sadly, it wasn't enough. It just didn't fit together in so many ways. I contribute it to rushing. Damn shame too.. On with the review.
Those of you unfamiliar with my system, it goes like this :
A- Atmosphere
G- Gameplay
G- Graphics
S- Sound
All are graded on a scale of 10.
A - Judging from the intro cinematic and the menus alone.. I thought I was in for a really atmospheric Orwellian style game. What I got was so much less. The intro shows a society torn apart. The society is known as 'The Ark'. A floating megastructure off the coast of San Francisco. It was meant to be a resort, but after years of natural disasters and global warming it became humanity's only haven. Compelling, no? Unfortunately it ends up being anything but. Why? Because the whole single player component is MULTIPLAYER WITH BOTS! I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to find this out. I had no idea, because I had read no reviews before buying this for 12 bucks. The least the company could have done is make decent cinematic sequences between the tedious skirmishes but nope.. Nothing of the sort. Just yelling. The characters in this game are mostly faceless and nameless. Including the character you create in the surprisingly robust character creation engine(More on that later). Such a waste. The bots are no good as well. The atmosphere may have been the only redeeming factor of this game. But they decided not to elaborate on it and instead rushed the game out the door. Which is tremendously disappointing considering how much work was obviously thrown into the art department. The environments (when not glitching out from horrible texture pop-ins the likes of which are worse than RAGE) are actually quite nice. And so is the design of the oppressive police force. It's just a shame it was wasted on a soulless skirmish game with bots. I get the impression that something really impressive could've been done here. -3/10
All of this beautiful scenery and nothing to show for it..
G - Ahh Gameplay.. It's boring. BORING! A single player campaign mode translated to simply multi-player skirmishes with bots instead!?!?! Constantly being shouted at to attack or defend a certain point or person.. It's no fun. I don't think I really need to say much more. It just feels lazy and rushed in this fantastic world with a great story. I didn't give actual Multi-player a try, but I got fairly acquainted with it from the matches I had to do during the campaign. There are two aspects of the gameplay that one could really bring themselves to truly appreciate. One, is the robust character creation. You really get a chance to give your character your own style(it's just a shame they don't really do much in the cut-scenes). There's plenty of outfits to unlock and you start off with a decent amount of facial features, scars, and hair styles. You can also choose between different body types to give your character. Heavy body for command over heavier weapons or go lighter for a boost of speed. But obviously this has all been done before. The other aspect is the one that had me really impressed : weapon customization. That's something I've not seen before. I'm not talking about COD style put one thing on your gun and call it a day. NO! You can completely deck your weapon out to fit your needs. From suppressors, to red dot sights, to muzzle flash compensators, to under barrel launchers; this game has an impressive amount of weapon mods. It's a pain to unlock them all(you have to do annoying challenges with the ever annoying A.I. . But at least it's a slight break from the ordinary) and it is nice to give your gun a bit of flair in this otherwise drab game. The parkour system : SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) that was implemented can take quite a bit of getting used to. All in all, this game feels clunky and you have to get completely used to that before you'll be any good at anything in it. And that takes quite a few deaths. It also doesn't help that your teammate A.I. can be completely oblivious to the danger around him. In the end.. This game can be bogged down with clunky controls and the occasional choppy frame rate. I really want to know what went wrong here. Like I've been saying.. This could've really been something. unique -2/10
Bot1(right): Think we should help out down there? Bot2: Nah. Let's just stand out here in the open.
G - Brink runs on a highly modified version of IdTech 4. IdTech 4 was used to create Doom 3 which, in my opinion, still looks good to this day when set on 'ultra high'. However.. Either the ps3 copy sucks majorly.. Or Splash Damage sucks majorly at modding engines. At times, this game can look moderatly good, but most of the time it's a texture pop-in mess. Especially when you're just starting a match. Which is normal, I understand that. But in most games this problem is gone after a second or two; in Brink it lingers for a good 6 to 10 seconds. And it looks awful when it does it. Again, this is a huge disappointment considering all the work that clearly went in to designing the environments. If they ever make a Brink 2 hopefully they use IdTech 5. Still, I have to say, the amount of stuff they did on an almost 7-8 year old game engine is completely impressive. And that's where these 3 points come from : -3/10
Alright, so the ps3 version isn't entirely inferior I guess.
S - Typical shooter affair. Automatic weapon fire, pistol shots, some shotguns and explosions. Some recycled sounds. But what game isn't guilty of that? That's the least of Brink's problems. The voice acting is actually pretty cool. There's a pretty decent variation in character voices and phrases. Which makes this game at least a little less tiring on the ears than the eyes. -7/10
The Verdict - 4/10
Brink was a disappointment to me. I expected a lot from it's previews and was let down hard. The graphics ended up being garbage, slapping the artists in the face. The single player was pretty much non-existent. And the story really didn't end up impressing me despite how well set up it was. The art direction and story concept remain impressive. If Splash Damage gets another chance to make a Brink game I hope they learn from their mistakes and not only create a viable single player campaign, but a functioning graphics engine. Brink had a good formula, it was just very poorly executed.
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