Brink by Bethesda and Splash Damage

Allow me to introduce Brink, a game set in a supposedly once utopian city called “The Ark” which was a self-sustaining urban dream, and all was going well until the earth flooded. A bit like Noah’s Ark, this city is based above the waters…. Brink is a battle between “Security” who want to save the ark, and “The Resistance” who want to seize control of the ark, escape and explore life outside the ark.
With a lot of hype that’s been thrown its way, is it sink or swim for Brink?



Let’s start with the graphics: They seem to me, to be a cross between Borderlands and Black ops, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but considering this game has been delayed for almost a year, the graphics are still a bit hit and miss and should perhaps be a bit better – On one hand, you have good looking and detailed character models, and good (and big) looking levels ranging from an airport terminal, to an aquarium, as well as a shipping container yard and a shipyard.. One minus point is that on numerous occasions during different cut scenes, I have had really bad screen tearing where some of the visuals seem to be failing to keep up with the camera panning and it kinda spoils it a bit for me. I know this is not a major problem but for a game that has had a year of extra development, it feels like the developers may have shot themselves in the foot. Overall though, the graphics are good but nothing awe inspiring.

One plus point about Brink is the sound effects: The guns all sound slightly different, all sound fantastic and in my mind there is no better sound then the barrel of a Gatling gun whirring to life before spitting out a seemingly never ending stream of bullets into the ranks of the opposing forces. The character voices are dependent on the voice you chose when setting up the character on the creation screen, so as you can imagine, as there are only a handful of choice, expect to hear the same voices repeated a lot online



Brink offers quite a bit in terms of gameplay. During gameplay, you have the choice of playing as one of 4 classes (Medic, Engineer, Operative, and Soldier) and each class has its own perks:

• Medics as you can imagine, can heal players, themselves or revive downed team members.

• Engineers, can increase weapon damage, lay mines, build gun turrets, and can repair objectives that need repairing (if you’re escorting a maintenance bot that gets destroyed etc.) as well as other objectives needing an engineer’s touch!

• Soldiers dish out ammo, and can plant high explosive charges for objectives

• Operatives are the spies. They can hack certain objectives and also scan dead opponents to disguise themselves as the dead person until they fire a weapon which “uncloaks” them to the enemy.

All 4 classes can get ability upgrades, by spending ability points that are unlocked every time you level up by earning XP as is standard in most games. This leads me onto a good thing: Everything you do, gives XP. Using a buff on a team mate, earns you around 70/80 XP, shooting someone, even if you don’t kill them gives you XP, Guarding someone who is hacking/setting up a HE Charge etc. on an objective gives you XP and various things like that, so even if you aren’t the best shooter, as long as you are a good team player you can still make quite a lot of XP, in any game mode, online or offline! I think this a great idea so well done to Splash Damage & Bethesda for this little innovation although I do wish there was a higher level cap than 20, hopefully DLC will increase it along the line.



3 modes of play await you in the game: Campaign, Free play and Challenges:

Campaign (Played Solo, Online Co-op or Versus mode) you choose to play as either the resistance or security, with each side having 8 missions and 2 “What-if” missions which are missions based on certain decisions being made (not influenced by the player in any way, shape or form) and each mission is made up of main objectives (escort an agent, blow up a door etc.) and optional objectives (like hacking a command post) and the opposing force have objectives to stop you completing your main objectives, so it’s a bit like tactical games on “black ops” or “battlefield bad company 2” in terms of what you do in game. The campaign has a total play time of about 10 hours or so, depending on how many attempts to play through the each scenario. The way it plays, reminds me a lot of Battlefield Bad Company 2, as its quite tactical, methodical and sometimes slow paced. Currently, its 8v8 but some people are experiencing quite a lot of lag, but SD/Bethesda are aware of this and are working on a patch which will knock it down to 4v4 in a bid to reduce the lag issues

Free-play allows you to play any of the levels you want, how you want, although still objective based, you can do it so each side takes it in turns to be resistance/security.

Challenge mode contains 4 challenges, each need to be completed 3 times to get 3 stars, and they involve different disciplines. Your reward for doing the challenges is new attachments for your weapons, and the XP you earn can be used towards unlocking new clothing for your character (Of which, there are loads and loads of combinations of looks for your character so I’ll leave it down to you to experiment with them all.



Onto the guns: There are 24 weapons in Brink, this means there are many possibilities for personalization (such as what sight you have, whether or not you have a silencer, underslung grenade launcher, things like that.. Think Black ops and your not too far wrong. However, what you can carry directly relies on your character, as bigger guns require your character to have a bigger Body Type and all weapons are usable by both Security and resistance, however you cannot pick up weapons off the floor, so this encourages you to stick close to a soldier class person who can refil your ammo etc

Achievement wise, I think this is a fairly straight forward one to max out the 1000 gamer score as hardly any of the achievements ask you to do something totally bizarre, there’s not any “collect 499 newspapers” or anything like that, so a thumbs up from me, I like the achievements on offer here.

There is one thing you will not find in Brink and that’s a stats page where you see your kills/deaths, favourite weapons etc. as it is trying to take you away from the COD mentality of trying to maintain a high kill/death ratio as a lot of people do, so it’s good that it encourages teamwork to such an extent it doesn’t bother telling you how many times you died. Well done to the developers on this!

Movement in Brink is slightly different to the standard in other FPS’ for the inclusion of 1 thing: Free-running! You can run and jump over obstacles without slowing you down, you can climb up walls, slide along the floor, and all of which can be used to gain access to areas that could give you the jump on your opponents!

I also want to mention the AI in Brink as it is rather strange – I was playing an offline campaign mission on “Normal” and my AI team were nothing but cannon fodder, leaving me to do the work, while the Enemy AI was the equivalent of the SAS and were decimating me. I turned it down to easy and the carnage was just as brutal, and just as frustrating so although it is possible to play offline, you get so much more benefits playing with friends!!



In closing I would say that Brink is going to be a bit like Marmite as there will be no sitting on the fence, you will either love it or hate it as I don’t see there being a middle ground. It won’t appeal to those people who sit on Modern Warfare 2 trying to do 360 no-scopes while jumping off rooftops, it won’t appeal to the people who just run off and do their own thing. Its teamwork or bust and that’s never a bad thing in my eyes! I have learned that some DLC will be coming soon, which will add more levels and items and best of all, for the low price of free!

Its a pretty decent game, but not sure of the overall lifespan as once you hit level 20, there's nothing more to do/unlock.

I would give Brink 7 out of 10

Great work mate!

Good review Stu. I really love this game and am in the strange situation of wanting to start new characters to be able to go through it again with, even though I have unlocked everything and got 1000g. Every game I play on it is unique and I have really started to like mixing it up in terms of which class I play as. I think your experience really will differ based on you online experience as I seem to be the only person I know not getting a lot of lag.

Probably my favourite game so far this year, roll on the free DLC next month

Nice comprehensive review there mate.

I like the sound of the game now! Wasn't sure before. Just wish I could afford it.

Good review there mate.

I'll probably be giving this one a miss until i see it in a bargin bin somewhere

Nice review there, has steered me more towards getting it, sounds like it could be fun, although still not sure.
Mind you as the gamertag suggests I am not the most decisive!