Review: Brink (Xbox 360)

Brink's team emphasis, crisp visuals and customisation do enough to stand out from a growing pack, in which reliance on online play can make or break the audience.

By Richard Watt
Published online : 16.05.11 @ 07.19pm

On a dystopian planet, rising seas have forced humanity to huddle together in a floating city, Ark. It turns out the inequalities of the present continue in the future, as years of plenty give way to division along resource and privilege lines. Some decide to leave Ark via plane, in search of others. These refugees feel oppressed by the city's founders, who squabble among themselves and retain a disproportionate share of the city's food and water. Their security forces are buoyed by a sense of righteousness, with more than a hint of misunderstanding.

On digesting a few plot points, the player raises an old question:

Am I red, or blue?

Developer Splash Damage lets the player decide Ark's fate by choosing to aid Resistance or Security efforts. Rather than have you choose the answer to a moral question — good or bad? — the choice is mostly aesthetic. Tattoos or crew cuts, baggies or fatigues.

A tactical shooter at heart, Brink's games are never won on the merits of holding one type of weapon or an individual's skill. Character classes are familiar (soldier, engineer, operative, medic) in the Team Fortress mould, although their application in Brink is more mechanical and not so much down to personal preference.

Each side's success in a map is based on at least two objectives, which all require varying character classes to complete. This said, a team's decision to go all out on medics to escort a wounded man is always fatal. As the demands of an objective are fluid and class choice depends on the rest of the team, change is made instantly at easily reached workstations. Each class is capable of "buffing" its team's abilities by gifting ammunition, medical help, and increasing another's damage. The impact this has on play is enough to encourage communication in itself.

Tactical shooters are based on the spawn, by which the player is forced to wait until dying to pick the right class for a new objective, but Brink's quick choices are a good fit because an experienced player becomes very hard to kill. Command wheels allow access to objective information, and one glance allows the player to know what team-mates are doing.

During play, my first comparisons were not with Team Fortress 2 but with Shadowrun, a very competent shooter that suffered from the questionable adaptation of a cult role-playing game to an FPS. The ability system and emphasis on teamwork rings a few bells, as does the ability to change body weight to allow different approaches to the game. Substitute a lithe and agile scout for an elf and we have a dynamic unfortunately missed by most, as Shadowrun went to the bargain bin.

Swell maps

Gripes that the game ships with too few maps seem unwarranted, as the majority (around seven of the 10) are very well balanced. Halo: Reach only came with five maps which anyone would willingly play online, and that game's experience was much shallower. I'd recommend playing online, bar a few tutorial sessions to get to grips with Brink's concepts. While the AI is reasonable, there are occasions where its herding tendency makes it impossible to play a map in the way it seems intended: choke points work all too well and the player is often forced to abandon his game-controlled colleagues and find a back way around to complete an objective.

Splash Damage introduces a SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) system, which adds a simple third dimension to shooters. Vaulting desks, pulling up on to higher levels, and sliding into cover are possible with a button press. The results are sometimes unrealistic but I appreciate the effort to introduce some kind of movement beyond a short, grunting jump.