Brink - A Redbox Review

INTRODUCTION
After hearing about Brink, I was immediately in love. Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games (as a one-time experience), but I cut my gaming teeth on games like Quake II and Counter-Strike. More guns were needed, and Brink delivered.


THE FEEL
Brink is what would happen if Al Gore watched "Waterworld", played Mirror's Edge and then penned the backstory for Bioshock. A floating arcology (The Ark, get it? lololol) is built sometime in the next 44 years out in the Pacific, as a(n expensive) haven for the rich, brilliant, and hip. Due to the seas rising, presumably from the polar ice caps melting, The Ark sees tourists replaced by refugees. In a scene right out of Snow Crash, all those extra commoners end up in an organic growth of boats and anything else that will float, moored at the edges of The Ark. As far as we know, no one in The Ark knows if there are any other survivors elsewhere on Earth. The two playable factions are Ark security forces, looking to maintain order, and a loose-knit band of rebels who want to escape and go looking for dry land away from The Ark. And maybe some olives.

I'm probably forgetting some classic, but this is the first game I can remember that really tells a compelling story within a round-based shooter. There are little cinematics before, after and sometimes during a match, with audiologs that you unlock as you level up. It made me unnaturally giddy to see my created character inserted into those cinematics, even if 'I' am just checking my weapon in the background while two teammate have a conversation. It's the little things that count.

Speaking of character creation and the little things, you maintain two costumes per character: one for Security and one for the Rebels. You can switch between them at will, and the music subtly changes for each. As you level up, you'll unlock new clothes to customize your officer and ragamuffin. Although some more choices would've been nice, especially regarding hair/hats, the last time I paid so much attention to my clothes was in Soul Calibur IV. Kinda random, but apparently there are no women in the Ark Security forces, nor in the fighting branch of the rebellion.


MECHANICS
Once you create a character, you can choose to play through the story, do challenges to unlock weapon modifications and get onto the leaderboards, free-play versus games, and tinker with your character & weapons. Modding weapons really stood out for me, since each gun can have up to four mods added, and each mod will improve some stats while lowering others. Most mods also are visible on the gun itself, giving you a sense of ownership after taking a 'stock' weapon and making it just right for you.

There are four classes: soldier, medic, engineer, and operative (read: spy). Each one has unique skills that you can buy with points earned from leveling up, and matches will generally require a mix of classes to complete multiple objectives. It's nice how classes are completely separate from weapon choices, and you can change your class at command posts mid-match. Pretty much anything you do in a match gains you experience points, even 'guarding' a door while you wait for the one operative on your team to come plant their doodad on it, fighting in close proximity to teammates, or playing online. It's a beautifully simple way to encourage players into playing the way that the developers intended.

Each level of the story is a match between the two teams, with the aforementioned cinematics and objectives that are appropriate with that part of the story. If your match settings are set accordingly, friends or strangers will simply replace bots. There's no gameplay outside of combat, unless you're like me and agonize over optimum weapon loadouts.

Within a match there will be a primary objective (e.g. a Soldier needs to plant explosives on a door), and secondary ones to help your team. If you aren't the 'right' class for the primary objective, it will display to you as Guard the Door. Hopefully this will encourage players to work together towards the primary goals. Secondary objectives might be blowing open a shortcut or securing a CP that grants a team-wide bonus. You can bring up a radial dial to select an objective, and it displays how many teammates are also working towards it. It's handy to see at a glance if no one is bothering with the most vital goal of the match. The levels are laid out like what you'd expect from a game that's about parkour gunfights in a dystopia, with plenty of places to jump, climb and slide around (except for the big, linebacker characters).


GRAPHICS
Yep, it looks like you're in a run-down shell of a place that was once great, except this time you're on top of the water. The rubble & such looks good, though... at least, as well as rubble can look. One complaint I had was that certain places were really dark at times. That's fine if it's for dramatic effect, but on occasion I would have trouble entering the battlefield, simply because our shipping-container HQ wasn't properly lit for emergency egresses.


SOUND
There isn't any background music during matches, unless I was so wrapped up in shootin' that I didn't even notice music. What you do hear, though... WOW. I was playing with headphones on, and I haven't heard such a satisfying shotgun since Quake II. Hearing that, I half-expected to see a head go flying 50 ft. as if I'd gotten a crit-hit with V.A.T.S. Oh, and the other guns also sound good & dangerous. Something rather random, though, is my character's apparent Foreign Accent Syndrome. I'm the type of player that will make created characters (the first one, at least) roughly based on myself, so it came as a surprise when my Washingtonian Filipino/Germanic avatar started talking with a Jamaican accent. Normally this would be a non-issue... except that you can't change a character's voice after he's created.




CONTROLS
Coming from Mirror's Edge, going nuts on junk lying around the environment came naturally to me, although there aren't quite as many moves available this time. If you hold down the sprint button (more like a brisk jog button), you'll automatically vault over obstacles and climb up ledges you jump towards. Crouching while sprinting will slide you under things like pipes & gunfire, and is a rather effective way to slide past enemies en route to putting some holes in the back panels of their armor. Raising up the sights for your weapons felt a little slower than I'm used to, but it didn't seem to affect gameplay. After the CoD series, it just feels weird. A nifty feature that I hope other games will implement is how a medic revives someone. Rather than running up to a downed teammate with defibrillators, the medic will toss them a syringe. It's then up to the casualty to decide if it's safe for him to revive himself. It's certainly not realistic, but you'll appreciate it the first time a pack of enemies run right past your almost-dead body.




ONLINE ASPECTS
There's been some scuttlebutt about Brink having issues with online multiplayer. It's all true.
Besides the $2 rental, I chose to try Brink on 360 due to the typically solid performance I've had with XBL. When I tried out a public game, the two other human players I was with brought the match down to a slideshow any time I tried to move. It definitely wasn't gameplay slowdown, as the bots were moving around as smoothly as usual when I stood still. I learned to play Counter-Strike on dial-up with ping of 200, so I can tolerate not having pixel-perfect accuracy & other players simply having better connections, but this was unplayable. This is why the big titles like Halo: Reach & Gear of War III have betas, even though they know the DVD factory is simply printing money: to iron the kinks out beforehand. It really burns my butter when developers & publishers are willing to let the early adopters be beta testers who pay $60 for the privilege.

Similarly, there's a Brink stats-tracking site; I even have the code to link my gameplay stats. Too bad the site isn't up, with no word (as of 18May11) when it will be.




CONCLUSION
I like this game. I really, really do. Bethesda or Splash Damage must have snuck a Polybius machine into my local theater, and used it to find out exactly what features I'd have in my dream game. That might also explain why I don't remember ever playing Polybius. And the night terrors.

Will I be buying it? YES... eventually. I didn't even play the game on release day, yet someone in charge at Bethesda, Splash Damage or ZeniMax thought it was okay to release a game centered around online multiplayer, with online features that aren't even finished. Am I just bat-guano crazy to expect a non-MMO game to have the features that work as advertised on release day, or have been adequately playtested? It's great that problems can be fixed after release through patches, but it seems like developers are getting lazier now that they know that the game doesn't have to be perfect by the time it 'goes gold'. Looking at what was shipped on the Brink disk +8 days of patching (or not), it's not worth $60. If I found it for $30 or less, definitely. If it's patched to the point where everything 'just works', I might ever reconsider $60. I just hope that Brink becomes popular enough that it'll be supported to the point where price meets quality, wherever that is.