Brink review

I'm not sure exactly where to start, or how to say it nicely, so I'll start with a very blunt statement and continue to explain why thereafter: Brink is a disappointment. That's not to say it's an entirely bad game, but for me the bad far outweighs the good.

With much of what the game actually was remaining mysterious until release, promises of a seamless merger of single player and multiplayer, as well as a revolutionary Parkour-like movement system got many of us very excited. Being developed by the creators of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, there was also an expectation that PC specific considerations and features would be delivered.

It seems none of this was quite the case, bar free and open dedicated servers. Single player has turned out to be what is more-or-less multiplayer with unintelligent bots, and the "SMART" movement system is hugely undercooked. Most unfortunately, it's very apparent this first person shooter's development was a console focused one, like so many others of late.

At the time of writing this review, sound can randomly stop until a map change, and ATI users are experiencing a wealth of visual problems. To Brink's credit, these appear to be the only two major common problems, and considering the launch woes of titles like Fallout: New Vegas and Call of Duty: Black Ops, things could be worse.

That said, even when the audio is working well, it's rather unimpressive. There was much hype about Brink's audio design, but that hype has been far from met in actuality. There are obvious ill-fated aspirations to deliver an intensity using some of the same aural concepts you'll have paid attention to in games like Bad Company 2. Brink doesn't reach those highs, and I've been mostly left annoyed by their implementation of "deafening" effects, and the lacklustre atmosphere of a large fire-fight.

The visuals are mostly fine, even if not looking nearly as good as the screenshots released. The interesting and well-conceived art style is of particular note, appealing to me above and beyond the not entirely dissimilar directions taken by Borderlands and Team Fortress 2. Performance is a concern though; my i7 920, GTX 590 and 6GB or DDR3 drops to 50fps, while Crysis 2 runs at near twice that and looks twice as good to boot. Visually, one of the largest letdowns are the SMART interactions, which are all canned animations that look awkward and often unfitting. The result is characters grabbing the air, or clipping through objects. Perhaps Splash Damage should have paid attention to technologies from NaturalMotion which have delivered apt and dynamic animated interactions within the environments of Grand Theft Auto IV and Force Unleashed.

We heard a lot about SMART and how it would revolutionise the way we move in first person shooters, and its failing isn't just in the presentation. The current implementation means if you hold the SMART key and look under a ledge while running, you will slide. If you approach a rail holding it, you will jump the rail. These moves can't be actioned anywhere though, with some structures being no higher than others, but some you can climb and others you cannot. In practicality, they could have made the crouch button let you enter a slide if running, and the jump key catapult you over a fence - or up a wall - if you're in proximity and looking at it. Splash Damage have tried to sell SMART as something it absolutely isn't.

Particularly disappointing is the delivery of the anticipated single player component. The end result could be and is being compared to that of Quake 3 Arena's single player offering. Make no mistake; it's a locally hosted skirmish with bots. It's insulting, as is the "huge" decision of whether you will fight for The Ark or fight to escape it, which turns out to be an inconsequential one.

The team based multiplayer mechanic itself is fundamentally Enemy Territory, there's no doubting that, and it's fundamentally good. What is bad is the feeling that there was likely no external play testing of maps, especially not for competitive gaming; the progression and action that arises amidst them isn't particularly compelling. Even less so is the progression of your character's development, with mostly uninspiring unlocks that dramatically reduced any care factor for levelling up at all. Finally, the arsenal is my biggest gripe; every SMG feels indifferent apart from the noise and model. The variety feels faux, and performance seems negligible between weapons in their respective categories.


The greater problem however is that Brink was sold not by being an evolved Enemy Territory, but by setting it apart from previous first person shooters entirely, using fancy acronyms such as SMART and promises of a great story. Neither is anything like what they were cracked up to be.

What I found particularly disheartening, given my trust in everything Splash Damage have done since Quake 3 Fortress, was that Brink is a certain departure from their PC focus. The in-game menus have obviously been designed for televisions and console controllers, and a "that'll do" approach has been taken toward these same displays and functions in a PC environment. No official support for 3D or triple monitor technologies has been given any thought, and as aforementioned; the performance on a good PC is far too low when sitting it beside better looking titles such as Bad Company 2 and Crysis 2.