You know, I was kind of in the dark about Brink until recently, when a friend of mine brought it to my attention, so I went out and bought it for the Xbox 360. I love Bethesda and figured I might as well give Brink a shot.

OVERVIEW

Brink is a game that blends FPS Call of Duty style gunplay with Mirror’s Edge parkour to the best of its abilities. Brink takes place at humanity’s last safe haven from a global flood; “The Ark”. There are two factions vying for control. The Security Enforcers and the Resistance. The Resistance are determined to find life outside The Ark, while the Enforcers want to maintain order and isolation. Obviously, overcrowding on The Ark led to a war over control. The concept is actually pretty cool. The way the game implements it is well.. not amazing. The parkour is often hard to use. It’s not like Mirror’s Edge where you actually can do the amazing tricks, it’s more of where you can climb over objects realistically. However, I often find myself climbing over the objects I don’t want to and not being able to climb over the ones I need to. That kind of led me to die.. a lot. Oh, did I mention that the NPC enemies are like MLG Players all hopped up Monster? They’re so unbelievably difficult to kill I was thinking playing against other people would be easier. It also doesn’t help that the guns seem to be overpowered and weak at the same time, and the gun sways so wildly at times I can’t tell if I’m shooting at an enemy or some street lamp. The accuracy and power problems can be helped by adding attachments. The parkour problem can’t.

GAMEPLAY

Brink tries to stand out from the crows of other FPS giants out there. It does this by adding special character abilities and four classes. Soldier, Engineer, Medic and Operative, and each class has their own special ability, that have unlimited uses but need to recharge after a few rapid uses.. However, each class can use every gun (depending on your character build type) which is always a nice thing. Combined with what Bethesda calls “SMART” gameplay and a difference of gametypes, Brink seems like a good concept.

The soldier is your general all around gunfighter, who is equipped with a molotov cocktail and a weapon of your choosing, as well as being able to replenish your own ammo and ammo of teammates.

The engineer is as the name implies, the engineer. No, not the TF2 engineer. The engineer plays a combat-passive support role. He is needed for repair objectives, demolition objectives, etc. His class ability is giving weapon damage buffs to himself and other players.

The medic is.. well.. a medic. He can heal players and throw syringes at downed players. The syringes are actually pretty cool. Say I’m a downed soldier, and a medic throws a syringe at me if I choose not to respawn (you can switch back and forth between waiting for a medic to heal you or respawning.) However, there’s a huge firefight around me. I wait until the firefight dies down, use the syringe when I want to and pop back up and start giving the enemy a nasty surprise.

The operative is the equal to a spy. He hacks objectives and can disguise as a dead enemy by walking up to said enemy and holding his operative device at them (which looks like a big iPhone, but no Angry Birds) and can freely walk around as the enemy until someone sees through his disguise.

Unfortunately, multiplayer (the part of the game I was looking forward to) was so laggy that I couldn’t play it at all. Never in my entire life have I seen a 360 multiplayer game so laggy you can’t move, much less play. If this isn’t fixed, it will be a huge setback to the game’s marketing front, which was after all, multiplayer.

However! Character customization (for 360 standards) is purely awesome. There’s a plethora of ways to turn your Resistance fighter or Security Enforcer into a total rendition of yourself. You can change your hair, helmet, shirts, pants, etc. It’s all changeable. You want a guy who looks like a bomb technician? It’s possible. How about a remake of a superhero? I’m sure you could figure it out. The customization possibilities really shine.

ENVIRONMENT

Brink takes place on The Ark. One side of it looks like crap (the Resistance hangs out here) and the other side is a utopia (where the Security is.) Battles can take place at either area. I’ve found myself battling on what’s left of a cargo ship converted into a resistance hangout, pieced together with metal crates. I’ve also found myself fighting in a pristine part of the utopia over control of a nuclear reactor. Make no mistake, this place was designed to keep people in, and the game does a good job of showing us what it could be like. The levels are varied enough so that I feel like I have a little freedom. But there are still multiple points in levels that are too easy for some defending team to set up heavy defenses and give the attackers no chance.

GRAPHICS

I can’t tell if this is a cross between TF2 graphics and Call of Duty graphics, or its own thing. Textures are colorful but a tad bland. I dunno, maybe it’s just me but the game could refine its graphics a little better and make them 21st century. The character graphics are sharp though. When you play as your character, the guns are detailed and crisp from your first person perspective. The levels look like a bunch of oil pastels that from far away look nice, but when you get up close they look awful. For a 2011 game you’d expect more graphic quality.

WHAT’S GOOD

Brink really does try to stand out from the crowd with its unique concepts and customization aspects. If multiplayer gets working, the varied gametypes and customization sets will allow for some pretty epic moments in gaming, especially if you have friends that play. The whole Security-vs-Resistance thing makes you as a player think “That guy is a dumb rebel.” or “That guy is a dumb cop.” It makes you actually feel the story and the struggle your character would go through in his faction, and landing a kill that much more satisfying. If you can get past the clunky parkour, it can be a good tool for strategy, although that’s stretching it.

WHAT’S CRAP

Despite the innovation and effort put into this game, it’s overshadowed by a storyline that is pretty much nonexistant and for now at least, broken Xbox 360 multiplayer. The parkour system is more of a curse than a blessing and the complicated menu interfaces do not bode well for those who don’t want to read the instruction manual cover to cover. Brink had potential, and for some it may hold them over until the next big thing. For me, it’s not that incredible, but if you want to give it a shot I’d suggest renting it. Possibly a buy when the price goes down.