First Impressions: Brink (360)

Future Tech: Non-stick low-friction pants. Classy.

First impressions are usually easy to write. You just put a new game in, play for a few hours, and then write what you feel. With Brink, however, it was a little trickier to get a bead on things.

After my first day with the title, Brink still has me a bit conflicted. Developer Splash Damage managed to pull of some amazing things with this game.They also managed to ship the game with some fairly major flaws. I can walk away from one play session and feel completely satisfied. Then the next time I head into the game I walk away frustrated and annoyed. 

The most important thing to know about Brink is that this is most definitely a multi-player game. It’s not that it can’t be played by a single player, but the single player game is literally just the multiplayer game with computer-controlled team-mates and enemies. As such, the story greatly suffers. There is a campaign to progress through, but the only thing that makes it a “story” are short, hard-to-follow cut-scenes before and after each match. You simply are not going to get emotionally invested in the world and lore of the game.

I don’t have a huge issue with this in and of itself — to be perfectly honest, the only reason I got brink was for the multi-player gameplay. Besides, how many times have we read arguments suggesting that the overly short single-player campaigns like those in the recent Call of Duty titles seem to be there just because we expect games to have them?

The problem with Brink‘s focus on multi-player is that the network play simply doesn’t work well. Out of 10 games I joined, one played perfectly, three played with intermittent but serious lag spikes, and six were unplayable. I’m not a statistician, but that’s not a very good success rate.

Additionally, there’s no lobby system. This makes joining games with friends awkward, as you have to actually start a match and then send out invites. A lobby would also allow players to update their appearance and weapon upgrades as they unlock. As it is, you have to leave the game you are in and go through the main menu to make changes to your character or weapons. Then you pray you find another working game to join.

Bethesda had said that they would address the network connectivity issues with a day-one patch. Sure enough, when I put the disk in and fired it up, it prompted me to install an update. Unfortunately, that seems to have done little to fix the networking issues. Hopefully they’ll be able to eventually fix this; if not, I feel the problems are major enough to suggest you think twice before purchasing the game.

There are also some issues with ‘texture popping’ — meaning that sometimes you’ll see the blurry low-detail version of a texture (meant to increase game speed when viewed from a distance) before the high-definition texture finally loads and ‘pops’ onto an object. This doesn’t affect game play, but it’s a pretty big faux paux for a big-budget console game.

There have been complaints about level and mission balance as well. I played through the first five or six missions as the ‘Security’ side without issue, but am now stuck on a mission that we just can’t seem to get past. The level involves first gaining control of a crane, which is difficult but doable. The objective then shifts to taking control of a missile silo. The control panel is in a very exposed area, and it just seems impossible to fend off the other side long enough to gain control.

This is day one, so the majority of players are still new to the game. Maybe as players learn the ins-and-outs of each level a little better, things will work out. At this point though, I can see why some people are concerned.

Yet another complaint has been that each objective can only be accomplished by a specific class. That means that if you pour all your ability upgrades into ‘Soldier’ abilities, for instance, you won’t have any advantage should you need to switch to an engineer or operative in order to complete a goal.

As quickly as you gain character levels, a ‘moderately dedicated’ player could probably have a separate character specialized for each class in under a week. You can’t change your character mid-game, but you would be able to enter a game as whatever role you’re in the mood to play. If you absolutely have to switch roles because you find yourself without a medic or with an incompetent operative that isn’t even trying to complete the objective, you can still swap classes in game. You won’t have any of your class-specific boosts, but you’ll be far from helpless. You’re never locked in as a particular class when chosing abilites, so you could theoretically pick one or two key abilities in each class and have a ‘balanced’ build. Class-specific abilities are only part of the customization regardless, so you’ll still have whatever general boosts you’ve chosen.

At this point, I feel that those looking for a deep or complex experience, and players who need to have long-term character leveling in order to feel rewarded will probably not enjoy Brink. Players looking for a fun, fast-paced multiplayer shooter have a lot to look forward to with the game — particularly if Splash Damage can iron out some of the technical issues.

I do worry a bit about the long-term appeal of the game,  but that’s something that I can’t predict after a single day at the controls. As I said at the onset, it seems like the things that Brink does well, it does very well. The things that Brink does poorly, however, are very poor. Right now, I’m unable to decide which way the scales tip.