Brink (PC)

BRINK was released on Friday. I was so enthusiastic about its release that I stayed up until 3 am, just to wait for the launch and get a taste of the action. Up again at 8am, I dashed to the PC to get back to the action. That's the short story, over the last 3 days I've clocked up about 20 hours. So far, I am impressed and have no post-purchase depression.
Team Fortress 2 meets Battlefield

I'd said before release that BRINK looked like a healthy mix of the game play styles of Team Fortress 2 and the Battlefield series. In other words, the team work elements of both, plus the lunacy of TF2. I wasn't far off. Like TF2, BRINK has hats and engineers can place automated turrets, while medics can buff your health, but there's much more to it than that.
It's all about the teamwork

BRINK is definitely a team game. Team play is the central core. This is where BRINK immediately stands out from your ordinary run-of-the-mill FPS. The likes of Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and even Battlefield in some respects have a large focus on kills and many people out there brag (or worry) about their kill-death ratio. BRINK takes a step away from this. The multiplayer scoreboards have no mention of your kills or deaths. In fact, unless you sat there with a pen and paper making notes, you'd probably never know how many kills or deaths you got in any given round. Of course, you wouldn't have time to make notes because the game is far too fast-paced and hectic and the very concept is just daft. The point is, BRINK doesn't care about kills or deaths and neither should you. Which is probably a good thing, because you will die alot.

Many games try to encourage teamwork. The Battlefield series for example, offers far less points for a kill than they do for capturing a flag, repair a team vehicle or carrying out another team work objective. But you'll still find someone sitting in a corner, trying desperately to keep their amazing KDR up, annoying the hell out of everyone. BRINK is very different. Try to go it alone and you'll soon find yourself dead. BRINK tips make it clear that teamwork is where the XP points lay. Revive a fallen comrade, buff their weapons, blow up a wall, rebuild some stairs, repair a crane - complete the objectives and you'll rack up the points and help your team win.
Objectives, Objectives, Objectives

Teamwork in BRINK focuses heavily on 'objectives'. Obviously the objective of any game is for your team to win, but how you win, depends on how you operate as a team and which objectives are completed. Within any given game, there are some main objectives, which require a specific class to complete them, but once that's done, the objective will change and so will the main class that's needed.

As an example, there is one level that requires an engineer to repair a crane. Once the crane is repaired, a missile console needs hacking, this requires an operative. Now this doesn't mean that everyone on your team should play engineer then operative. That would just be daft. There are secondary and tertiary objectives which assist the team to win. In order to get from the main base to the crane, the engineers need to run around a long maze, but soldiers are able to destroy certain walls (this is their objective) which make a short cut for the team. Enemy engineers can rebuild these walls, so the team need to fight to keep them open and help the engineers complete their objective.

On any map, there are supply and healthy command posts (consoles). If a team captures them, then the whole team receives a boost (buff) to their health or supplies. The enemy need to be kept away from these consoles otherwise if they capture them, they'll have the edge. Later on in the game, you'll unlock perks allow you to buff a command post - doubling the benefit to your team.

The essential tool for knowing what to do in the game is the objective wheel (middle mouse button as default). If you don't use it, you won't have a clue what you're doing and find yourself running around like a headless chicken. The objective wheel shows the main objective for your class highlighted in yellow, secondary objectives are in blue, tertiary in grey. Similarly, using a command console will show you the most important class for that part of the map. In my example above, the engineer would be highlighted in yellow. But a good healthy mix of all class types is essential to win the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4cybT6xu​BM&playnext=1&list=PLE576D1CE704239F4
Innovations and standing out from the crowd

It's unlikely that BRINK will win any awards for being ground-breaking, but there are some innovations and other elements to the game which make it stand out from the crowd.

The first of which is Parkour and SMART movement. This simply means you can run around the map like a looney. A nice touch to the game design. Run around, hold the shift (run) key down permenantly and obstacles won't get in your way. Characters climb, run, jump, bounce, wall-sprint and dash around the maps with ease.

There are 3 body types - light, medium and heavy. The light class can climb higher and mount obstacles more easily, dashing headlong into battle, while heavy body types lumber around more slowly, but take more damage before dying.

This SMART movement is a nice element of the game and a nice innovation, but if you want to move around even more quickly, hitting the right keys at the right time (manually) can make all the difference - crouch, run, jump, all at the right moments to get around that little bit faster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBQqD8mv0​XM
No noobs please, we're British

We all have our FPS frustrations. You'll hear people moaning about 'nade-spam' and noob tubes. I personally hate the norm of melee attacks in FPS games. The one hit knife kill has become the standard in most games. BRINK gets away from all these frustrations. There are grenade launchers, but they won't kill you with one hit, you'll just get knocked down (but you can still get up and fight back). The same for grenades. Standard melee attack is a rifle butt to the face - this will knock a enemy down, but not kill them. You can get knives, but not as standard, you need a pistol equipped and stabbing is not a one hit kill, it just dishes out a bit of damage. You need a good few knife strikes to take an enemy down.

No one weapon seems to stand out from any other as frustrating or 'noob' like. Which makes a nice change and breathes a breath of fresh air into FPS gaming.
XP, ranks and funny hats

Like most games, BRINK has a number of weapons, perks, achievements and outfits to unlock. But just like everything else, they do this in a different way.

Right from the start, you customise your characters appearance to suit your own desires. There are quite a few customisations out of the gate. This seems like a nice touch because you can make your character stand out from the rest - if you're fighting with friends you'd be able to see them with ease and have a laugh at their daft appearance. The problem is, the game is so fast-paced, enemies and team mates almost pass by you in a blur of movement and colour. Unless someone has bright green hair, you're unlikely to be able to spy anyone you know or recognise with ease. However, as you gain more XP and rank up through the levels you will unlock more outfits and customisations, so you can easily personalise your character to your whims. Sometimes, you'll spy your chap in one of the cut-scenes as you win or lose a game, so that's worth a laugh on its own. Of course, it's all cosmetic. Apart from the body types, nothing about your appearance makes a difference to the game.

Save the arc or escape the arc? This is the choice given to you when you first boot up the game. Making the decision will affect the look of your character. Save the arc gives you security outfits and customisations, escaping gives you the rebel look. The choice will generally effect which team you are assigned to when playing a game, but you can still switch teams. However, if your character is based on saving the arc, but you switch to the rebel team, you'll find yourself playing with a default appearance - this won't effect your game, you'll still have the same guns and kit, just no fancy hat or tattoos.
Pimping your guns and upgrading your character

Many modern games (Call of Duty for example) allow a player to customise their weapons as they progress through the ranks. You'll start off with barely any guns and nothing fancy to play with. BRINK does things slightly differently. You start out with a mass of guns to play with. The majority of which are immediately available to play with. Customisations remain locked, but you won't get them by playing the multiplayer and gaining XP. No, to get silencers, extended magazines and special sights (etc) for your guns you need to play the 'challenges'. These are offline game modes with specific objectives. There are 3 difficulty settings for each challenge type and 4 challenges to complete. You only need to complete the first two difficulty levels of each to get all the good unlocks, the 3rd is just for bragging rights (see Parkour This video above).

Playing the multiplayer will still bring you XP which unlocks various abilities and perks. There are class specific abilities as well as general ones. Simple things like being able to deploy a sentry gun, or upgraded 'buff' for your equipment - helping team mates by improving their weapons or health. The game certainly has legs. There are quite a few abilities which make a difference to your character. I've mostly played medic and engineer so far, so I've spent all my points on these. But there's an option to 'sell' the abilities you've purchased and use those points to try something new. This in itself is a nice addition to an already clever game.
The classes

I've already mentioned the classes within the game. There are 4 different potential team mates - engineer, medic, soldier and operative. If you've played any FPS you might be familiar with these classes, if you've played TF2, even more so. But it's simple enough, engineers repair stuff, soldiers blow it up, operatives hack stuff and can disguise as enemies and medics keep everyone alive. They all play their parts and have their advantages and disadvantages.

A nice element of BRINK is no matter what class you play, you can use the same guns. This is different to other games where each class usually has a set weapon which needs to be carefully balanced. No, in BRINK you can be a medic with a sniper rifle or an engineer with a Gatling gun. The only weapon limitations are based on your body type. Light body types have less weapon choice because they can't handle the weight of a minigun or a grenade launcher. So if you like a variety of guns, medium or heavy body type is for you.
Single player

There isn't much of a single player to speak of. The campaign is simply the same maps you will see in multiplayer, but with bots in place of human players. I initially thought the AI on the bots was a bit pants, but this was from playing the first level of challenges, once you get stuck in you'll soon find the enemy bots play just as hard as some human players you'll encounter.

Basically, apart from the challenges, there's little point in looking at single player - get stuck in to multiplayer, that's where the fun is.
Day one issues

BRINK had some initial teething problems. That's the way with games these days. Servers were laggy as they were overwhelmed by the number of players getting their teeth into the fun. One map had sound issues which made everyone go deaf after 5 minutes of play and there were some other minor problems. However, the team at Splash Damage were quick to patch out most of the problems and are still working on improving the game for all our enjoyment.
Conclusion

BRINK is just what I expected it to be and more. I do die a lot and often, but with the lack of KDR on the scoreboards, it's easy to ignore and just enjoy the teamplay. Playing such a objective focused game with friends is thoroughly enjoyable and I can see many happy and fun hours ahead of us.