Back in 2011 Brink by Bethesda Softworks made its debut. I honestly can't remember too much about it reception but I remember it being OK for a short period. It seems recently that Bethesda said "Why not" and made the game free. I just finished running a 10k and needed something to write about today (really I had planned on doing this anyway) so I thought this would be the perfect candidate for my one-hour series. I set the clock and played one hour of Brink.
The Experience:
Brink greets you with a quick back story of where you are. You are on what is called the Arc, which was a floating city that became a refuge with the earth's rising waters. The city was split in two with two controlling factions. There are two groups, one that want to save the arc, and one that wants to leave. When you create your character you must choose which side you want to be on, although you can basically just pick whatever side during matchmaking.
First off, the time has not been too kind with this game's graphics. I am amazed how much different games look compared to six years ago but the game feels kind of dated. The movement is a little more clunky but with sound assets that make you feel you are firing something powerful. The character style of hyper realization is weird too. Everyone has huge noses, really exaggerated shaped heads, and all had terrible acne as children. That or they took the time to make sure they were scarred from chicken pox.
The game is a first person objective based shooter where you play one of four classes each with the own perk. You have a soldier who supplies ammo, a medic who heals, an engineer who provides buffs, and operative who plays the spy role. Each class has more of a role depending on the map. You can change between roles when you spawn and can add special perks to them as you level up and unlock them.
One of the interesting aspects of this game is this story is worked through by assigning you to a specific arena based off of the story mission you are on. I was able to play four full maps in the hour and to get an idea of what it was like on both sides. I played two maps as resistance and two maps as security. I can't be sure but it looks like you are placed in matches with people around your level, that or there are a lot of terribadies in this game. Who the hell stands still in a shooter?
I do see where this game was going with the ability to jump over low objects by sprinting, knocking people over with some weapons, and sliding when you crouch while running. All pretty cool things that are less of an oddity now than they use to be. I do also like how the objectives are interesting compared to most. While they are still at the core "go to this point and defend it", what you are defending is fellow players hacking computers or blowing up doors to move on. There are also escort missions and could be other types but I only made it so far. If the team is successful in getting the first objective the game will take you to a quick cutscene and then you move onto the next one until the time is up or the objective is reached.
There are also some cool secondary objectives that provide a buff to the team and, when teams are even, seem to actually make a pretty big difference and are worth the capture. This creates for some interesting combat situations as you sneak to one location, capture it, and find yourself on the flank of your enemy.
All in all it's a pretty cool game. I definitely enjoyed the hour but I wasn't really blown away by anything. Not to say it wasn't a well put together game, it is, it just lacks any factor beyond saying it is OK. With the plethora of arena based shooter out there it's hard for me to say this a stand out especially since its an older title.
TL;DR:
Brink is an older game that brings its own flavor to the land of objective shooters. While the FPS world has moved on in graphics and gameplay it still provides enough for some novelty. Its free now so if you are looking for something to do to burn some time it could be worth the look but, if you are already inundated, its one you wont lose anything on from giving a pass.
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