Brink (PS3, 2011)
While looking for that image of Brink I noticed something. A majority of the images seem to be promotional shots, or at least not in-game screenshots like that one. They're not even shots from cutscenes, they're just artwork. I fear this apparent shallowness will become obvious as these words go on.
I bought Brink six years ago on the premise that an FPS set in a futuristic floating city on the verge of ruin between two warring factions with added elements of parkour would be like Mirror's Edge with decent gunplay. I remember absolutely nothing about this first play which seems to have lasted about three days, so here we have it again where I picked it up used for 99p and knocked off something from my backlog. Am I happy to have done so? Hmm.
The game is based around two alternate campaigns from both sides of that war. You are in the Ark, a sanctuary built on the ocean somewhere to deal with rising sea levels. Everything eventually breaks down and too many people get in, leading to war between Security who, uh, provide security and try to protect the nice bits and the Resistance, who call each other comrade unironically and try to overthrow the Ark's leaders. The two campaigns approach some of the missions from both sides which should in theory add and interesting element to proceedings, although for reasons which I'll get to this isn't the case.
Before that I'll opine about the world some more. The basic premise I've outlined sounds promising even now. The problem is that as a concept it's completely wasted on this game. It exists to provide a backdrop for the actual matches themselves which are between two teams, either online against other players (remember - six years removed from launch) or against AI bots. It's a class-based shooter, so you'll have objectives to complete in each match and you'll have to be the corresponding class to do so. Here is a large problem. You are an engineer, you fix a thing by going up to and pressing square. You are an operative, you hack a thing by going up to it and pressing square. Riveting. This wild variety undermines any concept of a story or world building in the game because any interest in what's actually going on vanishes because you're focused on completing your objective. Yet at the same time, you rarely have any idea why you're actually doing anything. Effectively going into the game blind you start and have no idea what's going on. I could have got around this by doing the separate Challenge mode first, but who is faced with the options of 'Campaign' and 'Challenges' and starts with the latter?
If you do start with the Challenges you have what's effectively a tutorial on the different class types and their purposes and the other thing you occasionally have to do in matches - escorting. Sometimes you have to escort a person to an extraction point across the map, sometimes a huge robot of some sort. Here I have two problems. The person you escort is always injured and walks slowly. So is a prime target to be shot at by the other team. None of the ludicrously proportioned characters in the game could lift him and move him more quickly, or by a better route, oh no. The same goes for the huge robots who have to carry a box or cut open a panel. It's nonsense. Even more frustrating (though not so much in 8v8 matches) is the fact that neither will move unless there's someone on the team next to it. When you're doing this and trying to put up with an assortment of bullets and explosives flying at you, it gets very old very quick. Especially since each match, from either side, is just the same sequence of very narrow objectives to be completed.
You might think there can be some interesting gameplay in just shooting people, nope. Every class has the same weapon. Pretty much all the rifles and SMGs are the same. I never tried the shotguns which are powerful enough to knock people down but not kill them, so they're too open to retaliation. The result is regardless of what you do to kill enemies it's always the same, and the guns are far too light and recoil-happy anyway. Why not mix it up with some secondary weapons, like mines that explode when someone's ten feet away already or grenades that don't kill people even when they explode right next to them? Since every class you play as and every class the enemy plays as seem to have identical weapons there's no variety in the gameplay at all. Even as you level up and get to unlock different types of secondary weapons like turrets and plantable explosives all your enemies level up at the same rate as you, so it becomes even more manic and indecipherable.
You may have noticed I mentioned parkour elements. In an FPS? The game seems quite proud of its movement physics which allow you to run and tackle obstacles with grace and fluidity - assuming you've not picked a heavy body type (hint: the body types make no other difference besides how quickly you can jump). But the maps are all basic multiplayer shooter stuff. Very rarely does the need or opportunity to run along walls and jump to ledges present itself. When it does it's just ridiculous anyway, you be miles away from where you're trying to jump to and still be able to pull yourself up. It's the sort of thing which seems like a good idea but is completely unnecessary in the game in which it's been implemented. And of course, when you get to small things you should be vaulting with ease you seem to get stuck more than you think you should, so the game isn't the free-flowing transcendent shooting experience it was probably intended to be.
Having only played this myself (and discovering it was released during the original big PSN outage) I don't know if it would be better with 8v8 people. I suspect it would be, if only so you didn't have to scream in frustration at the bots on your team who have a warped idea of what objectives they should be trying to complete. You can do things like build/destroy shortcuts and stuff in some maps but they rarely make any difference. There are command posts in the maps where you can change class but there's very little point to these. You die often enough that you'll be sent back to your original starting post - which is ****ing miles away from the objective you're on now, meaning any progress you made will have been erased - and be able to change there, of course as you're pinned down trying to hack a box of some sort all your teammates will be elsewhere. And then when you're down and need revived the medic on your team will deem other matters more important. This will happen all the time because you need to complete objectives yourself. If there's something a teammate can be doing, chances are they'll not bother and just
shoot be shot by enemies instead. Fun.
Another problem I have with this game which ties in somewhat to my complaints earlier about the world it's set in is the design. The characters are oddly proportioned which is fine, they were going for something slightly stylised. But they all end up looking the same, like reflections in those wacky mirrors you get at carnivals. Huge chins and hands, impossibly shaped bodies. When you're fighting, everyone looks the same. You can't immediately recognise different classes on your team and try to help accordingly, character appearance, like weaponry, isn't unique to each class. What really ****s you off is the similarity between both sides. There's some vague sense of blue and red but when you've got loads of bodies moving around in a small, poorly lit area you can't tell the difference. So you inevitably shoot one of your teammates and when you're on the Resistance it's the Irish guy who goes "do I look like a fascist to you?" Well, yes. I can't imagine the rage this would induce online.
One hilarious thing you can do is in the character creation. You get to pick skin colour and voices. A range of white, black and Chinese faces can be paired with any voice, so naturally I had a black Chinese man with the sort of patois accent that Little Jacob from GTA4 would need subtitles for. The range of accents all shouting nonsense during matches just adds to the cacophony of battle. I assume these voices and appearances (and the names of characters which come up on the kill list at the side, similarly diversified) are supposed to show that the Ark contains all that's left of humanity but due to the dreadful way the whole thing's presented it just seems silly.
I think what left me so unenthused by this game originally and what I find so hilarious now is that the premise and the game itself don't add up. The Ark and the story behind it is deep and rich and a great idea for a game. Even the maps themselves have a great amount of detail, though I just remembered that in nearly every map not all of it is available until you've completed a certain objective. That's really annoying. There's even some sense that the people who made this have a sense of humour. I saw a Simpsons reference in one map. The problem is that this world, these locations, this voiceover from Gaia from God of War is all wasted on a game genre which is ill-fitting for the concept and so poorly implemented that it's not even worth ignoring the surroundings entirely and focusing on the gameplay. Which you couldn't do in any case, since trying to figure out where to go for an objective is impossible and there's no minimap for you to consult.
I dread to think what horrors I'll dig up from my backlog in the future, but I doubt I will consider this game in the same mind which made me interested in it in the first place.
