GameXplain reviews single player and multiplayer separately

Brink...more like Broke.

Online shooters are without a doubt one of the biggest rages in this generation's gaming cycle. Because of this, publishers pointlessly shoehorn multiplayer modes into games that frankly just don't need it—at times sacrificing the overall quality of the end product just to check off a bullet point on the back of the box. Splash Damage's team-focused class-based shooter Brink is quite the opposite, it's a multiplayer game that's shoehorned around a story hoping to lure in gamers looking for next best thing.

Unfortunately from a single-player perspective Brink is not the next best thing. While I applaud Splash Damage for trying to make Brink's not-so-distant future death-match settings alive with story, bookending cutscenes around each available mission does not create a charming narrative. The only highlight of the cutscenes comes from catching the occasional glimpse of your customized combatant wandering aimlessly in the background.

The story pits two rival factions—the Resistance and Security—against each other for control of humanities last bastion of hope, the Ark. This synopsis is all that is really needed to know why one should be doing their part to complete objectives in each of Brinks limited eight maps. While Brink lets you play every map from either side, changing the maps objectives, the limited locations wears itself thin quite quickly. Now granted eight maps for a multiplayer game is respectable at launch, but a game touted for revolutionizing the genre—blending single and multiplayer experiences seamlessly into one package—it falls short as an engaging solo affair.

But the lack of maps isn't Brink's biggest crime to an engaging single-player experience. That would fall to the mostly inept artificial intelligence the game’s bots exhibit. When traversing each factions campaign solo, like multiplayer, the ability to succeed rests on the hands of a cohesive team effort. This is where Brink crashes down in a flaming wreck. I wouldn't say the A.I. controlled bots are dumb, they do the many tasks the game offers constantly. They heal teammates, capture supply points and generally stick together.

What they don't do is stop what they're doing to focus on the main objective at hand. Often I found myself guarding or trying to capture a point alone with mere minutes left from winning, while my teammates would go do God-knows-what costing me the match. I can't even recall the amount of F-bombs I dropped in fits of rage provoked by my A.I. counterparts. The enemy A.I. on the other hand does what it needs to do, which for them seems much more simple, guard or capture an objective. They work as a tight unit making things tough (near impossible when you have no support) and as the round goes on their aggression ramps as the situation becomes more dire.

It boggles the mind how the enemy can do their job and your teammates can't. Not being able to do anything about it only makes it even more frustrating. No options to issue simple commands, like in Rainbow Six: Vegas, leads to a lot failed rounds. Having the ability to organize your team would have gone a long way in increasing this games single-player longevity. Instead it's a game where every bot is out for themselves and when is that ever a good thing.

Only slightly less broken.

Brink is designed foremost with the multiplayer experience in mind. Up to 16 players can duke it out in eight vs. eight matches where it’s never about who has the most kills, but rather what team can work best together to complete each maps sometime multiple objectives.

Four classes (solider, medic, engineer and operative) paired with three body types (small, medium and large) offer some variety to the games rather limited map types. Each class has it perks; medics heal, engineers build turrets and so on—while each body type effects attributes like speed, agility and damage allowed. Every class is further customizable from weapon loadouts to some pretty ridiculous getups. This is all pretty standard stuff though for the formula Splash Damage crafted back during their Enemy Territory: Quake Wars days.

Experience earned from completing a range of both major and minor objectives and completing some of the separate skill based challenge maps will open up more items (guns, perks, and gear), but will also open up the games often unfair balance. Human vs. human matches play great (when things are optimal), but when its humans vs. bots, often times the bots will show up to the mix with some insane stopping power as well as the ability to almost instantly respawn.Crazy bot respawning is just another list of head scratching moments that Brink offers. Especially when much of the time Brink gives the impression that its also a “nap simulator” as respawning or waiting for a medic to revive can be upwards of a 20-second break.

As of writing this the biggest crime to Brink’s very existence is the game ruining lag that rears it ugly little head. When lag sets in, character rubberbanding and horrible frame rates bring the engaging experience to a halt. If this was an occasional thing, it could be forgivable, but lag seems almost constant when there are more the four human players participating in a map. Patches have come to alleviate some of the woes, but the experience is still far from tolerable.

Multiplayer addresses most of the A.I. concerns of Brink’s single-player experience, but sadly it introduces all new ones. When working in a cohesive unit with a team of human controlled players Brink at times glimmers with the promise of being something more than just another typical shooter. Outside of Team Fortress 2 this kind of small-scale objective based game is quite the rare commodity on consoles.  Who knows Brink may eventually be the team-based shooter that dreams are made of, but the rotating door industry that is the video game business almost guarantees that something better and more polished will eventually come along, leaving Brink as just another passing memory.