Brink

It’s easy to go back into the realms of recent history and get a little worried about Brink – after all, 2008’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars PS3 conversion wasn’t exactly great. In fact, it was only 60 per cent great according to the review of NowGamer’s past. But that would be overlooking the fact that, at its heart, Quake Wars was a very good game, and one merely suffering the effects of being chop-shopped to Sony’s black monster. When you take proven mechanics from a studio whose pedigree isn’t in question – ignoring conversions – and throw in the fact Brink is being developed for every machine it is being released on at the same time then you have reason to get excited, and many more reasons to ignore recent history.

Brink stays true to Splash Damage’s tried-and-tested formula: two sides, always fighting, objective-based combat and balanced like you wouldn’t believe. Like a pea on a pinhead, almost. We’ve talked about the story elements before, just as we’ve mentioned how Brink plays and how it looks to be genuinely exciting – if not a bit of a dark horse. But this isn’t a game that puts itself across through long-winded back story or reams of mindless exposition, instead attempting to inform the player through the look, the style and the feel of the game – as Splash Damage’s art director Olivier Leonardi said himself: “show, don’t tell”.

As a result, Brink has a well-rounded, stylised look that attempts to tell the story of what happened in Container City, how the eco-city has fared over the 20 years since it was built and why the people in it have fallen into near-civil war. It’s bold, but with the way Leonardi talks about it you can’t help but think Splash Damage is onto something. He points out the artists asked things like: “Where do we put rust?”, “has the paint started flaking?” and “how does the inside of a building look if it has been disused for decades?”– it’s this attention to detail (as well as how the game actually plays) that has us cautiously optimistic for Brink’s future. We’re not going to put all of our eggs into one praise-filled basket right now as we’re still smarting from Quake Wars being lost in translation to PS3, but what we know, what we’re hearing and what we’re seeing is all pointing in the right direction. How can you question a developer, for example, that actually builds a replica of the game’s Container City in real life? You can’t.

Though Brink is very much a multiplayer title, Splash Damage is still aiming to cater for the single-player market. While the company may be averse to giving a player 30 pages of storyline to read through before they commence playing, the developer does still acknowledge that those playing individually – they will exist, trust us – need something more to get their teeth into. Fortunately, the Ark, where Brink is set, is an enclave of mystery along with fighting and death. It’s unlikely to compete with the storytelling of any truly great RPG, or even the popcorn-action likes of Uncharted 2, but it’s nice to know everyone is being catered for.

… continued