Gamescom 2010: Brink Hands-On Preview – Back From The Brink

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Dan Webb
 
To say my last outing with Splash Damage’s Brink was an underwhelming experience would possibly be understatement of the century, but something didn’t seem right for a game that showed that much potential. Whether it was the bland environment, erratic pacing of the gameplay or poor level design, we couldn’t quite put our finger on it. However, with a more extensive hands-on, a new level and a bit more colour, our hands-on at Gamescom this year was a lot more positive. Huzzah.

In a nutshell, Brink is a class-based shooter – with soldier, engineer, medic and operative classes – that looks to blur the line between single-player, co-op and multiplayer. Instead of tackling the long, winding – and often sparse – corridors of the Critical Reaction level in this hands-on, we head back to the familiar ground that is Container City, as a six-man co-op team, playing as the Security.

The multi-staged mission’s main objective consists of escorting a bomb defusal robot to point B, whilst along the way getting a solider to blow up the gates, an engineer to repair the crane, before retrieving the bio-weapon and escorting it onto the next chopper out of there. That mission stands for the Security team; if one was to take on the role of the Resistance, your job simply is to stop the Security team from advancing by running down the clock.

Before going out to war, it’s essential to make yourself combat ready and in Brink, that not only means changing the appearance of your character – from the newly revealed acne scaring and impressive looking tattoo sleeves, to the apparel and of course, your build – but also customising your perks and guns. With different clothing options, colour dyes, accents, body types and so on, there is literally so much customisation that I could sit here and write a whole preview on it.


Starting as a level 14 soldier, we spent a good 5 minutes pre-match in the gun and perk customisation screen, which is possibly the most in-depth I’ve ever seen for a shooter of this magnitude. Opting for a pretty standard assault rifle, attaching a front-grip for stability, a muzzle, the duct-tape magazine for quick reloads and a D-flex red dot sight, we were ready for battle.

Before we stepped out onto the field though, it was the perfect time to select our class and non-class specific abilities, or perks if you must. In response to how many perks you can equip, according to Splash Damage’s CEO, Paul Wedgwood, “We have a level cap per character in alpha right now of about 20 – that might change by the time we release – but the general idea is that you can max out your combat role and augment it with a few a universal abilities.”

“But you won’t be able to have everything,” pipes in Richard Ham, Splash Damage’s Creative Director, “because there’s something like about 50 abilities.”

Opting to use the Sense of Perspective ability, which allows you to use a third person camera when completing objectives; Combat Intuition, which puts a yellow indicator on your HUD indicating where you’re being shot from, as well as Battle Hardened, which makes you more of a tough son of a bitch; we were ready to hit Container City. Wedgwood recommended that the engineers take the Turret ability with them and the medics take the Self-Resurrection ability, where medics can give Epi-Pens to injured foes on the floor rather than resurrecting them himself.

Seeing as we were the soldier class, Wedgwood recommended we take the flashbangs along, which incidentally reminds me that Splash Damage has taken an interesting stance on grenades in Brink, choosing to give players an unlimited amount, but with there being about a 20-30 second cooldown between each being able to throw each one... so no grenade spamming!


Having seen the E3 2009 build on numerous occasions, we were more than familiar with the layout of the level and were straight out the gates, along the pier and had planted the explosives before the Resistance had time to react. They weren’t too late however to finish me off as I tried to retreat, but by then, our support was keeping the explosive charge from being defused.

Rather than wait for a medic to throw me an Epi-Pen, we opted to respawn, and attempted to protect the explosive I’d just placed from another angle. Stopping at the command post, we flirt with the idea of switching classes; watching the gloves change colours depending on which class we choose – a subtle but effective indicator – but in the end, we opt to stay as a soldier.

Heading right this time, away from the gate where the explosive is counting down, we use the SMART button to scale a set of containers with relative ease. From there we take up another position, using the grenades and various other abilities to see off the troops, watching the countdown timer count down to zero. When it ticks down, the gates explode, we reassemble and then push onto the next objective.

Flicking up on the d-pad to choose the best mission objective, we then decide to head and capture a command post to give our team a much needed boost. At this point the action definitely seems to unfold at a more steady pace, with enemies filtering through at a more consistent rate, which is a far cry from the minute waiting times for combat at E3.

The team slowly pushes through to the crane, where we take the position on ground level and look to see off the constant flow of Resistance fighters that constantly spawn. Pinging molotovs and flashbangs, we look to funnel all our opponents into a bottleneck, making it easier for our team to hold their position and ultimately, fix the crane.


In a bid to not keep players on the field longer than they should be – you know, to stop people sticking around for 30 mins when there is no chance of winning – each leg of the multi-staged level has a timer – around 4 or 5 minutes according to Wedgwood. With our engineer repairing the crane to carry the defuser robot over the crevice, we continue to watch his back, watching his progress slowly tick up in the far right corner. While the engineer repairs the crane, we’re constantly giving ourselves and our teammates ammo to aid our cause, with our other engineers buffing us up at the same time. As the counter ticks over to 0 and the crane gets successfully repaired, our time with Brink unfortunately comes to a close.

Upon reflection, I’m still not convinced that Brink is a title that would work that well in single-player and although our hands-on with the co-op was a hell of a lot more promising than what we experienced at E3, I’m yet to be convinced that the co-op specifically will have long-lasting appeal… in the same way that Bad Company 2’s Onslaught mode is entertaining in short doses. That being said, the multiplayer component should prove to be a blast when you get a full group of people involved; that is however if the levels can offer the sustainability and draw that Container City offered us in Germany. It’s very reminiscent of Bad Company 2’s Rush game mode, which in my opinion, is one of the greatest multiplayer modes to ever be created.

In contrast to our E3 hands-on, the pacing here was more fluent with less moments of nothingness, the environment was a damn sight more visually engaging, while the level itself, in terms of design, was crafted as to filter players into key gameplay areas and the experience was all the better for it. It should be worth noting though that our hands-on was with the PC version and whether the console experience is as positive remains to be seen, especially on the back of the E3 showing. Still, there’s plenty of months to go till release and it seems as though it’s back on track, although there is still plenty of work to be done to truly hone that experience outside the Container City map. Regardless of that though, the mood in our camp has gone from dismayed, all the way back to eagerly anticipating. Let’s hope that charge continues forward.

Brink is scheduled for a Q1 2011 release.
Comments
27
  • nice !
  • Stop posting Brink stuff AARRRR =P
  • Thank god.. I was looking forward to this and you have reinforced my hopes.
  • @2 - Now why would we do that?
  • Because you're nice?? Webb - Would you ay this game has the same appeal as Borderland where that game really came to life with its coop fun? Because when ever I see this all I think about is my 3 mates I played BL with and see ourselves as much fun!
  • This game is probably my most anticipated for next year over GoW 3, and i'm an unbelieveably huge fan of that series!
  • @4 Because your kind people anyway I hope it's true what you say about the customisation and if it isn't well Brink will still be fantastic.
  • @6 Silly comment, just by the wishlist alone on this site GoW3 has 3 times as many people on its wishlist than that of Brink. Very excited about this game, i'm a sucker for Bethesda.
  • @8 what the hell does that have to do with anything?
  • @8 He said "MY most anticipated game over GoW3." Not "THE most anticipated game." I'm definitely anticipating this as well and I'm glad to see that it's coming along well once again.
  • I'm more intrigued by this game now. Possible Day One buy?
  • I'm buying it because my friends are buying it. Co-Op is my favorite. :D
  • the customization is really neat sounding, too bad you wont be able to see your character that much in matches and so on
  • thanks webb. back when the first trailers were out i was hella stoked for this game and then when you said it pretty much sucked was a downer. im glad to hear that its coming along better and cant wait to play. @13 i guess there are the perks that let you see the game in third person when completeing objectives. thats better then nothing :P lol
  • This does not sound appealing at all! Customization maybe, but I would kinda think every class has different set of abilities and that would mean each time you switych in game you have to spend 5 mins to assign new skill points and such. Plus being able toc hange class on the fly sounds like the worst idea ever.. No offense but this game as an idea sounds dumb as fuck. As to playability, sounds pretty much standard to me. Nothing we haven't seen or played (oh wait it has SMART button - future of FPS gamin is now:-P)
  • Im liking the idea that the player get to choose what objectives they want to do, I think it adds more replay value to the game.
  • oh look its an older version of Monday Night Combat.......probably not but still funny and I know that Bethesda will not fail to put out a good game
  • @15 - Did you throw common sense out the window before you made that post? You really think any developer would be stupid enough to make you spend 5 minutes everytime you switch a class re-equipping it? What is most likely to happen is something along the lines of what they did in Transformers: WFC, which is have 4 different class types, then each class have up to 3 different custom slots so each class can have a few different gun/perk setups. Changing classes on the fly is a bad idea? How? Seriously give me a good reason? Because the game is so objective based, if you and your entire party accidentally dont have anyone with a engineer and you get completely stumped at a mission because no one can go change it? Use your brain. Have you read anything about the game? I have yet to see/play any other game that encourages team work as strongly as this one. 'pretty much standard' would be like the COD and Halo gametypes, where even the 'objective' based ones just turn into 90% TDM and 10% players going for objectives. This game isnt going to make it so Team deathmatch ish.
  • @18 I respect your comments but I don't know if you can make statements like "I have yet to see a game that encourages team work as strongly as this one" prior to the games release. As for changing classes on the fly it does take something away from the RPG side of things. Your not picking a play style and sticking to it because you can just switch whenever you want. To me this game sounds like it will play out like Team Fotress 2 for the PC, thats the impression I always seem to get anyway.
  • Like I said, choosing a class and sticking with it would not work with this game, if you feel that the reasons I gave for it are stupid feel free to mention it. I also dont know that they were intending to go down any sort of 'RPG route', maybe just having a few elements. And youre completely correct, I should have added "as strongly as this one looks like it will". it could very easily turn into a bunch of people running around killing eachother with only a couple per team doing the objectives, I do feel strongly that the team that has most people doing the objectives will probably be winning most of the match, with the team with a bunch of people team deathmatching it up losing most of the time.
  • @20 I see your reasons why not being to change class as perfectly valid. Hopefully the objective side of things will be more tempting than the deathmatch. However playing a deathmatch style can still work for most objective modes such as capture the flag when killing the enemies is useful regardless of why you are doing it.
  • Can't F-ing wait!!!! SO EXCITED For this again thanks to this article :D
  • this game looks really awesome.
  • seems like an interesting game. it'll come down to available finances at release, ease of achievements as to whether i will/can get this. as for class changes. figure it'll be like MW2. some default classes you modify before the match and change between as it goes. @MoonGoose i can see what your saying about losing strategy in this game by having everyone switch, but on the otherhand it'll allow for more fluid changes to plans. being pinned down, add more soldiers, engineer player crap? more people can change to support them.
  • This game look awsome i think it's worth a buy to be quiet honest.
  • Been reading about this game lately, so far it looks like my 1st 2011 purchase.
  • Looks like Brink is shaping up to be nothing like your quick-to-judge E3 impression depicted it as. I don't like to say I told ya so, but....
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