As part of our tour of the Bethesda booth during PAX 2010, CFD! got a chance to take a look at Splash Damage’s new squad-based first-person shooter, Brink. The game certainly looks like a 360 title, even though it’s running on high-end desktops with a dedicated server for multiplayer.
Before the session began, the net code crashed and forced a network-wide shutdown in the booth. As the group waited for the rest of the machines to come back online, I goofed around with some of the customization options on the characters. There’s an impressive amount of items and clothing to choose from, though the color schemes were disappointingly limited. Several shades of grey and dark green were the extent of the choices.
Once the game actually began, my first taste of Brink involved a trial run with the Operative class, who are supposedly equipped with the ability to impersonate the other team’s players. In the PAX demo, that functionality wasn’t working correctly. Thankfully, the rest of the classes were working to expectations. Soldiers can issue ammo and are stronger than others. Engineers can spawn turrets, repair security bots (the “bomb” in one of the two multiplayer modes), and power up their weapons. Medics can heal others, upgrade their own health, and revive themselves (once per minute) along with teammates.
Combat mechanics feel quick, smart, and intuitive. There’s almost no learning curve before you’re able snap to targets and gun them down, plus the melee is solid and seems fairly balanced so far. Grenades, however, feel like they float out of the character’s hand and fail to have a powerful impact on enemies’ life bars.
There’s a manic pace to Brink that doesn’t immediately resemble anything else on the market right now. A parkour button is used to vault over cover and move quickly between gaps. It didn’t feel immediately useful or important, though that may be due to the rather straight-forward level design of the demo map.
Another strange occurrence was that one of the objectives, a barricaded doorway, was only able to be destroyed from one side and repaired from the other, even though you can reach it from both sides. When asked about the obvious oversight in level design, the guy running the session commented only on the error in the navigation system. Hopefully it’s a flaw that will be corrected in future versions.
Looking to the future, Brink is a promising title. In its current state, the core game mechanics are solid and fun to use. It needs considerable polish, but since the shooter doesn’t release until Q3 2011, there’s no reason Brink can’t shape up in time to be a contender in the online multiplayer arena.
