Brink: An exercise in futility

With all the time I’ve put into Brink, one would think I’d have a clear idea of how I feel about the game. Well, I don’t. On one hand, Brink is one of the most unique and refreshing games I’ve played on the Xbox 360 in a long while. Its objective based gameplay and inventive parkour movement style (the SMART system) coupled with a bright, memorable art style make Brink really stand out. Unfortunately, its frustrating design choices and, quite frankly, practically broken online component also make Brink stand out, but not in a good way.

Over the course of my time with Brink, I found myself contemplating this question – if a game has so many problems that it needs to be defended, constantly needing to add caveats like “it’s really a great game but…,” does it deserve to be defended? And honestly, I still don’t have an answer to that question.

I wanted to love Brink. I wanted it to be my “go-to game” for some time to come. But lately, I’ve been playing more Halo and Fallout: New Vegas (“Honest Hearts” DLC) and Brink hasn’t left its case in days. I guess that right there is the first indication that this game is not exactly living up to expectations.

Brink tells the story of a future ruined by climate change. Humanity has built a sustainable habitat called The Ark that can support up to 5,000 inhabitants. However, in the years since the disaster, over 50,000 people have fled to The Ark in hopes of finding refuge. After years of water rationing the Guests (the multitude of refugees) have begun to revolt and are desperately trying to escape their makeshift home. The Security forces aboard The Ark are charged with preventing further conflict and you must choose a side.

Lack of a strong narrative is a huge downfall for Brink. Bits of information are doled out before and after missions but things like memorable characters, exciting sequences and a compelling story are eschewed in favor of combining the single and multiplayer modes into, what is essentially, the same package. Whether playing the campaign solo or online, your experience will be (basically) the same. Offline, solo matches are the same matches you’d be playing online with others, just populated with bots. Relatively useless bots, at that. Enemy bots will be absolutely relentless in stopping you while your teammates are mostly ineffective, rarely completing objectives on their own. I feel that a concentrated single player offering would’ve really helped sell Brink. Wanting to streamline the single and multiplayer modes was a great idea but actually seeing it put into practice leaves me with a different opinion – one that maybe it wasn’t such a great idea after all.

Splash Damage does a great job of streamlining other aspects of Brink, though. The character creation system is simple, quick and intuitive. Creating some unique looking characters is great fun and unlocking the different outfit elements is one of the only reasons I played Brink as much as I did.

Brink also offers tons of guns and attachments to unlock. Only these are unlocked in a ridiculous manner. Rather than having guns and attachments unlock, or open for unlocking, as you level up your character (you know, to add some replayability or just a reward/something to work for) every gun and attachment is unlocked by merely completing four challenges – which aren’t really challenges so much as tutorials on the different aspects of Brink’s gameplay. So, in theory, you could have every gun and attachment unlocked an hour after you start playing.

But odd design choices aren’t contained to just character creation – the actual game itself is full of strange. First of all, if you like stats and knowing every little detail of your performance (kills, deaths, assists, etc.) you will not like Brink. Aside from naming the best overall player, best in each class and most kills (without a specific number) Brink offers no postgame information. I get that you want people to be more concerned with teamwork and completing objectives, Splash Damage, but even the most team oriented player wants to know how many kills he got. Who doesn’t want to know their score after playing a game? Isn’t that why we play?

There are so many other odd design choices to name, it’s hard to pick which are the most obvious/annoying. Too often I’ve tried to revive myself after being thrown a syringe only to wind up respawning accidently. How’d that happen? Oh maybe because to revive yourself you click and hold the left stick – the same stick you use to click right and respawn. Movement and simple actions like planting a bomb never seem to be as fluid as they should. Too often I’ve run up to an objective to plant a bomb, only to get stuck in the endless loop of “Press X to plant bomb…ok, pressed X nothing happened, let go of X as the animation begins, press X to start the animation again because I realized the game is just slow to do anything, only to have nothing happen because I tried to start the animation again before it had finished the failed animation.” If you were annoyed reading that, just imagine how infuriating it is when it happens during a game. With people actively trying to kill you while you’re engaged in those shenanigans.

Now imagine going through all that nonsense while contending with lag. And not just “slight hiccups here and there” lag, I’m talking “every couple of seconds you’re teleporting to a different spot” lag. More often than not online games of Brink are so riddled with lag that quitting out is the only solution. Get ready for being inevitably placed back into those games after trying to join a new game. Because that will happen. There was even a day one patch to fix some online problems as well as an online configuration update that supposedly limits the number of human players in a game to a single team in the hopes of alleviating some lag issues. Far as I know, though, not much has changed.

With so much promise, it’s extremely unfortunate that Brink is such a mess. All the promise and high expectations can’t cover up all the problems Brink suffers from. Splash Damage recently announced that there will be a free DLC pack available this June that will add new maps and other “new content.” However, with so many problems and such a negative critical response for Brink, I don’t think all the free DLC in the world could reverse the damage that’s been done to Brink. I’m going to continue to come back to Brink every now and then to check and see if its online is still a mess but I can’t see myself playing it very often. If you were at all interested in Brink try and rent it sometime, you might find that, like me, you actually like it despite its very obvious flaws. Most though will scoff at the idea of playing a game that is more annoying flaws than success and really, can they be blamed?

Stephen Colbert kicked my ass in Halo: Reach

This might sound weird, and I’m still not 100% positive about it myself, but I think I got owned by Stephen Colbert in Halo: Reach last night. Hear me out.

So last night, I was playing Halo: Reach with a couple friends online, playing some Infection and some Big Team Battle when we decided to switch it over to Team Slayer. After a few games we finally got a decent fourth and tore up a couple matches and we were feeling pretty good. I usually like checking out the gamertags of the people I’m playing with in competitive games, just for funsies. A couple good ones that jumped out at me last night were “Pregnant N00b” and “ADedicatedDump,” but this is beside the point.

So anyway, we get into a game and pretty much expect to run train on this group of unfortunate fools. After just a couple minutes into this match, I notice I keep getting killed by this same guy over and over – a blue and red Spartan, with the Pestilence armor effect – who always seemed to have the sword and rocket launcher. After the second or third time of getting killed by this guy, I realize his name is Stephen Colbert and mention it to my friends – one of whom is convinced that it’s the real Stephen Colbert, saying Colbert has mentioned Halo on his show before. I was a bit skeptical to say the least.

First off, why would he just use his real/stage name? I wouldn’t think celebs would want to draw attention to themselves online by using the name everyone knows them by. Secondly, he was pretty incredible. For a guy who seems to work as much as Colbert, I don’t know how he’d find the time to get this good at Halo. Seriously, check out the post game report below. He earned a shit ton of medals too (below next paragraph).

I'm Killface88 at the bottom. There's Colbert, way at the top.

Needless to say, as the game continued, I was pretty intent on hunting down Colbert as many times as I could. Not necessarily because it is (might be) Colbert, but because he’s leading the opposing team. And also because I can’t stand the people who camp the power weapons. And also because he would always use armor lock in addition to camping the power weapons. Seriously, I wouldn’t see him for minutes at a time when, I could only assume, he was waiting for the rockets to respawn.

As the match wound down, I found myself starting to believe it actually was him as well. His Spartan tag was “USA” and his avatar was a red, white and blue elephant. I even left our party for the game’s lobby at the end of the match to maybe see if I we could hear him talking (He was gone the instant the match ended). After checking out his Xbox 360 profile, I was almost convinced it actually was Stephen Colbert.

First of all, his profile was completely blank. People will usually have something in their profile and bio section, yet his was totally blank – almost like those sections didn’t even exist. Even I have something in my profile – a joke from Frisky Dingo (“You can’t fax glitter!” “Well, not with that attitude”). His gamertag avatar also didn’t seem to exist (it was just a blank, black box) but there was one aspect of his profile that made me think this profile was getting special treatment, and therefore belonged to a special person. I noticed his gamerscore was just over 2000 and when I went to compare games, nothing showed up. No games were available to compare and it didn’t even show his total score at the top of the list – just nothing.

Later that night, I took to the net to see if I could dig up anything about the staunch conservative protecting our planet from the Covenant. While I didn’t find anything specifically referencing him playing Halo: Reach I did find this:

Ok…now these ramblings are starting to get some traction. While the above image was just a mockup made by Bungie to try and get a mention on his show, this image surfaced on the net again after Colbert made a reference to Halo on his show, saying Master Chief must’ve been on the Seal team that took out Osama bin Laden. Now, I know you don’t need to play the game to make a Halo reference but it’s a pretty good indicator that he does.

The dude is sick. Just take a look at his ratio and all those medals he earned. The next highest medal earner on their team (Davidson) only earned 18 medals in comparison to Colbert’s 38. Whether it’s the real Colbert or not, just hope you don’t run into him online. If you do, you’ll need an army of bears at your back because Stephen Colbert will own you.

First impressions: Brink

If you’ve read this blog at all or follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know I’ve been pretty obsessed with Brink for the better part of the last few months. The FPS from Splash Damage and Bethesda made promises to meld the single player and multiplayer modes into a seamless experience where gamers would find themselves playing the same game whether online with friends or offline with bots. While what they claim is true, the final product is not nearly as entertaining as I had hoped.

Don’t get me wrong – I really like Brink. Really I do. But I can’t tell yet whether that feeling stems from the fact that I espoused how great this game will be for weeks (months?) or because I genuinely like it. I’m leaning towards the latter but I’ve spent precious little time with the game thus far to make an informed decision.

Also, this isn’t my formal review of the game, just some initial thoughts.

-The biggest problem with Brink is that it is a game chock full of great ideas that were executed terribly. The single player and multiplayer experiences are essentially the same. I say “essentially” because there are some huge differences between the two. The two modes follow the same story – that story being made up of different days/missions that both the Security and Resistance forces take part in. (It should also be mentioned the story/mission for both sides are the same – you’ll just be playing the opposing team.) When playing offline, the game is populated with bots that come in two flavors – tactically brilliant and relentlessly aggressive enemy AI and stupid, at best, useless, at worst, friendly AI. Playing Brink solo is an exercise in futility as 9 times out of 10 you’ll be the only member of the team working to accomplish an objective and the enemy bots will be working ceaselessly to stop just you. The online play is much more fun overall – when it works. Lag has been utterly unavoidable so far, even after a day one patch.

-The most glaring misstep? No lobbies. For there to be no lobby or party system in a game that is essentially a multiplayer experience is unforgiveable. You basically need to start/find a game, invite your friends and hope there is room.

-Along the lines of terrible execution – the system for unlocking weapons/clothing/attachments was an incredible miss. Brink offers a ton of clothing and items to customize your character. Unfortunately, these pieces are more or less handed to you as you progress in levels and with only 20 levels, you’ll have unlocked literally everything there is to unlock within the first few days of playing. Plus, you unlock guns through a non-story “Challenge” mode. Consisting of just four separate challenges, you can conceivably unlock every gun in the game within the first HOUR of playing Brink. Splash Damage missed a huge chance to inject some replayability into Brink by basically giving away every gun or piece of clothing.

-Each item you unlock after a challenge or multiplayer match is neatly laid out for you in a postgame screen, but you’ll find that standard FPS stats like kills, deaths, assists, etc. are missing. Splash Damage, I realize you guys wanted Brink to focus on teamwork but even teams with great cooperation like to see their individual scores. Brink does a great job of keeping track of your XP (and therefore character progression) but it’s very odd that such staples of competitive FPS stats are left out completely.

-Speaking of the story, it’s handled incredibly strangely. Each mission will see your faction completing objectives that progress the larger story – Security trying to quell the rebellion, the Resistance trying to escape the Ark. How each of the missions pertains to that story is all but lost on you as you progress, since little explanation is ever given about these events. You boot up a mission, get talked at for a minute, watch a short cut scene, play the mission and move onto the next – you’re never really given enough info to piece together what’s actually being accomplished in these missions. Each success unlocks audio diaries that probably help a lot in piecing together the timeline of events but really, who is going to listen to them? I barely listened to all the audio diaries in BioShock (an action/adventure game) and Splash Damage wants me to listen to them in a game that is supposed to be all-out action all the time? I’m not taking time out of playing the game to exit to the main menu to listen to more people talk at me so I can start to discern why I’m doing what I’m doing in the story (which, remember, is all there is to this game).

-A solid single-player campaign is sorely missing from Brink. I realize they wanted to make a seamless online/offline experience but there is a reason most games do them separately – because people want them separate. Presenting this hugely interesting and colorful world only to barely flesh out the story at all feels incredibly lazy on the part of Splash Damage.

-On a more positive note, I do really, really like how Brink plays. The guns, the movement, and character classes all make for a very fun experience that allows any gamer to play however they want. This is most easily accomplished online, as there will, more often than not, be someone trying to complete the main objective, leaving you free to revive teammates as the medic or build turrets and machine gun nests as the engineer. Since you’re earning XP for everything you do (buffing teammate abilities, handing out ammo, building turrets) you don’t even need to complete objectives if you don’t want to. Rather switch to a heavy with a minigun and wreak havoc on the enemy team? Go for it. Want to put together a tactical assault on the next objective, utilizing each character class? Brink gives you the tools to do that as well – and rewards you no matter your decision.

-The art style in Brink is phenomenal. I can’t even begin to describe how refreshing it is to see a more vibrant color scheme used in an FPS. All the clothing and character options are really cool looking and I’ve found myself tinkering with my character’s look each time I unlock new stuff. With all the variants in characters and weapons, you’d be hard pressed to ever run into anyone else who looked exactly like your character.

Look for my full review soon. I want to put in some more time with it before I make a final decision about Brink. Honestly, though, it will be extremely difficult to find more positives than negatives about Brink. All these notes were off the top of my head – I can’t imagine being more forgiving when writing its review from note taken during actual play.

Brink: Notes from Twitter

Brink is exactly a week away from release and I honestly can’t believe I was ready to wait another week for it just a short time ago (Brink’s US release was pushed up to the 10^th from the 17^th). I was trolling their Facebook page and nearly had a fit when I came across a wall photo from inside a warehouse where pallets upon pallets of copies of Brink waited to be shipped out. Is it bad that my initial reaction to this picture was that I wanted to find it, break in and get my copy now?

All I can do until then, really, is just keeping surfing the net for tibits of info or some new screenshots until May 10. Earlier, I decided to check out the game’s Twitter feed (@brinkgame) to see if there was anything of interest and I actually found a ton of helpful nuggets of info. The following are questions posed by fans with the response from @brinkgame, followed by my thoughts (denoted by GG).

-@finallyhavename Yep, you can still lean around corners in the game

GG: This is one feature I didn’t even realize would be in Brink. While I’m not the type to be stealthy and lean around corners to minimize my damage taken (I’ll generally be the big guy in the front absorbing bullets for my team), leaning is a nice addition to those who take a more measured approach.

Q: Can you use a weapon when you're downed? Do you get a kill when a medic revives the enemy you downed? Thanks.

@DelusionalKraut there's an ability that lets you use your secondary weapon while downed, at the expense of having less incap health

GG: Not many abilities have been discussed in developer diaries or trailers but there seems to be a plethora for each class. If you check out Brink’s Facebook page, there are a handful of pictures of different class abilities posted to see what’s in store. Some of these abilities, like Scavenge (getting ammo and equipment from dead enemies) and the Cortex Bomb (basically Martyrdom from COD), will be familiar to shooter fans while others (like Grenade Shooting – being able to shoot down your ‘nade mid-flight so you can choose where it explodes) are pretty unique.

-Totally! RT @Rossko93 @brinkgame Sounds awesome. So I could invite a friend, adjust the settings and then just play with the A.I?

GG: One of the big selling points for Brink (especially on the PC) are the many options for customizing games. Not only will gamers be able to create games with custom objectives, but you’ll be able to host your own game server as well. This was actually a question I had in mind and was thrilled to see someone else had already asked about it – you can basically play private games with a few friends and fill in the empty spots with bots and not have to put up with annoying randoms. Nice.

-does this mean I have to swap my clothes? Say I was medium then went to heavy would my clothes and abilities stay the same? Thanks

@Cart3rz Your player abilities and outfit don't change when switching body types

GG: Sometimes I feel like I have OCD when playing shooters – I’m constantly switching classes and weapon sets to try and get an edge in the match. This news is great for a gamer like me who is constantly tweaking his loadout mid-match that my character’s outfit and attributes won’t be changing along with them.

-How does assists work? Do the assisting killer get full XP?

@GamerOfFreedom That particular type of XP is based on damage dealt, so everyone involved in a kill gets their share

GG: This is something I’ve often wondered about, not just in Brink but in all shooters – just how are assists awarded? It’s a vague area in most games, where you’ll sometimes feel like you should get something for helping take down an enemy only to walk away empty handed. Great to know that XP for assists will be doled out based on how much damage you actually dealt.

-is the grenade launcher going to be a problem (spam)

@Umut77 The grenade launcher is more of a support weapon that's all about knocking people off their feet rather than killing them outright

GG: I’ve made mention of this before but I felt like it needed to be pointed out again. Grenade spam isn’t too big a problem in games like Halo or Battlefield but when it comes to COD (especially Modern Warfare 1 and 2) eating a randomly thrown grenade is something that will happen. Like, a lot. It still happens in Black Ops, though, not as often. Brink, thankfully, is leveling the playing field by making the grenades concussive and not fragmentation – meaning they’ll be used mainly to throw enemies off balance but not necessarily have the power to kill.

-Thanks also wondering that if the smart buttons is A for the xbox 360 wouldn't that make you not be able to aim whilst running???

@Cart3rz SMART is LB by default on the 360. Got several control schemes to pick from, plus you can fully remap everything if you like

GG: Customizable control schemes is a polarizing issue to gamers. Many gamers (myself included) don’t usually make this an issue while others will make it out to be the end of the world if they can’t map the “reload” button to whatever it is in whatever shooter happens to be their favorite. So while I’ll be perfectly fine getting used to the default button layout, there will be plenty of other players painstakingly creating their ideal control scheme and hopefully taking some time to thank Splash Damage for thinking of us little people.

-hey brink just wondering if you can switch between heavy to medium body type at a command post? Please reply!!

@Cart3rz You can switch body types (once unlocked) in the appearance customisation menu in between missions.

GG: Ok so it seemed to me before you could change your body type mid match, but I guess you’ll be stuck using the same type throughout a single match. Still though, being able to switch classes mid matches should be more than enough.

-are any of the classes a little too overrated. like will there be a limit of syringes if your a medic or is it unlimited?

@IM_A_GEEK11 it's limited by your Supply bar. Every time you use an ability, that bar goes down a pip. It slowly refills over time...

GG: Pretty self explanatory. Definitely glad to see that you’ll only be able to use your abilities sparingly. Getting constantly firebombed by molotovs from soldiers or having enemies have a steady stream of revive syringes would get pretty annoying.

- Looking at the achievements, what are 'What-If' missions? Just the name for freeplay missions?

@JoeArchy What-if missions are a rather radical view of both sides.. sabotage and such stuff.

GG: Wow, what a great question. That dude must be really smart and knowledgeable (and handsome, I’m guessing). For reference, I had seen “What-If” missions listed alongside campaign missions for various completion achievements but, honestly, I’m still not quite sure what they are. I’m guessing maybe it’s reversing the roles for the teams or giving either side a new set of objectives that give the mission a new twist but I’m not sure.

Lots of great info there that I wasn’t aware of before, like how switching classes was handled, if bots would be available for games with fewer human players, the impacts grenades will have on games and even if you’ll be able to customize your control scheme. I love FPSes but I hate how stale the genre has gotten, with games treading and re-treading the same deathmatch, CTF, etc. territory over and over again. Brink looks ready to give gamers a great alternative to the typical COD shooters and with its dedication to PC gaming (allowing players to host their own game servers), Brink could easily become the “next big thing” in the genre.

Three more Fallout: New Vegas DLC packs to come

When compared to how much I played Fallout 3, I've barely touched Fallout: New Vegas. I mean, I've played it a lot, enough to complete a single playthrough and most of another but I still feel like that is a criminally small amount of time spent with one of the best open-world action/RPGs on the market.

One DLC pack was already released for New Vegas, but I never got around to it (entitled "Dead Money"). A friend played it and it sounded too much like "The Pitt" DLC from Fallout 3, in that you get stuck in a new environment and have your weapons and items stripped from you, leaving you to make due with whatever you can acquire. However, the next few that Bethesda have lined up really piqued my interest.

The first pack, which will be released on May 17, is entitled "Honest Hearts" and will see you taking on a band of tribal raiders in Utah's Zion National Park. Some info on this pack was leaked last month and if my memory serves, this pack may be shedding more light on Joshua Graham, aka "The Burned Man." In June, "Old World Blues" will see you taken captive and turned into a lab rat. You'll apparently be in or find your way to Big Mountain, also known as The Big Empty, and use the tech you find there to escape. In July you'll be confronting the original Courier Six in "The Lonesome Road," the man who refused to carry the Platinum Chip that led to you being attacked and left for dead in the Mojave.

Each pack will be $10 and released for PC, PSN and 360.