Someone To Drive You Home

Brink

There’s a dearth of multiplayer shooters in this generation. Brink aims to snatch you away from those with a combination of class based shooting and a unique traversal system. The game technically has a single player component but it’s just the MP with bots which brings me to my first point.

It’s a risky proposition to make a FPS that only has a multiplayer component. The only examples of it that I can think of is unreal tournament (later ones especially) and those game never really felt “complete” to me.

Thinking about it I think I need to get interested in the fiction and be shown why the game is cool before wanting to spend hours in a MP mode. As much as it makes most gamers roll their eyes a set piece can teach you how/when to use a games mechanics to win. Although when the pawn hits conflict most of the tactics that defeat AI are useless and that’s maybe the idea behind Brink.

The game itself is a objective based shooter with classes. With the majority of levels involving one team attacking while the other defends a specific location(s). Some objectives are class based meaning you may need a soldier to blow open a door or a hacker to steal a passcode but that’s about as deep as it gets. The one divergent feature of Brink is it traversal system which allows you to vault and mantle ledges. The game offers you three body types with higher ledges only accessible to light characters. These shortcuts could allow you to sneak behind the enemy lines but as you have less health as a light character it’s a risk reward situation.

Being a while after the games release there’s not many players on at any given time which is disappointing.

It’s hard to recommend a multiplayer game with virtually no other players but Brink is really good. If you can bring your own team of players I’d recommend it.

I’m including a bit about the narrative here as this is how it’s presented in the game. As you play you are rewarded with audio logs which are really well written but totally buried in the menus for some reason.