BRINK

Ну умер и умер, чё бубнить то ?

Brink is certainly an odd game. After beating the 'Resistance' half of the campaign, I feel like I've seen enough to give my verdict. To Brinks credit, it does quite a few things very well. The artstyle is unique and suits the gameplay; this extends to the characters, weapons and maps, all of which are visually interesting and meet a nice middle ground between cartoonish and grounded. The story and world design is also decent, with the central plot point of fighting for control of the Ark providing a solid justification for having the campaign be split into two halves from the Resistance and Security perspectives. I also appreciated the extensive character customisation (you can choose your class, body type, a variety of clothing types, weapons and extra skills), as well as the competent AI bots that allow the game to be played solo. Finally, Brink is free, which makes it hard to rate poorly in spite of its various flaws. In terms of Brinks weak points, the most obvious is the gameplay itself. The gunplay feels stiff, rough, and dated, even by 2011 standards. Weapons are absurdly inaccurate, have long TTKs, and recoil is unpredictable and unlike anything I think I've seen in any shooter. Brink includes a nicely implemented parkour system that lets you climb and mantle over many parts of the environment to access new areas. This paints the idea of it being a movement shooter, yet it's impossible to engage in combat while parkouring around the map due to how inaccurate the guns are. The most effective strategy I found was to crouch and camp a long sightline with a semi automatic rifle; it worked, but wasn't particularly fun and it meant I didn't get to make use of the parkour as much as I would've liked. Weapon variety is also lacking, with most being basic stat swaps. You're also restricted in terms of which weapons you can use, unless you go with the largest body type (which further reduces your parkour abilities). Similarly, your choice of class doesn't feel like it has a lot of impact outside of which objectives you're able to complete. The objectives themselves are particularly bland, mostly requiring you to guard a specific area for 5-10 minutes with slightly different justifications for doing so each time. It really feels like a conflicting mix of ideas. On the one hand, the parkour mechanics and simple weapon/class designs seems like a good start for a fast paced and accessible movement shooter. But every other aspect of Brinks design detracts from this; the inaccurate guns, static objectives and various class and body type restrictions are geared towards a slower paced, strategic team based shooter. Either of these would be great on their own, but they don't mesh well together and it hurts the experience as a whole. Unfortunately I found Brink to be a bit less than the sum of its parts, but its certainly not all bad. You might get a bit of enjoyment out of playing through the campaign solo, and the price tag makes it impossible to advise against trying.