Game of the Week: Brink

By Tom Bramwell Published 13 May, 2011

Ark life.

Man, I dunno - I leave Ellie, Oli and Wesley in charge of the website for a while and before you know it PlayStation Network's down, Sequence is a Game of the Week and something called "Zumba Fitness" is the most popular thing in the country.

Were my instructions not clear enough? "Give everything 8/10 and do something on The Apprentice," I said, before wandering into an important meeting about brand cohesion or whatever it is I do. "And make sure some of the guys on the homepage have hats."

Oh well, casting my eyes down this week's list of new releases, I think I can perceive a partial resumption of normal service, because this week people do seem to be selling us games in boxes.

"Exerbeat - Gym Class Workout", for example. At first I was sceptical, but according to my 14 seconds of research the tagline for this is "Bring the Fun of a Fitness Club Home!" For me the fun of a Fitness Club is not being there, so Namco, you've got yourselves a deal.

Another option, of course, is Traveler's Tales Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. This is the story of Captain Jack Sparrow. Chris Schilling reviewed it for us and enjoyed not just the cuddly-jumper reheated Lego gameplay, but also the way the developers made light of the series' coruscating multi-million-dollar descent into stuff and nonsense.

I haven't played it yet myself, but I will be interested to see how TT managed to better Gore Verbinski's own conclusion to At World's End, where a couple of the big ships find themselves literally trapped in a downward spiral towards nothing.

Lego's not the Game of the Week though, because that distinction goes to...

Brink

I don't really think Brink is what we were promised. And I say this as someone who has sat through 478 presentations of the game, mostly by Splash Damage boss Paul Wedgwood, which means I have been within earshot of more words spoken about Brink than I have on any other subject ever.

The elevator pitch for Brink, such that I understood it, was that it's a class-based multiplayer first-person shooter with a parkour button and in-depth character customisation, wrapped up in a clever interface that would quickly and gently instruct even a total numpty in the art of team warfare.

Instead we seem to have... a complicated multiplayer FPS with more accessibility issues than a wheelchair riding around an Escher painting.

Eurogamers take on other websites at Brink.

Once you get past that, though, it turns out that multiplayer first-person shooters are still a lot of fun. Who knew? The shifting frontlines concept really works, the SMART button encourages you to think carefully about level layout whether you're on attack or defence, and you can give yourself a silly accent (a concept from which we already occasionally benefit).

Simon Parkin tended to agree, awarding Brink a healthy 8/10.

Splash Damage has decided not to delay the PS3 launch of Brink despite the ongoing issues with PlayStation Network, arguing that the campaign is entertaining enough in the meantime. It's certainly true that you can enjoy yourself offline, but the optimal experience is definitely with other people.

These bots are OK, but they're no match for real, unpredictable human behaviour - nor the reliability or otherwise of genuine human team-mate support.

"In moment-to-moment play, this is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2," Simon wrote of his experience reviewing the game on Xbox 360, accepting the initially high barrier to entry. "For those who can leap that first hurdle, Brink should run and run."

So if you stare around gaming occasionally and find you don't recognise the terrain, take solace - a complex shooty-bang-bang game is our thing of the week. PC and 360 owners, we'll see you online.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (31) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • PseudoDuck #1 1 year ago

    Friendly AI is atrocious, Enemy AI is frustratingly difficult (even on Easy). At times the lag can make it almost unplayable.

    But, man, when you get a minimal-lag game with real people online, it's a fantastic game.

  • MrChuckles #2 1 year ago

    'Splash Damage has decided not to delay the PS3 launch of Brink' - Is that even possible to do? It's in all the shops already there is nowt they can do about it.

  • metalangel #3 1 year ago

    How can Brink, with the crippling lag, fact half the potential audience can't even play it and widely discussed (except in that 8/10 review, of course) poor design, be game of the week??

  • sanctimoniousqf #4 1 year ago

    @PseudoDuck Reminds me of Shadowrun... Overpromised, underdelivered, laggy as sh!t... but when you got into a good match that game was sweeeeet! :)
    Edited by sanctimoniousqf at 13/05/11 @ 17:35

  • asphaltcowboy #5 1 year ago

    Despite all the poo-pooing it's been getting in the forum and elsewhere on the internet, it's actually a great game. A fantastic team-oriented, objective-based shooter. Really like it. Yes it has a few lag issues, but have everyone forgotten how broken BFBC2, BF1943 and L4D2 were on launch (to name but a few)? Give it some time. When it works, it works like little else out there!

  • technicianTed #6 1 year ago

    I have to admit i gave this game a good bash last night and don't rate it at all.

    I don't want to moan about anything in particular about the game because my quibbles with this game have been mentioned many a time on the various forums from disgruntled owners.
    I will say i can't believe this got 8/10 though.

    5/10 for me, possibly 6/10 once all the patches are in and they get the game into some kind of better shape.

  • Arsecake_Baker #7 1 year ago

    Seriously EG how on earth can you look yourselves in the mirror in the morning, Brink is a hideous mess, texture pop ins abound, AI is non existant, framerate verges from passable to stop, the level design is beyond linear with the worst choke points since the Boston strangler, multiplayer.....HAA! that's a joke the ten games iv'e managed to get into have been rubber banded lagfests with under floor glitchers chortling in glee!

    Honestly EG sometimes i feel like we are living in different worlds, GOTW, NO, not by a long long chalk!

    ps it's going straight into trade for LA Noire.

  • Vortex808 #8 1 year ago

    Personally, I love it. It fulfils my every hope for TF2 like fun. Had some great games of co-op campaign, and my admittedly brief foray into online multiplayer was not the promised lag-fest and was really fun too. As aspahltcowboy has already said there are so many games that suffer from bad lag to begin with. It will get sorted out. God knows how many title updates it took to get Gears 2 into a passable state, I think it was about 3 or 4. Get organised and find some other routes and it's just brilliant.


    I just think this is a game you'll love if you like team-based FPS hijinks, but if you're more into lone wolf CoDing, then it probably won't be your thing.

  • Hunam #9 1 year ago

    Considering all the problems with the game I'm surprised this got GOTW straight-faced.

  • silversun #10 1 year ago

    Someone mentioned this game to me today , i was not really following it too well but watching this video it intresting to see what they done with it , ive played team fortress, would people say its similar to that?
    Anyway good luck to them with the game.

  • jablonski #11 1 year ago

    I don't think they bought the review for one second, but I think eg have obviously got too friendly with splash damage with all the previews and podcast etc, and seem to have taken pity on them.

  • TheNinkyNonk #12 1 year ago

    I dunno. When I first heard of this and saw some early videos, I was expecting (and hoping for) some mature, single player Mirror's Edge spiritual successor and I felt like I got some Quake fragfest derivative instead. My fault for not doing my homework I guess.

    In fact I've just picked up Mirror's Edge today for under a tenner instead of buying this! Go Faith!!
    Edited by TheNinkyNonk at 13/05/11 @ 20:02

  • Killerbee #13 1 year ago

    Sorry Brink, I shall pass.

    LA Noire is out next week...

  • charliemouse #14 1 year ago

    I played the hell out of Brink last night and this afternoon had 1 absolutely unplayable game, 2 slightly laggy ones, and 5 that were great.

    The objective based play really reminds me of MAG and that's no bad thing. Shame no-one wants to talk and play as a team because the one match where that happened was the most fun I've had shooting people in the face in a long time.

  • coolbritannia #15 1 year ago

    Brink is excellent, with teething issues. All else is folly.

  • japstersam #16 1 year ago

    I have tried playing online and the lag crippled it, but so far I think the SP is great. Good fun and not spotted any issues with AI so far. Friendlies buff me, medics revive me, enemies attack in groups. Not groundbreaking but certainly not terrible.
    Loving the character customisation and the meaty feedback on the guns too :D SMART is also good fun!

  • japstersam #17 1 year ago

    PS, any EGers want a game, Steam ID is japstersam :)

  • BlinkeredAxis #18 1 year ago

    Which versions are laggy? is it PC, 360 or both? Just thinking about choices... I missed the hype on this, but am wondering why a hate campaign by people who haven't played it yet is creeping in. I really hate that herding mentality that involves slagging off things based on hearsay. That's the sort of crap that got Stargate:Universe canned :(

  • Arsecake_Baker #19 1 year ago

    @BlinkeredAxis

    I've been playing it on the 360, and granted iv'e had the pleasure of maybe two out of twenty games that were not laggy or suffered from hit detection problems, it's really not good enough and all these people crying "it's only temporary" are living in cloud cuckoo land, no amount of "great" netcode will overide somebody's shitty internet connection.

    It's a nice try, the artwork is fab and so is the customisation (no women though?) but overall it falls down in far too many places.

  • Derblington #20 1 year ago

    It got GotW because the alternative was LEGO Pirates of the Carribean. It's a quiet week and something has to get the article space.

  • Haunted_Tree #21 1 year ago

    "Brinkers" = a device worn by gamers to mask the realisation that they may be playing a piece of crap.

  • alexwilla #22 1 year ago

    Its wonderous how suddenly the entire site is plastered with Brink Pictures, movies and backdrops and a game like this can GOTW and 8/10. The campaign is short, there are 6 maps and the game is fundamentally broken due to its balance and AI issues.

    Dirty Pool Eurogamer ..... Dirty Pool

  • actionfitz #23 1 year ago

    @PseudoDuck
    Pretty much nailed it right on the head there.
    Would just like to add that the 'single player campaign mode' it's a blatant lie.
    There is no single player.
    There is a decent, if slightly flawed, multiplayer game here with some bots thrown in so as to have something to do when things like PSN going down happen.

    It's a shame, the characters and the world look great, I would have loved to sink into a few hours of Brink single player campaign...
    Instead we have 8 maps and two factions, which means you get to go through the same 8 maps again with a new hat on.
    I really hope the free dlc they have announced offers a bit of meat to the bones of a promising but limited game.

  • Zeali #24 1 year ago

    Absolutely love this game on PC.
    I went expecting a new multiplayer ET game and it's exactly what i got. Great balance, great maps and awesome playability.
    It's just a shame that lots of people play it for few hours and quits it because they were expecting a new COD/Halo/BC/BF what this game isn't.

  • Ninerfan49 #25 1 year ago

    I really hated Brink at first, but it is slowly winning me over. I finally played in a few stable, smooth matches with some good teamwork and had an absolute blast. I think if they can patch things up to give us smoother games, Brink has a shot at being a success, although likely with mostly hardcore players. There is a lot going on, and I don't see many casual gamers investing time with Brink when COD offers a much simpler experience.

  • Negotiator1 #26 1 year ago

    Played it today and it is a very average game, not what I would call game of the week.

  • imyj #27 1 year ago

    I'm with Alexwilla on this one. The word "Brink" appears 11 times on the front page, including videos, pictures and huge background advertisements. It has more coverage on here than any other game right now. The art looks amazing and I have a lot of respect for the Splash Damage team (who kick ASS), but it's difficult to take the review here seriously.

  • thegogsunit #28 1 year ago

    Im having a great time on brink. Might not be the best game ever made but its still a lot of fun. Not tried online yet

  • Vally #29 1 year ago

    I still can't seem to get my head around how much negativity surrounds this game, if I'm honest.

    To me, Brink feels exactly the same as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and that's a really great thing. I don't know if it helps that I'm playing on PC and not on consoles, but I very rarely have laggy matches online and I've thoroughly enjoyed the 20+ hours I've sunk in so far.

    Get into a decent game online with a couple of friends, work together to take those objectives, and it's an absolutely wonderful game. It's a shame there's a ton of people who aren't getting into it.

  • aphex187 #30 1 year ago

    GG on PC.

  • Sildur #31 1 year ago

    Okay here are my comments on Brink having played it for the last few days.

    1. This is completely different to the run-and-gun games like Call of Duty and others. In this game you play as a team and when you do it’s glorious!
    2. The mechanics, SMART system, weapons, levels, art style, graphics and gameplay are all AAA quality work.
    3. The bots in this game are probably the worst bots I’ve ever seen in any first person shooter, this includes Unreal Tournament released in 1999. The bots are so bad that I completely understand everyone’s frustration with them. At times they make missions entirely unplayable and you have to persevere beyond these to get to the good stuff. I’ve seen people saying that the enemy team bots are smart – they’re not smart at all, it’s just that your own team AI is so shockingly poor, so it’s pretty much you vs 8 bots if you’re doing the initial challenges alone.

    I’ve not experienced any of the lag that people have mentioned and I’m loving the game. But if the developers are smart, they’ll release a patch that allows you to only play with human players as you can on the PC version.

    Whoever programmed the bots in this game should be fired, along with the testers for not pointing it out, and the managers who let this slip by, as they have turned what is easily a AAA title into something you want to smash and throw away. The bots give such a terrible first impression of this game that it makes perfect sense why so many people have complained. I wouldn’t blame anyone for not persevering beyond the first challenges with the bots, but I would persuade them to do so in order to get online and have some incredible experiences playing this game with others.

    I love everything about this game beyond the bot code and I would recommend it to everyone who can play online.