Brink

It blurs the line between single-player and multiplayer styles, introduces an effective new movement system, and finds ways of discouraging all the obnoxious behavior common in most multiplayer shooters. The campaign is long, and the different classes allow you to play each mission over and over without getting bored.

If you love playing team-based shooters with strong team elements and multiple objectives, plus you have the patience to work through some clunky game choices and technical issues, Save Brink. If you're the exact opposite from above, Escape while you still can.

Brink does have challenge modes and a two-sided singleplayer campaign, but obviously it is multiplayer that shines brightest. Brink supports 16 players in multiplayer – get ready as I'm about to lay down some prediction as well as some very heavy compliments.

Brink is a game that provides massive amounts of customization for its gamers, including some unbelievably fun abilities. If you can excuse some of its offline play and lack of NPC A.I., then you'll find a game that encourages friends to come together online to share a deep and fulfilling team-oriented experience. Brink is a perfect example of how an online experience should feel and play out.

The ideas have been strong within this one, but the awful AI and the campaign that isn't worth its name may not exactly be helpful. For online players, however, it's a blast.

A daring proposal that, if succesful, is a step forward for a genre prone to stagnation, as it mixes altogether campaign, multiplayer, cooperative and competitive. With good ideas well executed, it may be liked more or less depending on the player, but deserves an opportunity.

Combat is consistently and gratifyingly chaotic, as the objective system organically builds choke points, and maps reward (or require) a good range of classes. Still, the game isn't frustration-free: Bulk, unlike class, can't be adjusted on the fly, escort missions are ludicrous, and the soldier class is underpowered. But a combination of good looks, heavy customization, and frenetic, fluid gameplay gives Brink the edge.

If you play Brink as the multiplayer-shooter it undeniably is (despite the possibility to save or leave the Ark alone, which should simply be ignored), it's a real winner. Great character-customization, well balanced maps, good handling, awesome graphics and a surprising depth thanks to the huge amount of abilities make this a MP-Shooter that has come to stay.

Brink doesn't quite live up to the narrative potential set up by its compelling setting and production values, but it does deliver a tight, well-polished team multiplayer experience. The SMART movement system saves Brink from being just another pretty face in the crowd by adding some much-needed mobility to the FPS formula. If you're looking for a creative new take on the Enemy Territory-style team multi shooter, Brink fits the bill.

The game is lovely to the eye because of its artistic decisions, has a gameplay that supports cooperative working, and has huge customization variety. But its lack of contents, poor performance and its online-only focus makes Brink not so great.

It offers a new angle on the genre and one that will excite fans. [Issue#73, p.84]

Splash Damage has evolved its compelling formula to offer some of the best multiplayer thrills in the business. Unfortunately technical problems still plague the game and prevent it from becoming a truly big player in the online shooter market.

Brink needs some time to unfold, especially during the multiplayer matches. But if you get across some early frustrations, the game really rewards you for your patience.

I like Brink quite a bit, but it's definitely not for everyone. The cumbersome interface is the antithesis of the modern streamlined shooter. If you can get past all the obstacles the game puts in your way, there's a lot of fun to be had here.

What also makes Brink interesting is that it provides players different options for approaching the game, with four different roles available: soldier, operative, engineer and medic.

A genuine triumph as a team experience, mind, Splash Damage has proved that it has a serious knack for creating videogames that require so much more than becoming skilled with a trigger finger. Smart, robust, exciting and always ready to play with the original template, Brink is a welcome surprise in a genre that has started to become very close-minded.

If Brink grabs you, it'll grab you hard. Even though the lack of polish is at times a disappointment, beneath the occasional annoyance is a fantastic and refreshing shooter that offers something different to the norm. It's standing on the precipice of true brilliance.

Despite these issues, all the elements are in place for Brink to become a terrific multiplayer shooter. It handles well, offers customization options galore, and challenges FPS players to do more than just pull the trigger.

A very original and stylish team-based shooter. Once you figure out the Parkour-based SMART movement system it's a pleasure to use, and the gunplay is very satisfying. The singleplayer game is weak and boring, mostly due to miserable AI, but go online and Brink has plenty of fun to offer especially after the latest patch.

The great unknown with Brink is whether a strong online community will form and maintain itself. And that's the crux of the matter. Blazing through the Campaign takes little time and earns a good number of achievement points but the game is lumbered with awful AI. I had limited online play with real people and found Brink to run smoothly enough but this is before a thousands of people jump on to find a game.

A meticulously designed Live shooter...Few multiplayer FPS games furnish you with unique anecdotes about valiant last stands and over-the-trench assaults but Brink is full of them.

Truly an original offering: it's got all the requirements of a solid class-based shooter, it injects some story into the mix, and it forces you to work together with your teammates, be they AI or human, to win.

It's only disappointing that Brink feels so confined by its own premise. Its innovative mechanics far outdo its lifeless, confining story, and, while respectable, its pure focus on multiplayer, team-based objective matches confines it further...Brink is still a very good game, and it deserves notation - just below Team Fortress 2 - as an exemplary team-based shooter.

Brink deserves to be ranked among the finest co-op games available. As a multiplayer experience, it is exquisite. But as mentioned earlier, it falters if played solo. While all the modes can be played in single-player, the bots that act as a stand-ins for other players are a poor replacement.

But the clean menus and HUD have a slickness and simplicity of interaction that elevate the squad-shooter genre to a new level of style and polish. Likewise, in moment-to-moment play, this is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2. For those who can leap that first hurdle, Brink should run and run.

Billed as a game that will blur the line between single-player, co-op and multiplayer, Brink actually does the opposite and reaffirms the general consensus on Xbox Live that multiplayer is king. Frankly put, unless you're playing Brink with and against human players, the game is mediocre at best. Get into a game with players that want to co-ordinate as a team against a group of like-minded foes, and Brink will almost certainly satisfy on every level.

A familiar class-based, objective-based multiplayer shooter that is immensely rewarding when played online with others.

It's not without its faults, some of which are more serious than others, but Splash Damage achieves the impossible: a game that feels fresh in the stalest of genres.

Despite failing to live up to some of its bold promises, Brink lands on its feet with an enjoyable class-based shooter that most anyone with a true taste for teamwork will take to. You may find a few hurdles to jump over, but if you're looking for a solid and fun team experience that isn't Team Fortress 2 on the consoles, you could do worse than Brink.

An interesting experiment in online shooting, dedicated to hardcore genre fans, possibly with premade groups to enjoy it with. All the others should at least try before buying.

Brink is a good game, totally devoted to co-op play and tactical gameplay. It works when humans are thrown in the battle, but it fails when bots are enemies and allies. Single player is definitely important in the package, and unfortunately A.I. is not as smart as it should be.

However, Brink is unified by its art direction, its smooth presentation and a fine user interface. Even if the maps lack some visual variety, their structure is incredibly difficult to fault. Players who can look past the hyperbole and ignore the fat will find underneath a sleek, highly refined multiplayer shooter long on balance and tactical gameplay.

Critics, business types, and your mom and dad don't understand that multiplayer is much more important to you than single-player these days. Head-to-head content gets the wealth of gaming time and Brink comes well equipped for hours and hours of gunplay.

It is a wonderfully complex game that has the potential to steal hundreds of hours of your gaming time if you have enough friends to enjoy it with.

Brink is a confusing beast. Inspired and engrossing, exasperating and chaotic. Putting my thoughts into words has been difficult, as a series of garbled, guttural noises are what I want to make whenever I try to describe this game. I want to excitedly shout about how happy it makes me, but I can't do so without adding important, overbearing caveats.

If treading the waters and building up a solid roster of characters sounds appealing then Brink could be the alternative shooter you've been waiting for.

Brink can be awesome and annoying, euphoric and inexplicable, all in the same breath. Unfortunately, fist pumps are followed by fits of controller throwing all too regularly to make this one score much higher.

Interesting but unpolished, ambitious but too weak to lift the weight of these ambitions. What bothered me most was that the brilliant idea of bringing other players into your single player mode was not realized properly. [June 2011, p.80]

The hype around Brink was huge and the game doesn't live up to all of the expectations. The campaign is extremely short and so it's the online gameplay that saves this game from demise. With the right teammates you'll have a ton of fun online.

The thing is that when everything does work, Brink is a fantastic fun online shooter, with just enough stolen ideas all rolled into one package that it ends up feeling very unique.

Brink really is a mixed bag. Stick with it, accept it for its faults, love it for its ingenuity, and there's a lot of enjoyment to be had here. Perhaps that's asking too much of today's gamer though, and inevitably, many will be put off by its short campaign, somewhat generic gameplay, laggy online experience and ultimately, the failure to deliver on its own hype.

If you have a gang of friends to play with regularily, Brink is fantastic. Proper communication makes solving the different tasks a wonder, and at times, this is one of the best games I have played in the genre. However, you never truly know what you get with Brink, due to the rubbish bots and uncertain online team composition. As a game it is simply too unpredictable.

In the end, Brink is another of those games that we see every so often; the games that have incredible potential and truly unique ideas but fail in their implementation. This could have been a great game, it could've been a hit and it could've given shooter fans a reason to return to a genre that has lost much of its originality over the last handful of years. Unfortunately for us and for its developer, the keyword here is "could've", because there's little here that makes Brink the genre redefining game some of us hoped it would be.

Brink tries to present many good ideas, but it falls short and, in the end, it's just the same gameplay mechanics we've seen many times. The SMART system is not as dynamic as it should be; the game modes are all the same; the feeling, overall, is that we have a fun and interesting multiplayer game (even in its Campaign mode), but users are left without new emotions. Many customization options that, in the end, are nothing new.

We were promised a nice mix of everything from Battlefield and Borderlands to Mirror's Edge. And while we do get some of that, the Brink experience just doesn't feel smooth and after a few hours of playing, there isn't enough that will make you come back for more.

Brink is a shooter suited exclusively for lovers of team-based online play; it's got a solid gameplay and good class differentiation, but it lacks a proper involving single player campaign, reduced to a mere sequence of botfights in the same few multiplayer arenas.

Brink has quite a few flaws, but the most frustrating one is the spawn-die-spawn-kill-die repetition in single player mode. At best it's a little banal and tedious, and at worst, it's downright rage-inducing. Your AI teammates and enemies often act strangely, exhibiting poor awareness of their surroundings, but they will unleash laser-accurate gunfire once they notice an enemy. This makes playing the game, especially at the start of the Security campaign, a real chore.

Brink is about two or three updates from being one of my favorite shooters of all time, but I'm not reviewing the game I want it to be. I'm reviewing the game that it is, and what it is is something just short of being the awesome experience that I want.

Brink is a good multiplayer game dedicated especially to online gaming's addicted. A well-implemented objective/class structure is a bit ruined by the lack of precision in the shooting component of gameplay.

As the product stands as of this writing, BRINK is a tough recommendation, but not a complete overlook. The game has its fun moments and clever gameplay. Unfortunately, frustration does come around the corner with a shovel and hits you in the face.

Brink is not a bad game. If Splash Damage can stabilize the performance and fix some glaring omissions (like a pre-game lobby) with a patch, I'd gladly spend more time with it. But with only eight multiplayer maps, 20 progression levels, no clan support, and average gunplay, it's not a good value proposition. Especially considering many Xbox Live games offer a similar amount of content for a fraction of the price.

The game has left us feeling in the middle of the road, admiring certain things like weapon classes and gameplay tweaks, but dreading online lag and unfair AI. It's worth a rental to see if it's something you'd enjoy in the long-term, but don't be surprised if, like us, you're left wondering how much better it could've been.

I'd say that Brink still has some promise if the lag can get ironed out soon enough; I certainly enjoy the online matches that run smoothly. If I can get into a match with a full 16 players and have it run smoothly, I could easily get months of enjoyment out of Brink.

Brink shoots for the stars, but unfortunately comes up pretty short, mostly because of design issues.

At the end of the day, Brink for the Xbox 360 is a game best left for gamers who really want to immerse themselves in some objective based online missions with some buddies; and I have to note, Brink is not intended to be played alone nor is it a game first person shooter fans will necessarily embrace. Brink is a unique game and does not follow the typical shooter template we have become accustomed to. In many ways Brink is an acquired taste. Unfortunately, my taste buds didn't exactly warm up to this one, but your experience may not be the same.

Brink's PR did everything to make people wonder just how the eight-versus-eight multiplayer-focused, story-based shooter would change the genre. The short answer lies in the clever tweaks it brings to the formula, whether it's your character's body type or the vast weapon customization options, all the way down to the teamwork needed to succeed. The SMART system feels more like a gimmick, and when it gets down to the actual shooting, it's nothing that we haven't seen before. Top that off with the issues it tries to parkour over, both off- and online, and Brink isn't so much of a revolution as it is a suggestion of where it wants to be.

Brink breaks my heart. It has all the ideals and elements to create a balanced and enjoyable multiplayer experience, but just lacks that final coat of polish that puts the shine on the packaging. Playing multiplayer with a group of your buddies might be good for a few hours, but in the end, you will go back to the Left4Deads, Halos and CoDs.

Sadly, there are a lot better FPS and tactical-RPG games out there for the Xbox; far too many to recommend Brink to anyone unless they have already played all the rest. If you're curious give it a rental but avoid a purchase until it drops to $29. Maybe, by then, they'll have patched the remaining bugs.

It feels like Brink is trying to take Team Fortress 2 to the next level and while it has many of great ideas, it's the perfect example of why mashing a bunch of different ideas together doesn't always work.

Brink is a mine of good ideas ruined by some technical flaws and some bizarre design issues. If you're looking for a great teamplay FPS, Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are still your first choice.

Brink feels like a breath of fresh air in the shooter genre, but turns out the victim of its own ambitions. That's mainly due to the large amount of potential that Brink holds, which is why it fails at other essential shooter-elements. Nothing's wrong with the way it plays and the class-system, but the lack of a decent amount of game-modes and maps, the below-average artificial intelligence and the constant network-delays, make it so that the qualities of Brink only show themselves very sporadically.

It looks unique and it has got some great ideas. It's just too short and not polished enough.

Loaded with shortcomings, not really generous in terms of content, Brink still remains an FPS with some really neat ideas, mostly in the way it promotes good teamplay. If you have several buddies with whom to share the experience, and take the time to organize your strategy, you won't be disappointed. But even so, the clear lack of polish, the not-so varied environments and average technical side prevent it from being an excellent FPS; it's only a good one.

Brink is not revolution. It might not even be evolution of the kind the FPS needs. If anything, it's an ideas board: a fun enough game in the short-term, but more valuable in the long run to better and brighter thieves.

After several hours of play, Brink conveys the feeling that it could have been much more. It's one of those games with huge potential, but it doesn't take advantage of it.

On the lively and intriguing battlefields of Brink, technical deficiencies and design issues can be as deadly as enemy soldiers.

Its visual style might be attractive, but Brink feels rushed with many technical flaws and has almost nothing that can justify its purchase in a genre populated with much better alternatives.

Brink has occasional flashes of brilliance and fun moments, but on the whole it just feels like a game that needed more time in design and development.

Brink is an extremely confused piece of software, that isn't quite sure exactly what it is, or what it's meant to be doing. When it gets into its stride and the gameplay flows, there are moments of beauty to behold. For the most part, however, it's all a bit irksome, as you battle with server issues, single player modes that aren't really single player at all, and a severe lack of direction.

I'd love to see more of the parkour gameplay, but one mechanic isn't enough to carry an entire game. Brink has heart, but the overall package is lacking.

If you like Enemy Territory enough that you're willing to play another somewhat flawed version of it, you may enjoy Brink.

With a few patches, it's certainly possible that Bethesda will clean up the network problems with the game and it will certainly be worth your time. As it stands right now, with laggy network performance and an abysmal single-player experience, this is a game that will push your patience to the brink. Take a pass, at least for now.

Overall, Brink was a disappointment.

Quotation forthcoming.

The AI makes playing on your own a pain in the arse and the netcode ruins the multiplayer. The story is actually pretty interesting but at the end of the day you don't play these sorts of games for the plot, and Brink doesn't deliver where it should.

There are some innovative ideas here but poor balancing, restrictive matchmaking and too little content overwhelm the positives.

Splash Damage's union of parkour and class-based shooter will hook you with excellent character-customization, and it is enjoyable under optimum conditions. Other times, it is nearly unplayable. Brink gave jaded fans of first-person shooters hope for a revolution. Instead, we got a mild and temporary disruption of the status quo with some fancy footwork.

Gearheads might keep coming back for the toys and outfits, but everyone else will run like hell. [Aug 2011, p.77]

Unforgivable mistakes leave Brink sitting alone in the corner crying, thinking about where it all went wrong.

Brink is an unfinished online game that tries to play like every other modern First Person Shooter, but fails in almost every aspect. The maps (which are also used for the campaign) are terrible and the re-spawning system is ruining the flow. Texture pop-up, animation glitches and the worst bot A.I. will make you "log off" permanently from its online co-op action.

On the brink of greatness, Brink employs objective-based matches to churn out a dull, frustrating time.

The structure of the game is decent, but it's brought down by issues both large and small. The largest one is a simple lack of content. With eight maps, a lackluster arsenal, and a campaign mode that is, by default, populated with terrible AI-controlled bots, Brink just doesn't have enough going for it to justify a full-price purchase.

Brink's artistically compelling soldiers can sail effortlessly over obstacles, landing acrobatic maneuvers never before seen in the genre with effortless poise -- unfortunately, just about everything else lands flat on its face.