A Regretful Purchase
Succumbing to the hype of BRINK's trailers and boasts involving parkour and a near-limitless set customization options, I decided to pre-purchase it before any reviews were posted. My first reaction to BRINK was a mixture of confusion of what the game was truly about and concern about my spending of fifty dollars.
BRINK's story is a series of empty transitions from one mission to the next as the missions themselves have no more story to them than any multi-player shooter. Given special titles to disguise the lack of creativity, the missions involve objectives like capture the flag, capture point, or defending a point. These are the same maps for single player campaign or multi-player online, adding to the lack of story or creativity. The backdrop of a post-apocalyptic civil war has been used before but was completely unused in BRINK.
The second point that caught my interest was the massive amount of customization that had given BRINK much of its hype. The options for outfits all look rather bland and the same goes for the other customization options in the game. There is no length or detail slider in the customization options and the huge number of the options comes from the different colors you can choose for your clothes and hair.
The gameplay was fair and the controls were manageable but the parkour involved nothing more than sliding or jumping onto a knee-high ledge. The environments were bland as I felt like I was walking through the same room with every new area I entered.
In closing, BRINK had so much potential and does not seem to live up to any of the expectations that Splash Damage set for its audience. I regret that I bought BRINK only to be given a basic shooter with no memorable qualities. I hope that my review will make at least one person think twice about buying BRINK before it's too late. Most of all, I wish I had my fifty bucks back.
