Brink Preview

07 May 2010 at 15:06:52 by Andy Alderson

We've all been looking forward to this presentation. Splash Damage is renowned for its energetic game demonstrations and, as Paul Wedgwood rattles off his first high-speed sentence into the mic, it's clear he hasn't lost any of his boundless enthusiasm for Brink. He gives some cursory attention to the story and background of Brink – futuristic society creates utopian city in the sea which soon becomes home of conflict between warring human factions – before getting to the meat of the presentation. Thanks to a certain Icelandic volcano, this is a worldwide exclusive demonstration of Brink and Wedgwood can't suppress the grin as he hints at what's in store for us.  

The focus of this build of the game, we're told, is to explain the twin notions of teamwork and customisation that lie at the heart of Brink. Character advancement in Splash Damage's latest shooter happens both online and off and we're shown how best to amass the XP and the vast amount of stuff we can spend it on.

From the first second of live gameplay we see, it's clear that Brink has come on a lot since early showings. The engine, which Wedgwood explains is “id Tech 4 plus loads of other stuff”, has obviously been streamlined as the game now runs at a buttery framerate making the action feel fast and frantic. We're shown an early Resistance Mission (each faction has its own storyline and missions in Brink) set in the Security Tower, a symbol of oppression resented by poverty-stricken refugees in the slums to the South. A brief cutscene at the start of the mission offers some dialogue and storyline to frame the action and it seems Splash Damage has gone some way to make Brink feel like a genuine single player experience rather than just a series of skirmishes.

But today's all about co-op (up to eight players can play at once), Wedgwood explains, and before long a team of Splash Damage staffers is taking the fight to the Security. Bringing up the radial mission dial we see that we have a choice of mission objectives, each with an XP value alongside. More pressing objectives, we're told, will reward more XP in an effort to gently push players into working together.

We have four objectives to complete: destroy a conduit, hack into the Warden's safe, free our colleague Nechaya and then escort him to safety. There are also lower-level objectives, Wedgwood explains, like capturing command posts which, once under your control, allow you to switch classes mid-mission. This, it soon transpires, comes in very handy indeed. After the SD team has seen off a few enemies near the conduit and captured a control post, Wedgwood changes class to the Soldier who is better versed in explosives. His team-mates take up tactical positions, providing cover fire as he plants a charge on the conduit by holding down the interaction button.

Once the conduit has been destroyed he runs back to the command post, which is now under attack by a couple of enemies who have flanked around the side (control points can be recaptured at any time). Wedgwood brings up the iron sights on his machine gun, and dispatches both pretty quickly.

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